Latest thing here: Paula Fraser.a member of the local sculpture network I co-demonstrated aluminum casting for a few months back, dropped in to work in the foundry for a day and get her hands dirty, see if she maybe wants to add some cast metal elements to her artwork. She has made a bunch of stained glass guitars and other cool stuff, done.some glassblowing and blacksmithing too. She brought a mask pattern along that was still super thin even after she added a few coats of resin to thicken it, and a couple plastic butterflies to try out. I was sure that mask would misrun so after I walked her through making up the mold I rammed up another one just in case. Rolled them over upside down to demold the pattern by lifting it off the cope by the nose so as not to risk ripping the hanging core off the cope trying to work against gravity. I let the aluminum heat up for an extra minute or so for good luck and gave it a shot... Well, neither of them misrun like I thought they would, but on the first mold that pesky hanging core sure did fall! Glad we had the extra insurance as the second mask came out quite nice. Might have happened when I laid weights down on the cope, or maybe when I closed up the mold, who can say. Took me a couple seconds to realize what must have happened when we demolded it though, lol. After all that I think she likes that one almost as much as the one that worked! Jeff
Nice finish on the mask, you did good. I'm curious, did you pour the butterflies first or the mask? That would be a tossup on which one gets the hottest metal first.
The wings are thicker than they look in this pic that she sent me when I thought the same thing and asked about thickness. But the one on the lower right maybe gives you some idea. I was relieved when I saw them in person. Definitely masks first! Jeff
That last "core-fall" face looks (from the back) like you attempted to mold in the brain as well Nice work, thanks for all the pics!
More Mrs. Roboto parts! There will be stained glass sections between the castings when it's done. It might not be the same finished piece the mask ends up being part of, I'm not sure. But she did decide she liked the brain looking fail mask best, so the perfect one came back to me as a gift. With a sweet dragon paint job! Jeff
I'm surprised she didn't add stained glass eyes to the mask. Cross eyes, one eye, Marty Feldman eyes.
