Anyway, in the ceramics department I have made 6 moulds, 3 tubs of porcelain casting slip and about 30 beaker forms from them. To make these moulds I started with a few of my thrown beaker forms from the throwing workshop a couple of weeks earlier. From these I cast moulds out of plaster, soft soaped up the moulds and cast models from these. This was basically so that I had an easy way to make multiple moulds.
I then separated them and made multiple moulds from each model, allowing me to cast more at once as I am after a sheer number of similar forms.
This is me foolishly using tims scraper to hammer my model and mould apart... it didn't go down too well!
However this meant I'd made 6 moulds.
Next was to make a load of porcelain casting slip. This was so I could get the extremely fine thin porcelain beakers I want.
So I bought 2 bags of prcelain clay and set to work following the recipe.
-25kg Audrey Blackman Porcelain
-50g Sodium Silicate (140° TW)
-50cc Sodium Dispex
-3 litres water
After lots of chopping up clay and mixing ingredients together with a giant hand blender (which I found rather novel) I had to weigh up 3 pints to get the water content. After a little bit of chopping and changing I managed to get it within the limits. Next I added more diluted sodium dispex to the mixture (this is the defloculant - the ingredient which keeps everything suspended) to get the right viscosity. Who knew an art subject could get so technical?
So after all that I've now got myself these 3 buckets full of the creamiest white porcelain slip. It looks so much like melted white chocolate its untrue, but I'm sure it wouldn't taste too good. Now I'm in the process of mass casting and am doing OK so far. However I still need to make another model and another few moulds as there's a bit of a size gap between my beaker forms. More to come soon when I have my first lot out of the kiln, bring on tomorrow!
No comments:
Post a Comment