The Rock

This is an old post that I found in a Draft mode from a couple of years ago, but it is still relevant, so here it is!  

A few years ago I was out mowing the lawn one nice summer day.  Things are going along fine when all of a sudden there is a loud grinding noise coming from the blades.  I know and hate that sound.  It means I've hit a rock.  That usually means beat up blades, a lot of work to repair/replace, and the lawn is only half-mowed.  I stopped, got off the tractor, and found the source of the noise.  I dug up the offender.  Rather than tossing it into the woods or putting somewhere out of the way, I took a deeper look at the rock.  It seemed to have a very interesting shape.  I set it aside for later.

A closer look at the blades indicated it must have been a glancing blow as there wasn't any damage - or at least any new damage - to the blades.  I finished mowing the lawn.  

Several days later I looked at the rock again with a different point of view.  I liked the shape, the size, and form.  There is a Japanese art form called Suiseki.  From Wikipedia - "These stones are not just any stones which can be found in nature; they must be expressive stones and have a special shape, color and texture to be categorized as suiseki. There is a distinction between landscape and object stones. The former reflect landscapes such as mountains, lakes or rivers, while other stones have object shapes that resemble animals or sculptures."

I had been looking for a good suiseki for some time.  I hadn't spent a lot of energy but always felt like I'd know it if I saw it.  This was the one.  I set about designing a glass stand for the rock, in the true nature of Suiseki.  However, one thing was still bothering me.  

Then the thought occurred - why not make the rock in glass as well.  

The story of making the rock is quite a bit of work - rubber molds, mother molds, two part molds, casting, etc.  I'll document that at some other point.  In the meantime, here is "The Rock".

Back Home from Corning

I just returned from The Studio at the Corning Museum of Glass where I participated in the workshop on glass casting led by Richard Whiteley.  What a great experience!!!!  I've now been privileged to attend 10 workshops at The Studio and I think this one ranks up there as #1.  There are too many things to go into - suffice it to say that if you ever get a chance to work with Richard - take the plunge.  It will be rewarding.

First off, workshops at Corning have a "teaching assistant" whose main job is to herd the cats (workshop participants), fire the kilns, and generally keep people from doing silly stupid things.  We had much more than a TA though.  Heike Brachlow was our TA for the session.  She should have been considered as co-instructor.  She did so much more than the typical BA.  She is a world class glass caster in her own right.  Check out her work here.  One of her movement pieces was featured on the cover of the Bullseye catalog #7.

Check out Richard's work here.  Richard treated the workshop more as a very abbreviated class he would teach at the Australian National University.  This is very different from what I've experienced in past workshops.  There was an equal amount of thinking/planning as there was actual hands-on work.  At first, I questioned this approach but I think it was much more effective.

Richard and Heike were sticklers for safety and health practices - requiring dust masks, eye and hearing protection.  Here is a picture showing how we usually saw him during the day.

And here is a picture of me working on a mold.

I'll post some additional topics about the actual pieces I made during the workshop in the near future, along with photos.  

I'm off to see the Wizard

My bags are packed, the car is loaded, the cooler is full of Diet Dr. Pepper, and I'm just about to depart for the beautiful town of Corning, New York.  Seven and a half hour drive, give or take 30 minutes.  I'm taking the Richard Whiteley workshop "Addition and Subtraction" over the next two weeks.

Above is the picture from the Corning Museum Of Glass website for the course.

I can't wait...

I'm Back!

It was before Halloween 2010 the last time I posted.  Not that I don't have a lot to say.  Well, maybe I don't after all.  I'm been extremely busy during the fall and winter.  And I've just been in the glass doldrums for a while.  I suspect that the extremely cold weather has had a bunch to do with that.  

It's been a very cold winter here in Michigan.  I think there were very long periods to time when the high for the day was about 10 to 15 degrees Farenheit.  My sheet glass and tools are in the garage.  Way too cold to even stand there for five minutes.  My pole barn (my workshop) which has the coldworking tools is heated, but I keep in down low to probably 45 degrees most of the time.  This prevents things from freezing and water from condensing and rusting onto the surfaces of equipment like table saws.  I can turn it up and it'll get quite comfortable in about 30 minutes, but walking out there and starting work just didn't seem like fun.

I'm getting ready for spring.  And starting to think about glass again.  I've sold a lot of pieces at the gallery in Lansing and that is nice to get a check every month for a couple of pieces or so.  I need to gear up for glass.  I haven't blown glass since November and am looking forward to it some more.  

I'm always on the look out for new tools.  I find them in the strangest places.  I found this one last summer in the local Bed, Bath, and Beyond store.  

You are probably asking - what is the "tool" that idiot is blathering about.  Well, its the "Baking Mat".  It's a baking sheet made of silicone.  It is meant to line a cookie sheet and prevents baked items from sticking or burning.  If it can stand 450+ degree temperature then it should be pretty durable.  I can't remember the dimensions but it is a "Full Sheet" size, 17" x 34" or thereabouts.  

I found that clay doesn't stick, wax doesn't stick, and it cleans up very easy.  I've actually poured hot wax directly on the sheet.  I built dams from clay, and then poured the hot wax directly into the dammed area.  Once cooled it was completely flat and perfect.  Peeling off the clay dams was easy and then the wax model just popped off.  No fuss, no muss.  

One more silicone item I picked up was a mini-muffin mold.  I didn't get the full size muffin mold but that will be a future acquisition.  The mini-muffin mold makes a dozen small muffins.  I just pour leftover wax into the mold, let cool, and then pop out discs of wax.  These can be easily stored and re-melted in the future.  You can see one of the wax muffins off to the right side of the mat in the picture.

Amphitheatre - or is it - Ampitheater

I wanted to do some finish work on this piece before I posted it.  Unfortunately life, or in my case, work, got in the way.  I cast this in the Daniel Clayman class at Corning last month.  

It turned out as I expected, actually better than I'd expected.  This was a simple form that was inspired by my trip last year to Athens, Greece.  I loved looking down at the amphitheatre from the Acropolis.  

This obviously isn't a direct recreation of what I viewed.  Rather this is my interpretation given the limitations of what I could cast and finish in a two day firing cycle.  There is some flashing and minor imperfections that a little, make that a lot, of coldworking will fix.

Time to get busy...

Future Fossils

When I was preparing for the Daniel Clayman casting workshop at the Studio at the Corning Museum of Glass earlier this month, I needed to show up to the workshop with a relief ready to cast. I was struggling to come up with an idea.  I think of reliefs as being two dimensional even though they are technically a three dimensional thing.  

For some strange reason, I started daydreaming about fossils.  I really like fossils of animals, fish, reptiles, and vegetation found in rocks.  I can't imagine the joy of someone breaking open a rock and finding a trilobite in perfect form, preserved for millions of years.  My mind wandered and had a very strange thought.  The fact of mind wandering isn't so strange for me.  The strange part is where it wandered to.  I was thinking of the types of fossils people of the far future would find from our civilization.  I thought that all the hardware - nuts, bolts, screws, wires, and other metal found in our houses, cars, toys, and other elements of our daily lives - would be the fossils of the future.  Thus, "Future Fossils" were born.  

  
Above is a picture of the first "Future Fossil", which was created during the workshop.  It is shown standing up and embedded in a chunk of clay.  That made the most sense as a quick solution to the photography problem and seemed more fitting than a plastic display stand.

Here are some photos taken on my mobile phone showing some of the steps along the way.  First up is the original clay model.  Here I took a bunch of parts from my workshop, rolled out about a half-inch thick slab of plasticine (non-hardening) clay, and then pressed the hardware into the clay. 


This is sitting on a piece of melamine board that has been waxed to prevent it from sticking completely and can get it off once the mold is created.

Next up is the preparation of the mold.  Here I'm doing a hand-built mold rather than a poured mold.  In this picture, I'm using compressed air at a very low pressure (about 3-5 PSI), to gently move the plaster/silica mix around the surface of the clay.  

The purpose of doing this is to eliminate the tiny air bubbles that get trapped on the surface and cause issues in the mold.

 I didn't take a picture of the final mold before removing from the supporting board, nor one of the mold with the clay still in it.  One trick we learned is how to use compressed air at much higher pressure (40-50 PSI) to help remove the clay original.  Note that the clay came out perfectly.  However if you look close, you'll see I still didn't do a great job of eliminating the air bubbles as there are many little pock marks on the surface of the mold. 

 The next picture shows the mold sitting in the kiln and filled with a turquoise blue colored glass frit.  Even though I've mounded it up, you can see that the final fossil isn't as thick as I'd have liked it.

I leveled the mold in the kiln and took great care to make sure it was level before I filled the mold.  I think it must have been moved or adjusted based on the final result, where it is slightly thicker on one edge than the other. 

All in all, I'm quite happy with my "Future Fossil #1".

 

It's Corning Time Again

Time is fast approaching for my semi-annual trek to one of the mother land's of glass and glass instruction - The Studio at the Corning Museum of Glass.  I've been accepted into Daniel Clayman's "Mold Making for Glass Casting" workshop.  Here is what the official description of the session 

This course is intended for sculptors wanting to explore kiln-casting glass using plaster molds. Students will explore the how and the why of a broad array of casting concerns. Using the students' work as a platform for demonstrations, the course will cover a range of topics, including mold recipes, wax-working techniques, rubber mold making, glass sources, kiln requirements, and more. Students may make an object or two, but the emphasis will be on learning the process, not leaving with completed objects. 

The description also says some sculpting skills required.  I'm not entirely convinced right now of this.  Of course, this is what I always think prior to attending a workshop!

I've known about this since early May.  Every week I've thought about what I want to make / learn in the session.  But there always seemed to be time for it later.  Well, looking at the calendar, I have a little over two weeks to get off my butt and get ready.  

As inspiration, I'm posting this picture which was in the Corning catalog for the summer sessions this year.

I'm not going this big or anything close.  We've been limited to a size of about 6" on a side.  Given we only have a week, casting anything larger isn't feasible. 

Time to get going... 

Floating Away

Been quite busy lately and haven't had time to post.  A while ago, I posted about some float (window) glass that a buddy of mine obtained quite cheaply.  You can follow that thread here and the first test results here.  I certainly was amazed by the results which wasn't at all what I expected.  I posted my results and asked some questions over at the Warm Glass forum.  The answers told me that I should have expected the results.  But I wasn't happy.  The holy grail of cheap clear casting glass was theoretically in my sights and I wasn't giving up quite so easily.

Off to the kiln for round two.  Since the first test wasn't flat, and took way too long to grind, I decided to fire the test piece longer and hotter.  The test pieces are 8" rings about 1" thick.  This is something that easily fits in my little kiln, doesn't take forever, and is easily repeatable.  I doubled the length of time for the melt and added 150 degrees to the top temperature.  Glass I'm used to would have been in a puddle on the floor at those times and temperatures.  Here is a picture of the second test.

N

Now this is strange.  It's hard to see in this picture but the glass went completely milky white.  The previous piece had "veils", but this piece is completely opaque.  It was definitely flatter, but certainly isn't smooth.  The bottom was pretty good, but this still has a long way to go before I could say I have an 8" flat disc.  My guess right now is that even longer/hotter wouldn't get where I want to be.

That left another test to do.  What if I took the glass, crushed it into frit, and then cast that.  That is a good way to work with other types of glass.  So I put a bunch of the float cullet in the kiln, heated it up to about 1100F, and then quenched the hot pieces in a bucket of water.  This sets up a bunch of internal fractures in the pieces, but they don't shatter immediately.  Hitting them with a hammer creates a fairly uniform gravel (frit).  The best way to describe it, is that they are like fat grains of rice. 

I weighed the first test piece which was 2.5 pounds.  I then weighed out the same amount of the frit, so I'd have a good comparison.  Of course, the frit mounds up as there is quite a bit of air spaces in between each of the grains.  It should all melt down flat.  Off to the kiln with a schedule that I thought would work, based on previous frit casting.  Boy was I surprised.

The picture is sort of out of focus, so sorry for that.  But you get the idea.  This looks like the surface of piece of sandpaper enlarged a hundred times!  This isn't flat, not even close.  However the color is much more uniform, even if it is white.  That I expected based on previous frit casting with transparent glass.  I wasn't ready for the surface texture.  Longer and hotter for this piece is needed as well.  

Finally, I had a friend polish the first test piece.  This is quite nice.  I like the veiling effect, but you certainly see the shape outline of the original cullet.

Well, its off to consider other options and tests. 

Cheap Casting

I am finally going to get more serious about casting glass.  I have several ideas, which I won't detail here now, but stay tuned.  More in the coming weeks.  Anyway, I needed to find a way to test out some ideas without breaking the bank.  Really nice glass can cost $8 to $10 per pound - or even more.  That is just too much for me to waste learning techniques and trying different things.

One of my friends found that the local glass factory sold broken stuff for next to nothing.  I won't give the place away as I don't want the convenience and low cost to be taken away!  I think the price is under $0.10 per pound.  This glass comes in half-inch thick chunks.  I'd say that the average is from about 1" square to 3-4" pieces.  The glass is very clear, even though it is a float glass which is usually found in windows.  The nice part is that there isn't any green tint that is associated with this type of glass.  

I took my 9" ring and loaded it with about 5 pounds of the chunks.  It is in the kiln now.  I'm trying to see how well it melts and what kinds of veiling or other remnants show up.  Stay tuned for the update when it comes out of the kiln tomorrow.