I was inspired by a blog post from my old high school art buddy Brian Colin who did some castings of his sculpture: Brian Colin’s foray into casting. He’s be come a bit of a celeb in some circles, just became a papa himself this month, and actually fulfilled the dream of supporting y’rself doing what you love, and how many of us can honestly say that? Well to be fair I ain’t far off. I may bitch and moan about programming (especially that haphazard half-assed no-support-having dotnet bastardization of a platform I gots to do most of it in) but in the end when I see things go right, it is magnificently satisfying. Perhaps because it’s such a rarity. Regardless, my day to day is usually pretty removed from working with my hands, even in the production room beneath me now, the only tools at by disposal are an iGen (think big-ass Xerox monster, looks like the AI villian from the Batman animated series:)
Yeah, like that. I got that and a cutter. Oh and a corner rounder, sorry.
So anyway, back to the thread: I read Brian’s post, thought, I could/should do that with the baby feets and hands, and so I did. It was a bit of an exciting beginner experience as it was a bit of a messy prospect, and rather time- sensitive, I didn’t really have the time to do it right and take pictures- so really I might as well have taken the pictures as I went along.
To start off I ordered my supplies through a place called Maragon in the UK, who had good customer service, in the UK. So it does exist. The kind gent asked what I was looking to do and made reccomendations on which supplies I should get, and even included some free fiilling powder and detailed instructions, if I could but follow them.
The first step is to take some alginate, a powder that mixes with water (usually to take Dental moulds) and put the baby’s foot into the resulting gel, whuch sets in about 2 minutes. I got a tupperware container just a bit bigger than Amelie’s foot to pour the mixed alginate in. I thought ahead, and thought to minimise squirming and such, and so forward-thinking clever Ryon, her used warm water to mix with the alginate. Unfortunately with alginate, the temperature is important, and so the first batch set immediately and I had a block of rubber about my spoon before I was even done mixing. Lesson 1: Temperature is important, do it at room temperature, which I did.
I had set up a platform for Amelie to lie back and have her foot dunked in comfort and luxury, but as my first fear confirmed, babies don’t like having thier extremities dunked in fluids, and so some kicking and squirming emptied half of the contents of the second container into the blanket, the clothes, the counter… Lesson 2: Don’t underestimeate the flexisqirmability of newborn babies; Milena had to holding her leaning forward 45° while I held the ankle and tupperware together in place. It got set alright, but when I went to pull Amelie’s foot out of the mould, the foot tore out the top by the ankle, which brings me toLesson 3: consider the extraction angle, so for the next attempts I was able to avoid tears by A: having the foot angle not be so far tilted up (Amelie’s doing more than mine, I think, really) which keeps the ankle joint bould from getting too thin, and B: pulling the foot out towards the back, using the boinginess behind the heel to keep the joint top pressure off.
Next is to mix and pour the casting plaster into the alginate mould, which brings us to Lesson 4: RTFM (that’s Read The Manual). I got the water to plaster proportions backwards, and the instructions had said “if you haven’t used casting plaster before, you will probably be surprised how runny it is,” so I thought well that must be the way it is and poured the 1/3 strength plasterwater into the moulds anyway, and while I waited for them to set, I looked at the directions again, and realised my inverse proportion mistake, and did my best to get the weak plaster out by rinsing it out in a bucket. Unfortunately, what would have been the best mould didn’t get all of the bum plaster out when I put the properly mixed batch of plaster into the moulds, as you can see when the tosies broke off. Also on that one, you can see the foot was pressed against the bottom of the container. Once I tore all the moulds off, I could see the final problem: bubbles. Lesson 5: AVOID BUBBLES. You can see the warty bubbles that came from air trapped between the skin and the alginate, and on the side not pictured, there are a few holes in the tops of the feet where bubbles in the plaster didn’t make it out of the mould.
We will definitely have to go back and do some more if we want a perfect set to bronze, which will entail making a latex mould from the plaster cast, and then casting metal resin into the latex mould. fun for later. Anyway, it’s great to be doing something artsy again, even if it is schlocky-parenty, but hey, that’s where I am now.
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Mar 08 2010
