Tuesday, August 26, 2008

Glass Studio Processes and The Serenbe Project

These moulds pictured are still for The Serenbe Project. Take a minute and visit the Serenbe Community, it is a delightful place. After the clay model is removed from the glass mould, the moulds have to be checked to make sure there are no undercuts (places where the glass can become lodged). This pictures on the blog tonight show how I finish the moulds.






You can see the greenish gray area on the top edge of the mould. That is leftover clay that has to be removed. I finish removing the clay, and sand down the glass moulds


This is how I finish the edges and remove the remaining clay.



I then brush out the mould to make sure that it is clean before taking a warm damp rag to go over it one more time.
After the mould is cleaned like this, it is ready to be placed in the kiln to be force-dried.
I found these cool little paintbrushes at Harbor Freight Tools. They are good for a lot of things in the studio and they are so inexpensive, I just throw them away!


At this point, the mould is still very wet. The plaster material with which I invest the mould has a very short working time (under 10 minutes on a cooler day). This means that most days in the South, you better have your plan together when you begin to mix, because on a 95 degree day with high humidity, the working time is more like 5-6 minutes. I still like this material very much.
These glass leaves will be installed at Serenbe in late October.


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