Name: Charles Kang & Isabella Lores-Chavez
Date and Time:
2016.09.20, 11:20am to 6 pm
Location: Upper East SideSubject: First Meeting
For our first loaf, we followed a basic recipe for a rye-sourdough loaf. We set this loaf to rise for the first time at 12:15, then kneaded it again at 5:40 pm. We set it to rise a second time overnight.
For our second loaf, we followed the recipe for Lady Arundel's Manchet. We let this loaf rise for 2 hours before putting it in the oven. We took the manchet out of the oven at around 4:40 and made our first attempts at making molds, using five different objects to make impressions.
Given that our molds were not entirely successful on the first attempt, we looked forward to working with three other loaves, which would all rise overnight. Together, we made a third loaf entirely out of wheat flour.
Later that evening, Charles made one more loaf, made entirely out of white all-purpose flour, since we wanted to compare the molds that we could achieve using a loaf made of more finely-ground flour.
Name: Charles Kang & Isabella Lores-Chavez
Date and Time:
2016.09.21, 08:35pm to 2016.09.22, 12:30 am
Location: Upper East SideSubject: Second Meeting
During our second meeting, we baked the three remaining loaves of bread (all made of different kinds of flour, and all set to rise overnight in the fridge).
From our molding attempts with the first loaf we made (rye-sourdough), Charles gets a nice impression of a key.
With loaf #3, we decide to try a technique using both halves of the bread, keeping the crust on to aid us in putting pressure against the object forming the impression. This time, although Charles does not get as good an impression of the key, I can get a pretty good impression of the Kylo-Ren figurine. It will be interesting to find out, through the actual casting process, how many details of the figurine actually registered in the impression. The tooth-shaped case mold also looks pretty good in this attempt, as a 3D model.
With loaf #4 (the one made of all-purpose white flour), we try both techniques: scooping out and packing the pith, and keeping the pith and the crust intact as an armature for a 3D mold. We find that this pith is not nearly as cooperative as we had expected; it seems too porous to be packed together. My Kylo-Ren impression is decent, but the structure of the mold itself looks dubious. Charles makes a 3D mold of the corked glass jar, which is quite nice, but still not our best mold—as far as we can tell, anyway!
Name: Charles Kang & Isabella Lores-Chavez
Date and Time:
2016.09.26, 1:30-2:30 pm
Location: Making and Knowing LabSubject: Casting in Sulfur and Wax
In the lab, Charles and I had four bread molds to use for casting in sulfur and wax. We decided to distribute them as follows:
-For casting in sulfur, the two-part mold of Kylo-Ren and the single mold of the key
-For casting in wax, the single molds of the tooth-shaped case and the Hera figurine
We started out with the sulfur casting. We set up structures to hold both molds in place. This process was rather elaborate for the Kylo-Ren mold: first we widened the channel into the mold just a bit, then we taped up the bread (in order to align and secure the two pieces of the mold together), and then held the joined mold in place with two metal cans filled with sand, set on either side of it. We also included metal rods on either side of the bread (on the axis parallel to the cans of sand) to stabilize it some more. We used a similar metal rod to tilt the key mold into a stable position.
Charles and I each handled the metal pot over the hot plate in the fume hood, supervised by Joel, to melt the powdered sulfur into a pourable liquid. It was a strange process: some the powdered sulfur stuck to the sides of the pot and stiffened surprisingly, while the rest melted into a honey-colored liquid at the bottom of the pot. It was bewildering, partly because we had to melt so much to ensure that we had enough for the two-piece mold, which we anticipated would need lots of liquid sulfur to fill up. With Joel's recommendation, we turned up the heat in order to melt the stubborn sulfur that had hardened along the walls of the pot. At this poit, we could actually see vapors rising from the melting sulfur, like smoke.
When the sulfur had melted, I poured it into the Kylo-Ren mold. Much to our dismay, the sulfur leaked extensively through the bread mold onto the ceramic plate. We thought this might happen, through gaps along the edge of the bread where the two pieces of the mold met, but we didn't expect it to leak quite so much. It seemed unlikely that any sulfur actually stayed in the mold, given how much spilled. We made a second attempt, at 2:20 pm, after aggressively taping the 2-piece mold with additional masking tape, ensuring that the places along the edge that showed traces of the sulfur leaking through it were completely sealed. Then, instead of our original structure to hold the two-piece mold in place, per Joel's suggestion, we nestled the mold into a tub of sand. This stabilized it and created another platform to absorb leaks in case they occurred again. During the second attempt, I poured the sulfur as steadily and quickly as possible, filling the mold until the channel was covered up. The liquid sulfur sank into the channel after I had stopped pouring but it seemed like the mold had been filled (even though the channel was not after a few seconds).
Because I had to leave the lab at 2:30 pm, Charles took care of taking the key and the Kylo-Ren casts out of the molds. He left the Kylo-Ren cast soaking in water in order to facilitate removing the bread that had stuck to it on all sides. For more details about this process, and for information about how Charles cast the key, see Charles's bread molding and casting notes.
Before I left, at 2:05 pm, Charles and I also cast in wax. For melting the wax, we also used a hot plate, on the countertop outside of the fume hood. The beeswax melted quickly, within minutes, emitting a pleasant fragrance. Because our molds sat level on the ceramic plates, we did not need to prepare any structure to hold them in place. Melting and pouring the wax was much easier than doing so with the sulfur! After the wax had melted, it felt like a very straightforward process to pour the wax directly into the single-piece molds; perhaps the experience of pouring the sulfur also helped me feel more confident about the experience of pouring. I poured melted beeswax into the mold of the tooth-shaped case, filling it just over the top of the mold. The wax was clear when it first entered the mold but quickly transformed into an opaque, milky-yellow surface. Charles poured wax into the mold of the Hera figurine.
Name: Charles Kang & Isabella Lores-Chavez
Date and Time:
2016.09.29, 2:00-3:00 pm
Location: Making and Knowing LabSubject: Taking Casts out of Molds and Removing Bread
Back in the lab, our primary goal was to get as much bread residue off of the Kylo-Ren cast as possible. Because of the texture of the sulfur, the porosity of the bread pith, and the extensive surface detail of the cast, the Kylo-Ren cast was covered in bread, even after soaking in water for days.
The biggest chunks of bread came off of it easily, but both Charles and I spent a long time slowly and methodically scraping and picking bread residue off of the cast, using metal tools reminiscent of the kind of instruments dentists use. The fine, sharp points helped us remove the smallest bread bits attached to the Kylo-Ren cast. We also used a brush to try to sweep away some of the bread crumbs.
Even after prolonged attention to removing the bread residue, we couldn't completely clear the surface of the cast of bread, but we removed significant amounts, enough to allow us to see how finely-detailed a cast we had achieved. The pattern (my Kylo-Ren USB stick figurine) has many surface details, particularly in the helmet and uniform of the figurine, both on the front and the back. The mold seems to have accepted these details with incredible fidelity, as the cast shows even the smallest lines in the helmet and the uniform.
Moreover, the imperfection of the chunks of sulfur surrounding the cast--seemingly caused by leakage within the two pieces of the mold--make me aware of how many extra touches and additional interventions are required to turn a cast into a finished objects. The cast that emerges from the mold is not necessarily a perfect finished product! I know this from my understanding of lost-wax casting, but it was a revelation to see for myself that traces of the casting process are literally, physically attached to the cast that comes out of the mold. We would essentially have to carve and sculpt the sulfur cast of Kylo-Ren to end up with a figurine in the round that would be the twin of the pattern (the USB stick).
Removing the wax casts from their molds was a much less involved process. Charles virtually popped both out of the bread molds, exerting some force because the bread had hardened after the casting process. Both wax molds were very successful. The tooth-shaped case mold created a cast that, uncannily, because of the color of the wax, looks like an oversized tooth! It was not nearly as challenging to remove bread residue from its edges and surfaces. With this cast, too, I can see how there would be opportunities to smooth out its edges and remove the signs of the casting process.
For information about the fate of the key (cast in sulfur) and the Hera figurine (impeccably cast in wax), see Charles's notes.