NAME: Michelle
DATE AND TIME: 3 October 2014, 9AM to 11AM
LOCATION: 260 Chandler Hall, ColumbiaUniversity
SUBJECT: Wax mold

Began the carving of medal molds into wax provided to us, which were cast from cupcake holders. I first started by etching a face rather crudely into the wax using one of the quill tips, which I found very difficult to do; the room was colder and the wax was almost impossible to work with. The quill tip was also a very ineffective tool for anything but carving lines, as it was not strong enough to carve wax away from any impression. I completed the face with deep scratches but realized that I had to create raised surfaces instead of merely carving lines into the wax, but by that time class had ended and I decided to create another wax mold the next time we had class.

NAME: Michelle, Yijun, Diana, Tony
DATE AND TIME: 7 October 2014, 4PM to approximately 6:30PM
LOCATION: 260 Chandler Hall, ColumbiaUniversity
SUBJECT: Wax/Plaster mold

Began the final wax mold of the medal along with Yijun and Diana during our session with Tony. I learned from my previous draft not to just draw on the wax but to create a raised impression, so I went ahead and made a raised profile with the wax using one of the dental tools that Jeff had provided earlier that day (I believe it was a very small squared scalpel). When I had carved away enough wax from the profile, I then proceeded to mold the details of the face – such as the lips and chin and nose – with more care, as I wanted those features to be defined enough so that it would cast, but not too much as to ruin the details. I almost destroyed the whole face by manipulating too much, but the constant manipulation made the wax warm from the re-working, and I was able to mush around the wax to create the image I was satisfied with.
Once I was satisfied with the wax carving, I began the plaster casting with Tony. Tony rolled out a solid piece of clay using a rather large ceramic cup, we spread some of the soap solution on the surface of the clay, and I pressed my wax medal into the clay with quite a bit of force. The mold moved around a bit, and when I removed my wax mold the impression did not take at all. I realized that this was because my wax medal is uneven (the profile is much thicker than the other end, which is much thinner from carving away the wax), and so I had to be careful in only applying pressure to one side while pressing the mold into the clay. The second time around, I pressed heavily into the thick side of the wax medal only, and when I took the wax out, it came away with a beautiful impression. The interesting part was that the impression of the profile was actually pressed several times while I was pressing the wax in, and so the profile had a great triple/rippled effect, which I decided to keep (it was an accidental artistic moment!).
Once I finished the impression, Tony created a clay wall around my mold because he was concerned that the narrower side was too shallow to take any plaster. From there, we took the clay impression to the fume hood to mix the plaster with water; he first sieved the dry plaster so that it would be fine, and then slowly mixed in the water so as to make a thick mixture. Tony stated that the ratio of water should be very low to plaster, since if it has too much water it would be fragile and break easily, so erring on more plaster versus more water is always on the better side. We cast the impression and then left the plaster mold to dry completely, to manipulate on a later day.

NAME: Michelle
DATE AND TIME: 10 October 2014, 9AM to ~11:30AM
LOCATION: 260 Chandler Hall, ColumbiaUniversity
SUBJECT: Plaster mold finishing

Opened my plaster cast and found it to be very successful. The dried clay fell away effortlessly from the plaster casting, and the plaster itself took a wonderful cast from the clay impression. Since a lot of plaster was used on mine to make sure the details came out (due to the raised clay walls), I had to do a lot of reworking on my medal. I filed away the edges with a metal file so that the medal would be smaller (it was much too large as it was, and I was determined to cast the thing in silver at that particular moment), and sanded it down from the bottom as well to lessen the thickness. I also used the same dental scalpel to work the details on the plaster even better, and to make the raised profile details even clearer, so that I had a very highly raised profile that had the triple/ripple detail clearly defined as well. It took me almost two hours to finish sanding and working the plaster mold before I was satisfied with it.