DATE and TIME: February 11th, 2015 at 9 pm
LOCATION: 2nd floor apartment, Sunset Park, Brooklyn, NY
SUBJECT: wax medal carving
I began working on the carving of the wax medal that Prof. Smith provided us.
As Donna and Joel suggested, I looked for the tools I needed in my apartment.
I started practicing my carving skill on the small portion of wax medal using a butter knife. This tool didn’t convince me, yet the excitement to begin working on the final product took over. I stopped experimenting, and I began carving the wax medal using a thin screw driver available in my drawer at home. While at the beginning I found the wax very hard to carve, after 15 minutes of handling, the wax warmed it up becoming softer and easier to manipulate.
Working at my desk close to the heater helped the process even more.
In less than one hour, I was able to carve a star removing the excess of material around it.
I continued working using a metal spatula to smooth the edges of the star carved out of the wax medal.
Prof. Smith recommended to make the edges of the carved shape slightly slanted towards the outside in order to expect a good sandcasting result.
Observations
- I should continue cleaning the areas around the star edges to make the wax surface smoother than what it looks now.
- At the end of the process, I found more difficult removing the little sticky bits of wax from my work table than carving the wax medal.
NAME: Giulia Chiostrini and Jet Palframan
DATE AND TIME: February 16, 2015 at 9:10 am
LOCATION: Chemistry Lab. Chandler 260, Columbia University
SUBJECT: plaster model
At room temperature we started kneading grey clay in order to form a thick solid block where impress our wax shaped medal.
I used hand soap as a release agent for the mold, placing it on the wax medal before press it on the clay.
With my weight body I put pressure on the wax medal in order to create a deep mold into the soft clay.
Prof. Smith showed me how to prepare the plaster in a proportion of 2: 1 (2: powder and 1: lukewarm water). I started the process using ½ cup measurement of powder and less than ½ cup of warm water. After stirring the mix for a couple of minutes in the fume hood, the consistency of the plaster was too creamy. We decided to add another ½ cup of water. The plaster became liquid as we wished and ready to be poured into the mold.
With the use of a sharp metal tool we removed the wax model from the clay.
After pouring the plaster into the mold, we shacked the whole solid clay block to remove bubble from the plaster surface.
During the next class we will work on sandcasting using oyster shell in the form of calcium carbonate