try and try again

Remember these little miniatures from last week? 

We went to the second half of that estate sale, the garage and two more rooms, and I looked at them again. About half had been sold and when I picked one up that looked like an old steam iron, the top flipped open and it was a pencil sharpener! They were all pencil sharpeners! Anyway, the second half was a waste of time for us as it was all tools and garage men's stuff and fishing lures and hooks and molds to make your own wigglers and some craft stuff and a boat load of arrows and split feathers for fletching and all kinds of stuff like metal summer camp dinner trays and if they had one of something they had a dozen of it. At least. I think all the skunks were still there. Oh and here's something I meant to show before...a box of creepy clown doll heads with a few frogs thrown in.

Thursday was the second attempt at making the mold for the heron box. Let's just say it wasn't a total and complete disaster as the wax box was recovered undamaged. This time Marc used boards screwed together to make the casting box, instead of the cardboard box I had constructed, and sealed the corners and around the bottom with clay. After he poured the investment it started leaking out at the bottom and there was no stopping it so he quickly unscrewed one of the sides and pulled out the model so he could rinse it off. Remember when I was doing the water measure for the first mold and when I picked it up the bottom separated and water went all over me, all over the table, and all over the floor? Yeah, like that. It poured out all over the table swallowing a putty knife, a screwdriver, and screws and an even bigger puddle on the concrete.

So, back to the drawing board. We went back to the cardboard box since that didn't leak, just ballooned out, and used the board box to support the sides of the cardboard box. Took me the rest of the day to make a new cardboard box and construct the wood box around that and then replace the wax sprues that got damaged (these create a tunnel through the mold for air to escape instead of getting trapped and creating a hole in your piece) so that today all Marc had to do was level it up, and mix and pour the plaster and then do the de-waxing which is plenty especially in that hot shop.

And as they say, third time's the charm. We have a mold.

I got the water measure done while it was still wet and it's about a pound less glass than the first attempt, the difference in getting an accurate water measure.

Now, of course, because I already don't know if I have enough time to get it finished on time, I'm adding another piece to the whole. It's just a slab, gray like the top but it will go between the bottom and the feet and be the same gray. Sorta like this...

So I have to alter the wax slab for the top and make another one for the bottom. I'm glad he hadn't made that mold yet. But! I have written out the river vignette that goes inside it but I need to get some manuscript vellum to print it out.

The weather is beautiful; days sunny and warm with cool, clear, star-filled Milky Way nights. Up at dawn, quiet contemplation before breakfast and breaking camp. Finally we are loaded and I push off with a sigh as I feel the first tug of the current pulling us into the river, carrying us on through the quiet beauty of the canyons. We are in no hurry as we dip our paddles in the river. We come upon a blue heron at the river's edge and it spreads its wings and flies downriver as we approach. Again and again we chase the heron downstream until it reaches the end of its territory and turns back to fly over us back upriver.

Anyway, working on this piece is going to be about all I'm doing between now and the middle of September.

And after all this trouble, it better be fucking fabulous.