Yay! One more week!
Alright, so, I convinced Charlie to let me stay another week on Friday, which was ever so kind of him. So on Friday we came in for only a moment to begin a cast for the finial that will be placed on top of the entry gate at one of the jobs on Upper Mountain. I learned that you use the plexiglass to form a sort of open box for the piece to fit inside. Then you fill the whole thing with (in our case) silicon rubber and hardener and wait overnight for the mold to solidify. Now, I wasn’t there for the actual casting, but I gathered that you pour an epoxy into the mold to form whatever piece you are to create. This particular epoxy had iron filings in it so it actually resembled iron or steel. Neato!
And today, well, I started just forging something random. It ended up being a horribly formed flux spoon (man that spoon shape is hard to get), but meh, it works. By then, I wasn’t feeling very well and the extreme humidity wasn’t helping me in the slightest. So I tool the time to sketch out an idea I had had for a long time (which really can only be described with a picture, though I don’t have it on hand, but will at the presentation!). Basically, I wanted to make a taloned foot made of metal, and god it’s hard to visualize how one would go about it. So I made a spring fuller to help me accomplish the task, which went smoothly. The talon however was really quite hard to make, and i didn’t end up getting it that well. I resolved to simply get a picture and try another day.
By this point, I was beyond tired and dehydrated. For the rest of the day, I perused a binder on blacksmithing and the McMaster-Carr catalogue, and learned how to read the hardness scales. Something about today was just downright tiring. Anyways, Wednesday is the presentation at 12:30, boy that’ll be fun ^_^.
EDIT:
Well, uhh, I thought I posted this on Monday, but it turns out that I only saved it. Silly technology. Anyways, that post was referring to Monday, and this is for today, which would hopefully be Wednesday.
Presentation went beautifully, it was just Ms. Nagorka (my teacher sponsor) and myself, plus a few curious students here and there. It was good for myself to set before me all that I had accomplished (that was transportable) and truly gauge my improvement. It was quite astounding really, how much I’ve improved not only from one piece to the next, but over the whole month. My pieces have become significantly more complete, and clean. Execution is the capital improvement I see in my work, which is certainly good. It was also nice to view the reactions to the pieces (which I’ll will now refer to as elements) I had created. Ms. Nagorka and another art teacher admired my work, especially the Basket Twist. What they found most impressive was how well I’d hid the weld (which from their standpoint was probably good).
I’m certainly pleased with myself and the elements that I’d produced in my time with Charlie. And now Friday seems to be the last day, and I need to practice hooks so I can teach middle schoolers how to do it. What fun!
