Month: November 2019

Investment making for bronze casting

17^th Nov

I started adding a mixture of sand and plaster to the wax tree. The first layer is made of 1 proportion of plaster and 2 amount of sand. Once they were mixed up I need to keep string the mixture as well as brushing to the wax tree. After that another coat was added to secure those PLA printouts.  Unfortunately, due to I keep adding the mixture to one object one brunch cannot holds the weight and falls apart. For the third layer I mainly brush the mixture to other brunches make sure they are strong enough to support other objects. After adding the third coat I mix three different types plaster with the proportion of 1:1:1. This mixture dries out quite quickly when it becomes completely solid I empty the bowl. The dried mixture are no longer useable because its too dry to mix together.

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I deicide to cast those PLA jewellery into bronze, it is my first time working with bronze casting. PLA jewellery was attached to soft wax stands in order to brush French polish to their surfaces. I brush one layer first and add another coat after 15 minutes. It was quite tricky to paint polish on tiny objects because they was placed on clean film if one part falls from the wax stand the rest may fall as well. After applying the first coat they were transferred to a clean wooden surface and stuck to it firmly.

Some yellow wax was melted to make the branches. I brush vegetable oil to a smooth surface and pure wax liquid to it. Once it cools down a bit some oil were brushed to my hands. The wax was gradually formed into two sized brunches. I have to do this quite quickly once the wax cools down it will be really hard to do any forming.

I attach brunches to a paper cup that is the basement and using soft wax to fill the gap make it steadier. Melting the brunches attach them to the main trunk and add small jewellery pieces to them. When I finish attaching every single parts, another layer of French Polish were paint on the branches.       

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2ed Nov

I kept on developed my idea further. The news said that once brexit done Northern Ireland will leave the UK. It reminds me of my previous kinetic brooch that I made for the St John project. I am going to develop this idea into another piece. The outline of Northern Ireland and England were traced. The shapes were laser cut on a piece of cardboard. To be honest I don’t like the layers in the thick cardboard because the detailed curve lines are blurring the conceptual focus of this piece. I did a digital drawing and print out the design in PLA.