A link to some other fotos...

Google are irritating!

Blogger.com seem to have committed suicide by buggering about with the account - for some reason I now have to go through a completely uneeded and unasked for log in via Google - with a reset password process which makes no sense... this may be the last posting whilst I go and find a blog site which is simple to use and doesn't subject me to this sort of irritating crap!

Anyway, here's a piece I've finally finished this weekend - iron(ically) one of the first pieces I cast five years back - a multi-piece polysterene 3G jigsaw - now mounted of a carved block.

I've had confirmation from Pam and co. that the course is running again this year, so I'm signed up and ready to go once again! This time round I'm going to try my hand at lost-wax...

The Pods

... finally finished grinding off the last of this summer's sculpures and made up the wire 'holders'. Here's the finished result... Alex, time for you to drag yourself down to Wiltshire to get happy with the grinder and dremel - we need images of your finished works up here!

(Alas, because of the way the blog archives images, some are missing from this page. I wonder how to create a 'links' section down the right hand side of the blog? Anyway, here are some of my favourite images of my other work: http://digitalcrab.blogspot.com/2006_04_01_digitalcrab_archive.html )

another view...

Picturesque Coalbrookdale

...Its worth bearing in mind that the course is run right in the heart of the birthplace of the industrial revolution. Anna took some fantastic pictures of the views around the valley - including of course, the famous bridge.

Images and details galore

New images and further detail of the iron casting process is on my flickr page. It's very brief. I hope to post up a more detailed explanation soon, as well as pics of the finished products!

Hey, nice camera!

Those pics turned out reaaaal nice, Tobes. Here are some of my own!

Blacksmiths have big vices (says Jim)

Jim had some radical iron-ironic t-shirts.

Here's the furnace before:


And here's the furnace after:



And here are my head models, made in modelling clay:


The middle guy was made in air-hardening clay which wasn't ideal, particularly if you've got what are called "undercuts". The gurning guy with the teeth above the middle dude is an example of a model with undercuts.

Effectively, these heads were put into resin-impregnated sand when it was still soft, so all the bits inside the mouths behind teeth and up the noses etc were captured in the softness. But once the resin sand hardens, about 30 mins to an hour later, you've got to get your models out. If they're made with something that's hard, like wood, for example, you'll wreck the resin sand mould by forcing it out. So I was able to pick out all of the bits of still-soft clay after the resin sand hardened, thus keeping the undercuts intact.

More info on how they became cast iron later!

Indeed, forthcoming posts include a How To for those inexperienced in the great art of iron casting.

My favourite part of the week? Breaking Agas with a sledgehammer. Now why didn't I get a shot of that?