The 2 gallons of Vytaflex came today so I mixed it up and filled th 294 mold with it, the 2 gallons wasn’t quite anough to completely fill the mold, but as long as all the detail is covered it won’t matter as I have to add a 3-1/2″ deep plaster backer to the rubber when it’s cured anyway. Now it will need to sit and cure overnight before it can be removed from the mold. The rubber positive with it’s new plaster backing block is out of the mold, now the keystone is approximately the same depth the original 1895 sculpture was before I made a shallow mold of…

I found some time to do a little work on this West Side Highway model. The screw heads are just the right size for the rivets and much easier to use than hand forming every one of them by hand in the clay. The slots in the screws will get filled in before the panel is molded. I also roughed out the first eagle head a little bit. I also just ordered another 2 gallon kit of the rubber I need to cast a positive in the new mold for the 294 girl keystone, so next Friday I should be able to cast her, it will take the whole 2…

The kiln shut off during the night and by afternoon it was cooled down enough to open the lid and after a bit- remove the two pieces with gloved hands, the 137 came out great, it weighs 25#

I decided to put the first set of two clay sculptures in the kiln now, with the 137 grotesque on the bottom resting on it’s top, and with the shelf furniture I had to stack some posts to get the height above the sculpture so the shelf can be laid on top of them and not touch it. Once the shelf was in, 22-D was laid on her back on some posts to let the heat and air circulate inside from underneath- ditto for the 137 on the bottom which was raised up so it’s top gets the full heat and red color evens out over the whole piece. Pretty…

I now have 3 of the 137’s and 2 of the 22-D’s in pressed red terracotta almost dry, I think I’ll fire one of each in two weeks they should just fit the kiln together, and then repeat the same loading of two each weekend until they are all done. I still want to make one more of the little 22-D keystones so she can go in with the third 137 and I can get two pieces done together for the same cost. Think I’ll do the 22-D to-morrow so it can start drying out. Those 137’s are pretty thick and weigh 30# each.

I decided this stunning keystone- a cast I made of the original 1895 one I had years ago, is small enough it can be done in pressed terracotta too, but I have to make a new mold of her first, as the old rubber mold I have which was made with a brand of silicone rubber I stopped buying a decade ago when it started tearing real easily is pretty well on it’s last leg, one more cast out of that and I’m sure by now just removing the rubber from the cast will just tear into pieces. So I need a new mold, and then I’ll need to make…

It took some doing but I managed to print a full sized image of the model to be done, I had scaled the design out a couple of years ago in CAD software but now that software version I used will not run on my newer machine and I could not longer read the existing files. SO I wound going back to an older machine that was archived, that has the software on it AND works with my printer. SO I was able to scale the image 1:1 with the page layout and print it in multiple 8-1/2 x 11 sheets. I thought about this design and how I was…

Pressing #2. I still get defects that have to be hand worked over, tiny seam lines between adjacent portions of clay pressed in next to one another, I don’t know if in the old days they used a wetter clay or if it was just technique. Another time-lapse video, hand pressing another 137 grotesque keystone, starting with 40# of red clay and ending up with 35# after cleaning it up.

I think I will go ahead and start this model I planned to do back in Dec 2015 but didn’t get past setting up the form for the shape. The model was to depict one of the large cast-iron Art Deco styled ornaments once gracing the elevated West Side (Miller) Highway that ran along Manhattan’s West coast along the Hudson (North) River. The elevated highway was built starting at the end of the 1920s and construction of additional extensions continued into the 30s. The city hired noted sculptor Rene Chambellain to model replicas of the 5 historic city charter seals as well as these ornamental pieces at the foor of…

The first red clay 22-D is almost dry, probably in 2 weeks I’ll fire this one and the white one that is already loaded in the bottom of the kiln. Meanwhile I’ll be calling in my order for more materials.