I have #137’s mold finished, it took the whole 50# bag of moulding plaster. it will be a couple of weeks before it’s dried out but it will be about 3 weeks before I order more clay and materials anyway.

The first pressed 22D is dry, so she is stuck down at the bottom of the kiln where she fits nicely and also an inch away from the kiln walls. I decided the best position to fire these is flat on their backs rather than standing upright on their tops where the center webbing and the bottom could possibly sag downwards a bit from gravity when the clay gets soft from the heat. I can fit two of these in laid flat. So to do that I can use 5 of my nice tall posts to support the octagon shelf which in turn supports the 2nd sculpture. The 7 small…

I took the two sculptures out of the kiln a little while ago, they look good. The beaver started out 22″ x 13-1/2″ and when the clay was bone dry he measured 20-7/8″ x 12-3/4″ and then after firing the final measurements are 19-1/2″ x 12-1/4″, so the shrinkage through the processes amounts to about 11% for this clay. He weighs 28# The white clay I won’t be using, I got some of that thinking it could be glazed, but having white clay and red clay in the same molds will cause cross-contamination with white bits getting on the red and vice-versa and that could be a lot of trouble…

I did a little bit of cleanup work on 137’s plaster backing block, so I’ll probably soap it up and start making the side pieces of the mold once I smooth and clean up the one side and top which I had to add a little more plaster to the other day to line up the sides of the plaster block with the sides of the rubber better.

I decided to modify the kiln firing schedule for the two large beaver panels- adding another hour to the first segment, slowing it down between a couple of critical temperature points, and then adding a couple of cool-down segments that will slow that down from 1600 to 950 degrees as it passes thru a critical temperature in the 1100 range. I didn’t add a slow down before now, when the kiln shut off it shut off and cooled, and 2000 degrees cools pretty fast with the power off, so now when it reaches 1600 the heat will turn back on to slow it to 175 degrees drop an hour down…

filled the mold for this with water to see how much it takes, it too just about 2 gallons, so that gives me an idea how much rubber it would take to make a positive cast to turn this design into terra cotta too, it would fit in my kiln easily. Interesting thing about this piece is, way back around 1978 I was looking for work and not having much luck finding anything, somehow or other I got the idea to look in the yellow pages and one thing led to another I called this place uptown called “Gargoyles” and I remember trying to see if they might take some…

Seeing how the first beaver panel fits in the kiln, cutting it close for height with only 5/16″ between it and the lid but it will work. A second one- red- will go in when it’s drier. I had to stack a couple of shelf supports behind this first one so that if it tends to want to lean backwards it will be stopped by them, the second panel will need the same behind it. I think next Friday I’ll turn it on. I modified the firing program just a little by adding another hour of pre-heating @195º making it 9 hours so these are good and dry for sure.…

I decided that since I thought I have JUST enough left over mold rubber, that about the only thing small enough I could use it for is that grotesque keystone, so I got the mold out and filled it with water to see how much it takes to fill it, just about one gallon. It looked like I might have just a hair less than one gallon of rubber left, so I mixed it up and got every drop out of the containers I could and poured it in, and it was about a pint too little, but an old trick of floating something weighted right like this plastic drink…

The rubber positive of this keystone is cured and out of the mold now, I had JUST enough rubber to make it as the 2nd photo shows how thin the corner is, but with the plaster backing I will be adding it will be good. The original this was molded from I removed from a building around 1977 that was at 1 West 111th St in NYC on the corner of 5th Ave, the buildings that were there have been replaced by this new one. Now I need to set up to cast the 4″ deep plaster backing for this. I like this pourable rubber, it’s also a lot less…

The first pressed clay is now out of the mold and she came out with a very minimal amount of surface defects that have to be fixed by hand. In the 1890s when these pieces were made the workers pounded the clay in using a small sand bag to ram the clay into the details and eliminate the little “creases” that I seem to get between pieces of clay laid in and pressed next to each other. Might help too if the clay was a little more moist and softer but I hesitate to add water since more water causes more shrinkage. To get a batch custom mixed to add…