After a fair amount of work I finally completed moving two domains and their associated web contents to different hosting that will save about $100 a year. Other than that, there hasn’t been much to update, I’ve become busy with other projects and I’ve taken a break from making further models so I haven’t started the West Side Highway model beyond making the wood form for it. I might get started on that in a couple of weeks, we’ll see. I’ve discontinued my mailing list which had only about 32 subscribers to it all these years anyway, other than Rick and maybe one other client, I never heard a peep…

I decided on the width of the model and I took the old photo I have and sized it proportionally in CAD, then I decided to experiment with making the sides “torn” so I could get a better idea the effect. I think with the right amount of “tear” texture it will be just what I had in mind. Maybe adding about 50% more raggedness and rounding/curving the tear here and there on the clay model will do it, the CAD version is just a real quick/easy use of polygon hiding. Oh and if anyone is wondering about the street name “Desbrosses” street and how it might be pronounced, this…

I scaled off a large format B&W .tif image obtained from the Library of Congress’ historic American building survey to find the dimensions. The technique is easy with this photo since not only is it a straight-on shot with no distorsion, but I have one known measurement to use to calculate the scale of the objects in the photo with. Using the ruler in an image editor I found the measurement of one of the medallions I own (not shown in the view) which is 18″ to come up with a pixel measurement of the section where the yellow line is. I found that yellow line compared to the size…

I think I want to do some kind of model of one of the historic West Side Highway street/pier markers, these were extremely heavy cast-iron and as far as I know only one was saved when the highway was demolished in the 70s/80s, the rest were scrapped. The designs were made by renowned sculptor Rene Chambelain and I have seen photos of his original plaster mockups or models for these in his studio. I’m thinking of doing a “section” of this elevated highway side, not just the sculptures but to include the interesting riveted background and the partially pierced railing section above too. The smaller “eagle” on top was made…

NEW: hand made, solid steel fire alarm box HAMMER Those who collect both “local” and municipal fire alarm boxes such as the older Gamewell models which used a small piece of glass covering the activator lever, hook, or key will usually lack the little steel or cast-iron hammers most of the boxes had originally. This includes Faraday, ADT, Edwards and a number of other makes. Back in the 70s and 80s when I had a collection of of over 100 local fire alarm boxes salvaged from numerous buildings in NYC, a few of them still had their “break glass” hammers attached with a chain. These hammers were often stolen or…

With the completed mold here’s the first cast.  

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Here’s the 3 section plaster master to be worked on for the larger panel once it’s dry. All 3 sections and the narrow strip need to be assembled together in a nice  squared shape and molds made then  of it. The narrow strip on the right needs to be trimmed and cleaned up yet.   The new Art Deco model 8B plaster masters are now laid out on a board and being prepared for the mold making process.The gaps on the bottom (at at the top out of view) between the four sections will all need to be filled and then smoothed and the texture blended in so it all…

The model is set up now to make the mold tomorrow  

I now have the modelling finished on this master clay model, once it dries a bit I’ll be going over the surface and cleaning it up more. Once it’s dry the first mold will be made and then I’ll be combining 3 plaster casts of this to make one larger panel shape, then two molds will be made of that- one for casting interior cast-stone and the other for pressing clay for the terracotta version.