Duluth Public Art Progress, 13 April

Making good progress on the project. We are being extra careful on the mold making and adding insurance in the form of sand molds over our ceramic shell. This adds perhaps another hour per mold but insures we don't have to start from scratch if a mold fails.

Final 3 sections of the legs, all the debris in the background is waste. But if one of our shell molds were to fail we would not only have 30 pounds of molten bronze on the floor we would have to start the wax process over. The sand mold is insurance to prevent this from happening.

Make shift blower. To dry the shell cores (inside the mold). I found a sleep apnea pressure device that blows a gentle 8 cfm, split the pipe and put ends into mold. Works great!

Arms right out of the molds

Body section, because these are so big we are coating one side at a time. To prevent the wax from spreading out from the weight of the mold material screws are set next to the wax, blocks are underneath.

We will be casting body sections early next week and assembling of the casting will start right after that. By next weekend I should have the female figure pieced together, can't wait!

Duluth Public Art Faces and more

The female officers face

male officer

arm sections in the ceramic shell room with the first coat of liquid

The pictures of the faces are taken after the initial clean up and a quick sand blast. I'm pleased with how well the castings came out. The final 3 sections of legs are in the kiln and should be ready for a bronze pour tomorrow. The arms are in the first coat of the ceramic shell process.

Here at Last Chance Fabricating we use a product called Shellspen. It is a very good product and makes the process easier because we don't have to keep our liquid silica mix in constant agitation. I did this for a number of years with an elaborate mixing machine and lots of difficulty if the power went out.

Judie helps Pour

This is a picture of Judie Johnson with me in the foundry. Judie came to help pour the Cyrus bench. Cyrus was Judie's beloved father and she wanted to be a part of the process in making the sculpture to help memorialize him. The bench will be finished early next week. I'll post a picture of the finished piece then.