Weekend productivity

I had a pretty productive weekend. I got the “spine” drawing matted and into a frame in my stash that I had earmarked for it and it looks great in it.

I also finally made the first couple of test casts from the “book end” sculpture mold, in two different metal finishes. The first one had one flaw area where I guess a bubble formed in the cold cast metal layer and hardened that way before I did the rest of the resin fill. Its not a huge deal and it looks fantastic otherwise, but the second one turned out almost perfect, and I’m quite pleased with it. My only gripe was that I apparently mathed wrong and mixed more than double the resin I was going to need for it and ended up wasting a lot of resin…but once its mixed, you’ve pretty much committed to it. You can’t unfuck it at that point.

But from that I have a better idea of ratios and amounts for that particular mold, and the particular resin I found has a crazy quick cure time. Some of the previous resins I’ve experimented with take anywhere from an hour to 24 hours to set, so the 10-minute cure time on this is a welcome surprise. It also means that there’s no fucking around. You spend 2.5 minutes mixing, and then you get it the fuck into the mold because it is going to solidify way faster than you think. Hopefully I should have a few available for grabs soon, because apart from bookends, they do seem to make just a lovely decorative piece.