My First Mold Failure!
Summer is here and I am busy in the studio casting my 2 latest editions – Avalon and Jahangir 2020 along with prepping them. We finished up sending out the Elayna limited edition but in the process let the first side of the Jahangir 2020 mold rest and degass for a week. I’ve never done that before and now I know why. During the degassing process, the alcohol vented off and the mold shrank a small percentage. That small percentage was enough to pull away from all four legs to the point I could not pour the second half successfully. So I pulled out the original Master Resin from the rubber mold, made some adjustments by cutting off the front left leg, remolded the torso and made a new mold for the leg and forelock. I did the parting lines differently which is making the castings come out much better with much less clean up. That will get them out the door a lot sooner which should make my customers who purchased him a lot happier!
Elayna Done! Avalon and Jahangir are Shipping
Anyone who did not receive their Elayna needs to contact us (unless they were sent to a painter and you are communicating directly with the painter). When I have a chance, I will see if we can get a few more castings of her but that will be in between the other two editions. Possibly while we are casting Jahangir 2020 and Avalon, Larry can slip in a few more castings of Elayna. We have started shipping the Avalon edition as there were several critical projects on Larry’s plate that he had to address first. I apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused anyone who purchased her or Jahangir 2020 but I trust they will both be worth the wait as they are both turning out better in the long run.
Avalon Gallery
As it turned out, the inside of Jahangir’s front legs were impossible to clean up and I didn’t realize this until I cut off the front left leg. He was MUCH easier to mold with the leg off and castings are turning out substantially better. I had split the parting line down his face in the original mold which was a mistake as I found out when I flipped the original mold over to do the second side. The right nostril was facing down to the point that a huge bubble would have formed when we poured the rubber. Now that I remolded the torso, I formed the clay dam to put his head up to his ears in the first side of the mold which filled in both nostrils without bubbles. I stand on Romans 8: 28 “And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God and are called according to His purpose.”
Jahangir 2020 - First Casting
Goodbye Facebook and Twitter
Since I’m no longer on Facebook or Twitter, I will be communicating on my blog more often and sending out more newsletters. People who are looking for me on these platforms will have to communicate with me through email, phone, text or in person. I hope you all have a wonderful June and a great start to Summer! Larry and I are both doing everything we can to enjoy better health with mind, body and spirit. We got off to a great start with the hiking season by doing some challenging hikes bordering on mountaineering.
We have 4 offices now in Cashmere, WA and are finally not renting any storage units for the business. Unbridled LLC includes the Sculpting Studio and my HorseModels studio are doing well in spite of last year’s lockdowns. Washington State is still under lockdown and expected to be fully open on July 1st. We are both optimistic that the 2nd part of this year will be a better than the last year and a half. And with this, I need to get back to work cleaning up resins and enjoying living in the mountains.
Happy Summer!
Debbi 🙂
