Robin has come in with me today and is taking pictures, so I’ll have some documentation of the day’s events.
Today was a very busy day. I spent the week getting all my revised sextant molds ready for a brass pour on Friday. Gregory and I push today’s large brass molds into the Arts/Industry kiln to heat them up for an hour prior to pouring which makes for a smoother pour. Everything is now ready after a final, hectic morning run with Gregory and Mary Jo to pep-set in order to make more molds before they shut down. With that accomplished, we all head over to the brass foundry to pour our big pieces.
Mary Jo, Robin, and I pushed our heavy pour carts over to the brass foundry where we met Bob who arranged for our individual pours.
All our pours seemed to go off without a hitch. It is always fascinating to watch a pour. It’s amazing seeing the molten metal go in the molds, it’s so incredibly bright, smooth and liquid as it goes in yet, it begins to set up almost instantly into a solid, yet still hot, form.
We gathered our clamps and other supplies and pushed our carts across the factory and on outside to the yard to cool. Larry was there to help with the breaking of the molds. It’s work, but kind of fun to break up the sand molds and finally get to see the end result of all the week’s work. I had much better results this time with my sextant after I went back into my pattern and brought out more of my design by making deeper cuts in my plastic pattern.
Larry ground down the vents and runners on our pieces and our pieces ready for buffing next week.
We all skipped lunch to get everything done today before the end of the first shift. By the time we were ready to leave to grab a bite to eat it was 3:30 pm -- and we were tired and hungry. We all headed over to the Horse and Plow for a bite to eat and gave ourselves a break after a very productive day.
