WIP Ash tray

Just a few pictures of a project that I need to finish painting...

 I sculpted out super sculpy soft pack out with firm grade, (I did this simply to make the soft grade go further and the firm stuff is pretty horrible to sculpt with on its own). The shape is built around half an Ali drinks can, this was to act as an partially expose armature and to have something metallic to stub  things on.

 I spent about 5 hours-ish of relaxed sculpting whilst sat in front of the TV over a couple of days. I didn't want to risk singeing this in the oven, so i put it in boiling water (I swapped out the water about 5 times ensuring that it should have been heated enough) . Unfortunately because of the Ali can, when the sculpy shank as it set, a few cracks formed along some of the thinner sections of the sculpt.

 This has been painted with acrylics, and a small amount of Chameleon Nano Flakes an iridescent pigment that come in powdered form.

 I'm pretty sure that the squid is going to be a bit more orange and dry brushed with Goldfinger (like the phone case's watch parts).

A New phone Case

 I've been gently working away at this for about a month now.
 First i bought a cheap ultra thin phone case, I did a sculpt onto the outer surface in chavant; I didn't want to have to bother figuring out how to get a good clean grip to the phone so i let someone else to that hard work for me. The sculpt also included some watch parts, i used a blow torch to melt the surface of the teeth to get a nice smooth glossy finish.  

 This was then moulded in silicone; it's a 2 part mould, the syringe is for a fill hole, tooth picks are for risers (holes for air to escape), the steel rods are to strengthen the top part of the mould. In a previous mould for an ipad case the silicone would droop and collapse causing the cast shaped to be warped and unusable, the steel rods seemed to have worked (they can also be removed and re-inserted if i need to flex this part of he mould)

 The teeth were dusted with copper filler power in the mould, and then a thin layer of cold casted fast cast, ratio of filler powder was at 3:1. The cast was: seamed, sanded, filled, sanded again, primed and painted (acylic) I used a small amount of Chamelon Nano Flakes in the outside frame to give is a strange light splitting sheen. To get the teeth to shine (the picture doesn't do it justice) i used a combination of Silvo, and brass/copper polish and buffed the hell out of it.

Copper and Brass work

A New Gramophone
I made this to retrain myself how to work with relatively soft metals (Copper and Brass) and how to rivet, silver solder and acid etch again along with basic metal forming. I also used the techniques involved as a reference whilst i was training a friend to become a jeweler. The gramophone itself will go to my grandma as a gift.  You know I've just realized that this doesn't have a stylus... Bugger.

 The Horn was made 4 strips of copper: annealed, bent round, and silver soldered together.

These then had 6 hole drilled in (2 on top, 4 on the bottom) and 3 strips were riveted on, binding the rings together.

The record is brass that has been acid etched, the lines are consecutive as opposed to a spiral which i had no idea how to draw out accurately by hand.

 To give a sense of scale the base is 40 x 40mm wide, and the mouth of the horn is 105mm wide.