Thursday, July 31, 2008

Shims...

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If there's one part about mold making that I hate more than anything, it's having to attach clay shims to rubber and having them fall off in the middle of making the plaster mother mold. Enter husband, Justin aka problem solver extroidinaire...We don't usually use metal shims with rubber molds but he thought it would be a nice way to cut back on the amount of clay shims we needed to use. (FYI- A shim is used to divide the mold into sections that will end up being pieces of the plaster mother mold.) To get them to stay he cut a slit in the rubber T and inserted the sheet metal in about a quarter inch. He then used packing tape to attach the pieces, in order to make sure plaster doesn't get in between the pieces of metal.

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Justin demonstrating how fancy he is.

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All metal shims in place....now onto the clay shims...

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Intern Nora making clay shims.

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Clay shims!

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Clay shims added to the rubber. This divides the mold into 7 pieces--3 on each side and 1 on top.

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You can see that we back the clay shims (aka clay wall) with smaller pieces of clay. They act kind of like buttresses and hold up the wall while we're working on the other side of it.

Next up plaster mother mold...!

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