BLOG062505

June 25, 2005 (Saturday)

Whoo. We finished casting another head last night. Or mask, rather. My back is very unhappy, but I think it
turned out well. It was a bit complex and I was worried that some of the undercuts might not turn out. I'm almost
done, today, pulling the clay out of it. I'm still working on the hardest part--the muzzle. I've got all the rest
pulled. Doing the muzzle requires a lot of patience, because I can only pull out tiny bits of clay at a time. You
can't use metal on the mold--not yet anyway, it hasn't cured completely--because it will mar/scratch the surface.
Once the Ultracal 30 is completely set, it's almost unscratchable. But not until then. Til then, it's still ever so
slightly soft. So no metal scrapers or tools of any kind really.

My hand is soooooooo achy from pulling out tiny bits of clay over and over and scraping - with plastic tool. And
my back. Oy.

Still have the end of the muzzle to go but I'm eating lunch first.

This time I took photos through-out most of the procedure. I just didn't get a shot of how it might look when the
two halves are first pulled apart -- the way the clay looks. I forgot and just started removing clay. I'll take one of
the clay in the deep part of the muzzle, though, after lunch.

I'm a bit stressed today because I just found out that the step-son of one of my closest friends had a stroke. A 16
year old boy. Apparently, like me, he had an unknown (til then) congenital defect in his brain. A cluster of veins
in the very deep center of his brain. And one of them burst. If it had been a tiny one, he might have just had a
seizure and then they could have found out the root cause. But it was a big one and it released a lot of blood,
causing a lot of pressure. It caused a great deal of damage to the left side of his brain. Until last night, they
thought they were going to lose him.

But his pupils reacted the teensiest bit today.

My poor friend. I wish I could be there with her.