Week Three - Casting up the Fox - Part Two - The Disaster!

With the seam work done I then fitted the sides to the mould to my maquette, filling in all the open gaps around the edges and bottom of the sides with yet more clay. I did this to try and ensure that the plaster, once poured into the mould wouldn't just flood out of the sides, ruining all my hard work and making a mess.

10 minutes or so passed, with no problems what so ever, then all of a sudden one of the sides of the mould split, pouring 7kg's of unset plaster all over the table and floor, resulting in a huge mess.

I didn't take any photo's of the mess as it happened as I was too busy trying to salvage what I could and trying to find out if it would've caused any problems  to my maquette.

This is how the mould looked with all the plaster missing. Luckily, it would seem, all the plaster at the bottom had already set, however I wouldn't know the damage until I'd finished the whole thing, casting up both sides, then I could removed the maquette and check for air bubbles, damage to the seam and finish of the "skin".

Learning from my mistakes I cleaned up the edges of the mould and refitted the sides. Then using loads of left over/scrap clay I rebuild the edges, making them a lot stronger in the hope that they'd hold this time.

Then I mixed up another 7kg's or so of plaster and poured it back into the mould and waited for it to dry.