What is Lauren doing?

Well... hard to say. I will document!

[lrsimpson]

4' tall tree!

People at the art walk mentioned how cool a giant tree would be

So far I've made a base shape out of aluminum foil, then covered it with plaster of paris. I want to sand down the plaster some and then apply the Plasticine as a thin "skin" (Plasticine is expensive). I might ruin my clay with the plaster. I might not have enough clay

I'll need to change the circuit to a plug in design. I'll probably nix the fiber optics and just wire a bunch of LEDs.

I have no idea how much resin this will cost. messups will be quite costly...

[lrsimpson]

I made 5 trees for the brewery art walk. Everyone thought they were cool, but I guess not enough to buy one.

Forget labor, I was just hoping to make back material costs, so the price was right. Ah well. Next time I'll have to work on the presentation. They lit up nicely in my dark art room, but in the brewery they were in full sunlight so the light up effect was diminished substantially.

[lrsimpson]

Half way through the copper boxes. Still need to weld up the sides

[lrsimpson]

The resin tree takes so long to pour and set up. 2 days or so. If I’m going to get 10 done by the end of this month, I need another mold.. Perhaps the old one is salvageable if I glue on some silicone air vents using something called silpoxy.

UPDATE: the silpoxy worked great, but the air vent hole was still too small and the branches trapped air bubbles again. I think I'll just trash this mold.

[lrsimpson]

I put the box in my mini freezer to cool off from the welding. I guess I forgot about that ham...

[lrsimpson]

Alright! No resin leaks this time! I sewed up the silicone and put hot glue over the threads. Perhaps that helped!

But, for some reason I blew a hole through the copper with my map gas torch. That was a surprise. I patched it with a small piece of copper. It looks kinda rough, but well, I guess each box is its own special snowflake.

I bought a brick at Home Depot, (trying not to add more burns on my lazy Susan) and this lady in the parking lot came up to me asking if I needed more bricks. I guess she sells them? She said she has lots more, but I explained that I only needed one, which I’m sure sounded strange… I always wonder what everyone else in Home Depot is up to, if there are others with weird projects or am I the only cookoo

[lrsimpson]

The switch works better on the side. I cut up some paint stirrers to make a divider. I'll attach the battery contacts to the divider

I can’t glue down the electronics yet. The heat is so intense when welding the copper sides together that the box sometimes catches fire. Ha. It would be bad if those electronics were glued in.

[lrsimpson]

Notes

9/64 bit size for light sensor

[lrsimpson]

The switch doesn’t fit well between the batteries (top left picture). Maybe it can go sideways, where I have the dowels, but I’m not sure where/how to attach the battery contacts. I soldered the electronic pieces on a piece of perfboard. Using scissors to cut the perfboard made it splinter. Arg. I’ve heard scoring with an xacto works better.

[lrsimpson]

Turned out ok! I had to break off the resin in the air vents... If I do another tree model I will make a clear "break point". The ragged edges might puncture the silicone at some point :/ In picture #2 you can notches from where I broke off the air vent resin. The last picture shows the final tree after I dremmeled off the notches and seam lines. I should try a finer drum sander. The one I have really scars the surface. I could also try slicing the notches with an xacto blade.

[lrsimpson]

I don't know what happened!

*sob sob sob*

[lrsimpson]

Paul found these plastic clips at a Japanese grocery store. They're perfect for plugging the air vents.

I've got a pretty bad leak inside the shell though.

I think my curved seams, though good for lining up the silicone, create a lot of surface area for the resin to leak out...

Also my placement of the silicone cut seams might be a problem. The resin might stay in better if the silicone seams and the outer shell seams don't line up.

After I poured the resin, and released the trapped air from each vent/clip, I noticed a steady stream of resin spilling out around that pink clip. I tried to seal it up with hot glue, but resin still continued to drip for a few hours. It's ok if I lose a little resin. The big problem is the resin hardening inside the shell and fusing the shell shut.

After the resin stopped dripping, I pulled apart the shell to break the gooey resin up, took the tree out, cleaned the resin pools out of the shell, as best as I could, then set the tree back in the shell to finish hardening... :/

This stuff is just really frustratingly hard to get right. I was hoping this would be the last time I had to make a tree mold.

[lrsimpson]

New violin!!!

My teacher played through many violins before finding this one. I’m so happy!

It’s a copy of a Nicolo Amati violin.

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amati

I’m not sure how they age the instrument. Armen called it “old varnish”. I’m guessing that means it’s made to look distressed. It is a copy, but it’s a good one, hand made by a real violin maker, not a mass produced copy.

[lrsimpson]

Yay Shyam!

Shyam came over today and helped me put some padding in my new music room. It looks like a fancy victorian couch! I had all this packing material from several weeks of blue apron shipments, and Shyam casually remarked how useful that would be if I wanted a sound proof room (!) An excellent way to recycle the padding #IloveHoarding

I put up some led light strings, and we shoved some foam from an old memory mattress in between the loft ceiling joists.

[lrsimpson]

Ah look. A disaster

I have vanquished the air bubbles! And unfortunately all the resin leaked out. (Note the newly forming resin puddles in attached pictures).

I had to take it all apart and soak the shell and the hardware in a giant bucket of soapy water. What a sticky horrible mess.

That medicine dropper on the floor... well, I planned to use that to "coax" the resin into the air shafts. Ha. I should've plugged the air vents and released the pressure slowly, one vent at a time. That's the plan for next time.

[lrsimpson]

Shell notes

Machine screws

#8 32x2”

Bit - 11/64”

[lrsimpson]

silicone cut in wavy lines, clay removed, air vent circles

almost ready for resin pouring