Foam Latex Day

 This morning I woke up at about 9a.m, with a knot in my stomach. Foam Latex day had arrived. The first thing I did was to go and check the fourth head armature I made last night.....as you can imagine, failure: the lower lip fell off as soon as I tried to move it around a bit. But it wasn't the end of the world...eyebrows, eyes, teeth, cheeks and chin, all seemed to be in place (I would realize later that they were not)
Anyway, upon my arriving to uni, I started setting all the armatures for their correspondent moulds. Glueing the nuts to the puppet's feet, and attaching the last copper tubes for the replacement hands and heads.

So, once I had applied the foam releasing agent (in perhaps an exaggerated way, I'll lower the dose next time) and brushed away all the powder remaining in the moulds, I was ready to start measuring grams , with a very funny looking gas mask, some protection goggles and latex gloves that were not made out of latex....(Health and Safety never has enough..)

Now , I am really sorry, but this next few lines will only be interesting for those of you who are animators (maybe just as the rest of the blog......?)


FOAM LATEX_ RUN 1                       

Room Temperature: 28* C           Room Humidity: 31%

Base Latex: 150gr   Foaming Agent: 30gr   Curing Agent: 15gr   Gelling Agent: 12gr

1. Increase from speed 1 to 12 during 30 sec.
2. Maintain speed 12 for 5 min
3. Reduce to speed 4 gradualy
4. Maintain speed 4 for 3 min
5. Add Gelling agent at speed 4 for 30 sec
6. Backbowl for 30 sec
7. Ultrarefine speed 1 for 2 min

NOTES:

I couldn't do the Backbowling (consequences of buying the cheapest stand mixer...)
I thought it was a bit slow to gel, as at the time of pouring the latex to the moulds, it was still to fluid.
Maybe there was not enough mix to begin with, the 195 initial grams barely made it up to the mixer's blades.
For next time, maybe increase the time in one minute for speed number 4, and make twice as much foam.


Once the foam was in the moulds, I let it gell for about 20 min, I then put them in the kiln at 85*C for two hours (I could say  they have been the two longest hours of my live...) . I had to find something to do during those two hours!! So I did, I approached a computer nearby, and started editing yesterday's animation of Orli's sculpture. So here is a quick look at the footage:

This is now becoming a really long post, and I still haven't shown you what happens when I open the kiln after those two hours, but as you know, I like to keep the tension of the audience. So tomorrow, as I have no money, instead of going out to grab a drink, I'll be blogging, uploading some more pictures, eating garlic pasta and watching some movie on BBC2 (did I just sound excited??)

Until tomorrow then!!