|
Art • Art Gates • Studio • Slag • Resources • Wetumpka • Home A Fish Story | |
|
• This is a brief article about the fabrication of the Clown Lure design that I have come to call "Charlie". I began on earlier pages and don't want to be more redundant that necessary so I direct you to the initial page for preliminary information. Click on any image to enlarge it.
When I brought the two lure blanks to the studio, I had to rough out the design on the blank in pencil to have a guide for creating the additional surface elements.
After transferring the design to the blank, I began to carve and fit pieces of polystyrene foam to create the raised features of the design. Each piece was glued to the fiberglass blank using a 3M adhesive made to glue urethane foam to material used in automobile trim construction.
Each piece was rough shaped and then carefully carved with a Sur-Form tool, or "cheese grater" and then glued to the blank. Notice that the larger elements are cut into multiple pieces (lips for example) in order to create the necessary curves from 2" thick materials.
The studio slowly became a sea of pink foam and finely shredded foam waste. Foam particles were in every corner including the oscillating fan motor!
When the foam carving was finished and all glued on, my next step was to cover the foam with a coat of fiberglass. I used polystyrene foam since I was told that it would not shrink or dissolve with the application of the resin and hardener like other foam products. It does shrink some, but not so much as to destroy the form it created. It is enough, however, to cause problems if you sand through the fiberglass. Take my word for it... Since we, in Alabama, were experiencing the hottest summer in recorded weather history with 13 days in a row over 100o F, the studio temps ranged from 110-130 by late morning and I found it difficult to work with the chemicals in the fiberglass product necessary for the next step. I put Charlie in the truck and took him home to my garage where I could leave the hall door open all night to cool the garage enough to work with the fiberglass until about noon. After about 12:30pm, I had to give up working with the resin and hardener products and spend my time sanding the mornings work.
Because I had no experience with the chopped fiberglass and hardener, I went for a product that was dispensed with a device like a caulk gun and dispensed the hardener and the resin in what was supposed to be the correct proportion. Gradually I learned to use less and less of the hardener to get more working time from the product. When I ran out of that product, I switched to another similar product which you can see has a different color.
After several days of work in the garage it was time to take Charlie back to the studio for power sanding. It was also time to clean up the garage.
Charlie gets another ride.
• |
|
|
