How to make a sprig mold

hi folks welcome back in today's lesson I'm going to show you how to make a plaster spring bowl for applications on the side of your pots it's really simple and easy to make a repeated pattern this way all I could really need is some number 1 pottery plaster and an original design I'm going to show you how I've set it up I'm gonna zoom in with started ok I'm setting up for my spring mold again the goal here is to make a repeatable pattern just kind of like this one I have a little plaster mold made my original design you pack some leather clan there and cut it off and you get a really nice a little sprig you can attach it just about anything so first I'm going to do is make a tiny little slab gainers rolling out a very very thin slab probably have sixteenth of an inch thick I'm gonna take this stamp but the stamp is only bone-dry and I'm pushing hard enough to get my impression but not too hard to create any under goes okay that looks pretty good I'm gonna push this down a little bit more I'm gonna trim my edges right to the edge you want these to easily be coming out of the mold so I'm actually holding my rib here at a slight angle so there's no undercuts not gonna make a big thick coil and make what we call it gate this is gonna hold in the plaster just want to make sure you have at least half into space all the way around you want to make sure we have a nice seal at the bottom okay that looks pretty good to go I'm gonna go to get my plaster and we'll mix it up all right to catch this small amount of plaster we just we just need to use what we call the mountain method I have some barely lukewarm water and I have some number one pottery plaster I'm really just gonna pour this in super slowly some people like to do this through a screen you know see little some bubbles or hear the bubbles I like pouring it in until I see a little Mountain happen give it a little agitation most people don't add enough plaster when they're doing this if you're doing larger pieces I recommend measuring you can see how it's breaking down the sides a little bit a little bit more I'm letting it's Lake once I see it starting to get wet all the way to the top of the mount I'm gonna take my mixer and your mixer will be absolutely ruined if you don't rinse that off right away okay you can see that the puff is all mixed up bubbles are rising to the top then you go ahead and pour this in well it's still liquid and you get it all the way up you can actually see it's starting to go off already I'm gonna get the table a little shake see some bubbles coming up to the top this also helps it settle around the sprig itself and some people even take a little soft brush at this point and make sure it does there's no air bubble stuck to the sprig itself but I think we're gonna be fine gonna let this set up it can take anywhere depending you know from a few minutes to an hour but usually starts going off pretty quick you can already see that I can't pour that out I'm gonna let that harden in this taper container I should just fall out in one lump and then we'll go ahead and check it out when it dries okay ten or fifteen minutes has gone by and you can tell that my mold is not hard the plot the placer had gone off and it's also warm and that's the indication that the chemical reaction occurred it's actually gonna be quite hard and it's kind of worse that's also at the time where I can go ahead and take off my gate and have a look you can see the design still in there I'm actually gonna let that sit there for a little bit longer but I can take this and clean up all the sharp edges I don't want this to be sharp last thing I want to do is have you know any bits of plaster like this get in my ceramic bead it actually causes incident popouts mini blow ups there's no better tool to clean up these edges of this tool I'm not sure form rasp it's really just like a deal I'm gonna Brown the corners just babble them a little bit for strength reasons it won't chip as easily the plasters still pretty soft you saw much water I added the plus it's gonna absolutely is completely soaked with water at this point so I'm just gonna let it dry and it won't be a functioning mold until all the physical water is gone so it might be a few days a couple days and outside in the Sun you want to avoid like heating it up in an oven or definitely don't put it in a microwave to dry it just some heat and air blowing across it will dry this up pretty quickly in a couple days you can you'll feel the difference in the weight and when that happens we'll go ahead and take a look well my spring molds been sitting all day it's still wet I can feel the moisture in here but you can see how my it did that clay did come out I was a little bit of wet clay left in there I'm gonna be careful want to pick it out it might be a good idea just to let this dry but you can't always do a little preliminary test by taking some wet clay I'm just kind of loosely smashing it in there usually I take up a tool like this and cut it level but I just want to pull it out and see if I can get it to show me something and this is the actual sprig that I can cut and apply so it looks like we have another successful sprig to add to my collection and I hope that this helps you with your sprig molds and this really gives you all kinds of options for more surface treatments so give it a shot and let me know how it goes

Channel: Andy Ruble

Views: 725

Rating: 5 out of 5

Keywords: Plaster sprig mold, sprig mold, how to make a sprig, sprig, plaster mold, mold, clay, pattern in clay, diy ceramics, ceramic, ceramics, andy ruble ceramics, andyruble.com, foothill college

Id: FJr7YGgZbFo

Length: 7min 35sec (455 seconds)

Published: Mon Jun 01 2020