HOW TO CAST & RE-ASSEMBLE YOUR SCULPTURE w/ Glue & JBWeld best way resin plaster hydrostone castings

Hey YouTube, John Burns with another edition of John Burns Fine Art. Today we are going to be casting hydrostone into one of my molds, my latest molds, Andromeda. There's actually two molds, so we're going to be doing some reassembly. So in this video I'm going to cover everything from prepping the mold, how I pour the plaster for a bubble-free casting, and how to clean up the seam lines, how to assemble several parts, and in essence get prepped for patina work. If you haven't subscribed by now, please hit the subscribe button to stay in the know. And if you like this video, please hit like. It also helps me get found in the algorithm, so other people that you think might benefit from this information can find me. Thanks guys, let's get going. Okay, so we're going to get this cast. There's a lot of steps. I want to get this cast, and then we'll come back tomorrow, take it apart, examine it, go over things like the seam lines here. This is one that I already cast out of this mold, and we can get it cleaned up. I'll show how to clean that up briefly, and then we'll get it reassembled. Cut these off, put it on the main sculpture, and then get it all patched up. So I've got my plaster mixed up here, and I don't know if you can see that very well. Maybe, but it is pretty saturated now. It's looking like wet attic insulation, but it's completely waterlogged, so it's been sitting for about eight minutes. Also, before I pour it in there, this is wire, armature wire. It's very soft. See, very soft, and I put a little hook on each end. After, I took two strips, so it was one actually folded over, and I put it in my drill and held it with pliers on this end, and then you just pull the trigger. That winds it up, and you don't have to wrap wire around a piece if you use this method, but the point of this is I cut it to where her legs would be. This is to add extra support, so I'm going to slide this inside her leg holes. I'll pour in the rest, top it off, and then I'll pour the rest in here, get it closed up, and we'll get rolling. I'm trying to stir this effectively yet gently. I don't want to whip air into it. Do not whip air into it. Air bubbles are the nemesis, the bane of plaster. Fortunately for me, this is like a vent, so I'm going to pour in the bigger hole, and the air can escape up this side, and by the way, I do have this Vaseline along the edge so that I don't seal my two pieces together if I have a little bit of spillage. So your fingertips sometimes don't have enough, so I like holding a thing like a paint scraper, and I failed to mention one other thing. I sprayed the inside of it with surfactant before I assembled it, and it's still wet. Okay, so here's the real deal, and I'm hoping this is enough plaster. I'm hoping this is enough plaster. So I took this mold apart, and I sprayed both halves with the surfactant. This is Windex mixed with water 50-50, and what that does is breaks the surface tension of the plaster on the interior of the silicone mold so that when it hits it, it just spills, you know, and if you don't believe in this, give yourself a little test. Take some Windex, spray it on the thing, and then put some plaster on there. Watch the table tension and the droplet just spill out and bleed. It can't hold its shape, but it's a surfactant 50-50 Windex and 50 water. What that means to you, what that means is that if you just put straight Windex, it can become very chalky, so don't. It's better to err on that enough. Anyway, I greased my board here so when that goes on there, I don't have plaster sticking to my wood, so, you know, a ton of prep work. I've got my wire installed in there. I suppose if I want to put it in later, that's fine too, and I wonder, I mean, after I pour it in. Yeah, let's do that. I got a mind to put that in afterwards. So the path of least resistance, this is what I'm concerned with right now. There's the inside of my mold. You can see how the foot acts like a nice ramp, both feet. One actually acts as a vent, which is pretty cool, and the bottom is where I'm going to let it in. The face and the show surface of the figure, like the nipples and so forth, are going to be down. That way, when the plaster rolls in, the air will, in theory, go out versus upside. Now you've got trapped air in the face, trapped air in the nipples, and that's not favorable. So you just never know where the plaster is going to want to stick by the time this is all over. So let's just pour it in and see how it goes. And I am pouring it in at a slight angle so that I'm not incurring more air. I was in an antique store once and saw this sculpture, pretty big sculpture, three foot, whatever. Went and looked at it. Air bubbles all up in the head. It's too bad. It's so sad. Okay, so I just had, boy, I wasn't sure that was going to be enough, and it surely is. So what I'm taking with this here, I'm just going to slide it in there and dip it in and out, just to make sure any air that's trapped on the wire doesn't show up in the casting. I'm just going to set it in there and hopefully that's going to be okay. I have this pre-marked where my back is, where the front is. I'm familiar with my mold. My washer is ready. So I'm going to leave this here as my test so that I can tell when this starts to set up. I know this is getting close to setting up. So this wheel, in essence, is allowing me to get some height on the feet, some height on the head. All right, so we are on day two here. I went ahead and took the bottom off just to make sure that what I had done was okay. So I'll show you that in a second. Let's take a look. Get this opened up. It's kind of like the big reveal. Can you see that? So what I think I might do for the next casting, sometimes you've got to troubleshoot molds. Although that sounds like a good video. If you would like me to make a video on troubleshooting, leave it in the comments and tell me what you're up against with your molds. And I can tell you, I've worked with molds for many, many moons and I've dealt with problems. Problems. Plural. Okay, so that's nice and flat and solid. That's a good sign to start with. And actually, when I mixed up the plaster, I wasn't even sure this was going to be a sufficient amount of plaster. But it looks like it almost completely filled it up, which I suppose is good in some ways. So I'm concerned about plaster bleeding through, but that looks fine. All right, so this is my first casting with this mold. I can't say that I'm not nervous because, well, I am. Okay, next mold piece. With those fingers primarily. Okay, came out. Happy days. Now she should stand on her own. That's why I greased the inside of the mold, so these pieces come right off. And that's not dumb luck. That's experience that I'm passing on to you. Okay, thanks for your patience. I just, I'm in no hurry when I'm trying to do things right. Here's the big reveal. You're seeing it with me. You can only carve this fast, right? So this is pretty sweet. I'm digging this. So we can see here, flashing, this still trapped between. Can you see that? And this is just slight bleed through. Not a big deal, I'm just knocking that out. There's a little more of it over here. Knocking that out. Okay, so here's some more flashing. Okay, so her chest lined up pretty good. That was making me nervous because I've cut a seam going right across her chest. Can you see it? So the seam came down her arm right here and across. No, it came right across here. It came right next to the areola, down over the ribs right here, down across, right next to the navel. That was a mistake, but it looks good. Down the thigh, right down across the toes, on the inside here, across this foot, the back of the calf. I don't know if you can see that. She's in quite a bit of shadow here, but here's the other seam line. And here's where I did the patch job, taking out the pipe. Very easy to clean up. And that line came down the back of her leg and right down here. On top, the line came across her face right here, over the top of her head, and right down right here, right across the back, across, down the leg. And here is the patch job for the piping. It's such an inconspicuous area to have a flaw, but right there, that's the biggest flaw. I do have other videos on how to clean this up. I'll try to get it to... I'll tell you what, I'll put those videos at the end of this video. But one of the biggest problems you'll see is people dragging straight across. Don't do that. Not any longer than you have to. You're going over the curve. This helps follow. And this one doesn't have a poor spot on it. So you can see how those don't come together quite right. Yeah, I don't like that. So I have a Sureform here. This is a Stanley Sureform. That's S-U-R-F-O-R-M. There's a link in the description. You have an Amazon account. Have them sent your door. These are getting better. You know, take your time. Just take off a little. You have to learn patience in this game, especially when you have a double connection like this. This isn't like bronze where you can beat it back into shape or beat it into a shape. And it might help to make these concave so you have less of the two high points in the middle touching. I'm just going to take that down. OK, so the registration marks are there. They're lining up well enough. This is not a perfect fit, but I feel pretty comfortable with it. So what I'm going to do is get these arms cleaned up before I glue them on. So for her, I'll do some... You hear the sound? That's the sound we want. When you first cast it, it'll be a dull thud. And this, by the way, I don't know if you can see this, but there is the wire right there poking through. And see here, there's some wire and there's some wire. And that doesn't bother me at all because the paint's going to cover it. There's enough plaster that rolled in behind it that it's only there at the surface. It has no... You know, I can't feel that running my finger over it. So the plaster, the acrylic bronze paint, rather, will look really good on top of that. So you can kind of see how I was working the arm. It's kind of the same setup here. I have dental tools that I use. Then there's, you know, you can use a cheapo knife or take some of these tools, your pottery tools, or if you want, if they're really light, you can just use sandpaper. So this is where we are. So I realized the last time I used this, I didn't close it. That's not like me. I've been building my next clock. It's a medieval astronomical clock. Calendar clock, actually. It tells you the phases of the moon. It tells you the day and the week of the month. It tells you where the moon is in the zodiac. It tells you where the sun is in the zodiac. And of course, the minute, hour, and second. And if I'm not mistaken, it just takes a wind, a wind, one wind is a week. Anyway, I'm going to have sculptures on that clock. And also, that clock was designed by a horologist named Clayton Boyer. He has his clocks for sale. I'm very impressed with his designs. There's a link in the description, lisaboyer.com. And then there is a link on that page for the clocks, the clock designs. Anyway, I'm working on that clock, and I'm adding a lot of my own sculptural ideas, elements. I'm really excited about it. Okay, so these are dry now. You hear that? It's, I can tell it's a secure bond. And then it's dry because the sound travels through the, travels through the body. Okay, five by thirty second. That's what my calipers read on this nail. So that's the drill bit I used. You got a sixteenth inch or eighth inch nail. That's the drill bit you'll use. Again, it's just a pilot hole. And now I'm going to stand it up without chipping, very gingerly. Okay, that one almost goes in completely. I'll leave that there for a second. And I've got it aside. You know what? I'm going to leave it just like that. I'm not drilling more holes because I'm afraid of the drill coming through and hitting it again. So, and this is kind of an optional thing anyway. I've got a big little blob here. Try to wipe off the excess. With any luck, this will kind of start to seep out. I should see it down here in this bottom, but you can't always count on something like that. So that's where that's going to go. Now the next step is to open this up so I can start putting filler in there. Okay, so the next step is, I have a Dremel here. Because of the nature of this hydrostone, I'm going to use the Dremel to kind of grind it open a little bit. What I'm trying to do is create a little more contact area and make it a little more available to accept material. So you can put plaster in here. I would cover the sculpture before you apply more plaster though because of the nature of it dripping and so forth. And that's really if you want to keep this white looking like a plaster casting. If you're just using it as a medium, you know, to cast your material in. That's hollow right behind there. I didn't know that. I knew the air was somewhere in here, but it's right behind there. Anyway, I'm going to fill this void with the JB Weld and this here will get very hard. You know, you can grind it down with the Dremel to shape if it's not quite how you want it. I will warn you though to be careful because this is going to be harder than this. So if you hit this material while you're trying to grind this down, this is going to go down a lot faster. But this would be a great filler and it'll act as a better reinforcement. Okay, so if you have compressed air, this is the time to use it. I just want to make sure that before I mix up the epoxy that as much of this dust is out of here as possible. And make sure you grind out the registration marks too. And while I'm mixing this stuff up, just let me say all these items that I'm using, the Dremel, the epoxy, these types of things can be found in the description below. I am an affiliate with Amazon. So if you click on the links in the description, it'll take you on over there. And of course they recognize that I sent you. So I'll let you put two and two together. I'm not allowed to tell you that that helps me out or that I benefit from you making a purchase. Okay, so it's been a few minutes of me mixing this stuff up. It's pretty sticky. So if that's lifting back off, that's because there's dust. So I just need to let it grab the dust, pull it out, roll it, shove it back in there and it sticks. Okay, so I don't really need to use this piece for anything else. Okay, so get your fingers wet and that'll help push this down without sticking to your fingers. But you know, don't do this until you're done applying it. I'm quite sure how lucky you'll be to get another piece to stick to it. I'm doing this to compress this in to this crack as far as possible. So this can be used for resin castings before you paint them. A plaster obviously. I'm gonna let this sit for probably 24 hours before I come back and grind this. And then I can use this Dremel to either grind this down, you know, or something of that nature. If in the next couple hours this sets up enough where it's rigid but not rock hard, I may take this knife and try to cut some of this off. But right now it's still too soft. J.B. Waterweld. I kind of feel uncomfortable grinding much closer at this point. I'm gonna sand by hand. This is just 100 grit, I believe. These are scrap pieces. Yeah, 100 grit. These are scrap pieces from my sanding block. So these are handy for situations like this. You just had your nails done? Don't do that. That'll scratch them up. So anyway, I went and hand sanded this. I hand sanded this and you can feel your fingernail. When it needs to come down more, you can feel on your fingernail where there's still a ridge. This one's pretty good. I mean, ultimately, once you think this is where you want it, you can hit it with a primer or your patina paint, whatever you're going to do. And that will make a lot of flaws obvious. And then you can go back after your paint has dried and sand that a little better and then do more. So one of the main things that I'm trying to avoid here is taking off too much material. Because taking off too much material will end up making a dip in the part that we don't. This is what we want to conceal. So anyway, there's that. And the Hydrostone is softer than this Water Weld by JB Weld. And so I'm just taking it a little bit at a time. I might go directly perpendicular to the arm. And I suppose that's okay to a certain degree. Everything's okay to a certain degree, right? But when we get closer, we want to go like we're like a barber's pole or a candy cane. And this will help conceal lines better. The eyeball or the eye, when people see, they tend to notice cross sections. They stand out. And we want to avoid that. We want it to look more like an organic line moving across that way. So we're going to do our best. And I'm sure this is quite stimulating. I'm using the light here to see. If I hold it at the right light, I can see the shadows starting and stopping on these flat planes. So I can see where I've over sanded it. If you use a pocket knife, I've been using this like that. You can use it like a draw, a draw knife. That'll help you a little bit. Now this method, I just want to disclaim here, this is not foolproof. You have to take your time. It's kind of like sculpting it all over again in that area. So, you know, if this was metal, this would be a lot easier in its own way. Maybe not. Because you would cast this in metal, cast this in metal, and this would be a weld. And then you would grind this down with your files or pneumatic tools and blend that as best you can. I have some natural light coming in my studio, so I've got two light sources here. But there we go. Hydrostone casting, reassembly. And I hope you found this video valuable, beneficial. And, you know, if you have any questions, put them down in the comments there. Or send me a direct email if you can find it. But it's better in the comments so we can share with everyone that might be too shy to ask. But anyway, there we go. Appreciate you guys coming along. Be sure to like and subscribe. And check out the description for the items mentioned in this video. And if you found this super helpful, in any degree really, go ahead and share this video link with a friend. They might find it interesting also. If some of you have your sculpture circles, circles of fellow sculptors, or if you belong to a society of sculptors, go ahead and share that link. Hey, don't forget, I have a PayPal account. And if you'd like to make a donation to support my channel, feel free to do that. Any amount is welcome. And I do give 10% back to our local charities. And 10% and beyond really. But I appreciate it. Let me tell you, here's some more fun information. In the next video, I'll be showing how to do a patina coat on her and how to attach her to a base. How about that? Yeah, yo.