STORY WRITE UP
Ever since I was a child, I always remembered our famous end of the year holiday. People from all around the world came to South Africa to get a taste of our beaches. This holiday was the essence of family time. I want to capture this through the ripples and waves from those iconic places so that everyone can have those memories and stories in the comfort of their own.
PROCESS
I started off with making the mold out of Y2 clay. The Y2 clay was very hard when cold, and it went soft when heated. This required me to make the mold by a heater where the Y2 clay would be more malleable.
I proceeded to make a master mold with silicone. I achieved this by first making a boundary for where the mold would fit, and then mixing the silicone with a catalyst so that I could pour it over the dampened plate to make a master mold with the negative space. I let the silicone set, and then took out the Y2 clay model.
I proceeded to fill the mold in 3 different ways. I first tried using a mixture of resin and gelcoat, which didn`t get the glossy finish that I was hoping for. I then tried pouring in the gelcoat separately, and waiting for it to dry so that I could then pour in the resin to fill the rest of it. Luckily due to the size of the product, the plate didn`t warp.
After making the first mold I was unhappy with the outcome. I realized that my AXOR plate was not the right size, and my finish was not as clean as I would have liked it. For these reasons I modified my master mold. I achieved this using a CNC machine to cut out a rectangle for my master mold to fit in. this was used to make my master mold the right size. I proceeded to fill this mold with catalyzed resin. Now that my master mold was the right size, I sanded the prototype to a smooth finish. The smooth, clean prototype was then used to make a silicone mold to make a final product.
Final Product
