And that’s a wrap folks! Tons of goodness out of the kiln today, I’m happy to say. And just on time for Christmas presents – phew! Here’s a few making of photos – more once everyone’s gotten their goodies. Happy holidays everyone!
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Booyah. After quite some time creating them, figuring out what stopper to use, what epoxy works best, taking photos, organizing the photos, picking just the best for each one, writing up descriptions… the first stoppers have made their way to the Etsy marketplace! Check out the wine stopper category in my store: CurtinsCreations.etsy.com (or just click on one over in the right-hand Etsy sidebar of this page.) I really had fun writing up the descriptions of each. Hopefully they’ll find some good homes! (But if not… they’re more than welcome to stay in mine!) Hello hello! Â I finished up my stand designs and sent them off to Ponoko to be made in black acrylic, white oak, and cork. Â I printed out the design, pasted it down to some foamcore, and then cut it out by hand to make sure it all worked. Â Whadaya think? Hello! Â Life’s been busy the last few weeks, and I’ve made some good progress with the wine stoppers. Â I ordered up some new epoxy from an industrial supply catalog, some extra nozzles, and a gun to make applying it easier. Â After some trial and error, I’ve actually got a process that works well – all of these were glued up after about 30min of prep and 15min of choreographed gluing. You’ll notice a few new color combinations in there too – I’m loving the speckled blue and the pink/purple combinations! I’ve got a good number of these guys done now – next up: a display stand and some business cards. Â (And some good photos of each!) The mob has arrived! Aaannnddd… they look great! (If, you know, I do say so myself.) More pictures to come, but at least this way you can see them all. Getting the bodies connected to the stainless steel bases from Torne-Lignum.com has been quite a long road. Here’s the story: First, I tried something called E6000, which was recommended in a few places. (A lot of places refer to E6000 as an epoxy, but it turns out it isn’t – its a craft glue. This is an important distinction!) The first try was a stopper with a solid flat bottom. After setting for about 24 hours, the body pulled away from the base when I applied force to it. Whups. The glue easily peeled away from both ceramic stopper body and steel stopper base. Essentially, it looked and acted almost like rubber cement. (It wasn’t hard, like I expected.) I decided to try again, thinking maybe it just needed to cure longer. I glued up the original stopper again, as well as two that I had hollowed out the bodies of. For the ones with the voids, I first glued a short metal rod into the steel stopper, then filled the void in the ceramic body with E6000 and dropped the metal stopper and post down into the glue. Clean up the glue that squeezed out between metal stopper and clay body, rubber-band down to apply pressure, and wait a full week. Unfortunately, even after a full week, just a small amount of pressure sideways to the piece, and it peeled away. The E6000 inside the body hadn’t dried even a little bit – it was still completely fresh. Not what I expected at all, and clearly not going to work. The piece with the flat bottom seems to have worked well, but all of my stoppers have holes in the base now, so that isn’t really helpful. I finally went and picked up some Loctite instant-mix two-part epoxy. Sets in 5 minutes, has two nozzles with fine tips that allow me to easily inject the right amount of epoxy into the pieces, and dries rock-hard inside of 24 hours. Here’s the comparison as I see it:
Loctite (two-part epoxy)
So, epoxy for the win! More photos and maybe an etsy post or two soon. I love these little guys. Very cute, glazes worked well, and the photos came out great too. I’m predicting these little buggers will sell like hotcakes! (Little, curly hotcakes.) Blueish one (#9) is here: http://www.etsy.com/listing/50264731/curly-creature-9-ring-stand-light-blue Continue reading Ring stands are up! |
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