Not Quite Finished

Spent Tuesday and some of Wednesday - we had a planned powercut from 09:00 to 16:00; something to do with the railway - taking advantage of Hay's absence to progress with the Georgia Jacob copy from the comfort of the kitchen island and being as messy as I like.

On Tuesday I used a car bodyfiller spreader to spread resin all over the cloth on the silicone mat. Once that had semi-cured, I applied a 2nd coat and, perhaps, should have given it a 3rd coat. I mixed far too much - 250ml for the first coat, but used only half of that. A little goes a long way.

Keeping the cats off the damned thing was a nightmare!

Having half the resin left over, I dropped a few shotgun cartridge ferrels into it to make a resin paperweight.

Having never mixed so much resin before, and not being bothered about bubbles, I'd been over vigorous with the mixing and there were a lot of bubbles in it. It was curing fast (the silicone resin beaker was getting warm), so it was too late to try to get them out. It was smooth on the bottom and sides, but rough on top; however, this was fixed with some 250 grit sandpaper, followed by 600 grit wet and dry and then a polish with cutting compound.

I decided not to use clingfilm at all for the lampshade. Peeled it off on Wednesday morning and the side that was on the silicone mat was like glass, while the top side was like sandpaper. It looked and felt like one of those oilskin table cloths, but much stiffer.

I then draped it over the makeshift former in the shed and applied the heat gun to make it fall in folds. 

On reflection, I should have marked out the planned position of the bottom of the lamp beforehand. As it was, I wanted it higher at the back than the front, but doing it freehand resulted in it being rather lopsided and too high at the back, which translates to too heavy at the back. That said, it was a first attempt and a learning process.

Brought it back inside after allowing it to harden again and placed an elastic band around it to keep it together while I thought what to do next.

I then cut out a hole in the base with a scalpel and placed it on the LED display light, just to see the effect of the light shining up inside the flutes.

As I think you'll probably agree, it does look really effective.

I now need to pay attention to a few things:

1. I need to attach it to a reasonably large, clear, resin base to give it stability. A coaster simply isn't large enough, so I'm looking for a suitable mold with which to create one. It has to be deep as well, to add weight and stability.
2. It need more folds in it, as it's the folds that give it strength. It does tend to open up a bit when I take the elastic band off (see photo below), so I may need to add some more resin on the outside of the convex folds to stiffen it more - possibly painting it on in vertical stripes and then re-shaping it, preferably hanging it from something. I don't think there's much danger of the folds sticking to each other, so a good, overall heating should achieve the objective.
3. For the next piece, use something a tad thicker for the cloth, which will soak up more resin and hence be inherently stronger. Some kind of thin canvas, rather than cotton.

It's very difficult to shape the folds with a heat gun, as it's so large. The resin doesn't set as quickly into the new position, so you have to hold the fold while it's hardening, which is laborious and time-consuming. Doing it with a cold, running, water spray nearby would be ideal, so as to get it to cool and harden almost immediately. Also, as I said previously, I need to hang it from something while doing the shaping.

The main lesson learned is to better plan the position of the base and cut the hole before covering the cloth in resin. It should be a central on the Y axis and about a couple of inched up along the X axis - however many inches you place it off-centre, it will be doubled in the final result, as the back is raised by two inches and the front is lowered by 2 inches, making a 4 inch difference in total, if you get my meaning. On the one I made, the drop from back to front is about 8 inches, which is far too much.

The Georgia Jacob lamp I bought has no offset base and the 4 corner points are at equal height, although there are ones that are offset, which I think look better. The resin on the Georgia Jacob is also much stiffer, for I'm not sure whether 50 years since manufacture has added this attribute. Lastly, there's a lot of even grain on the fabric of the Georgia Jacob - it's somewhat redolent of the material on a roller blind that we have in the kitchen, which is a polyester fabric.

It's about £23 a metre, which is quite expensive when compared to the cotton I'm using, which is £9 a metre. I think I might buy some and try a test piece.

I have heard of craft modellers using Mod Podge to harden fabric, which sets very stiffly but, once set, you can't change its shape, except possibly by wetting it with a water spray. Being water based it is very easy to clean up and you can get it with a matt finish.