Introducing: Metal

So once I'd made my good moulds and got those working it was time to just blast out as many casts as possible, and to make the cabins and decks of those boats too. below you can see one of the best quality large boat casts with a cabin in it which I made out of metal. Originally I'd planned to cast every section of the boats from clay, but then had the idea to make some or all of the cabins out of copper sheet. I marked out, bend and soldered these cabins in a surprisingly short amount of time actually, it probably made 3 or 4 in a day and managed to get the dimensions for some prefect so i could bend them round a steel machinists block and get really really crisp edges. The most difficult part is definitely soldering as it can be a very frustrating and fiddly process and just takes bloody ages to set up.

To get that super smooth juicy finish on the surface of my boat I burnished it with a spoon when it was leather hard. Unfortunatly the glossyness goes away after firing which I think is possible to fix by doing more stages of burnishing but i can really be bothered i just want it to be smooth not glossy. Matte white will contrast with the glossiness of the glaze well anyway.

Also lets just take a minute to appreciate the surface finish patina on that copper oof. I think these cabins would look nice like this or with a really perfect gloss finish, however for the gloss everything needs to be perfectly flat and thats so much more work that I don't want to do.