Progress report

Maybe I should do these weekly? What do you think?

Anyway it’s warmed up a little. Workshop’s averaging about 10c when I get down there. Done a couple of test-casts and they look alright.

Will be casting up some from the still-intact moulds tomorrow with a view to ship on Saturday. Others are in progress.
The first couple of layers of filler have gone down to get the new moulds sorted. Another couple of days of that and they should be built up and finished enough to start laying on fresh silicone. After that I make up the new fibreglass jackets. So all being well, should able to cast the full range again by the end of next week.
Only potential delay I’m aware of will be if I run short on silicone or fibreglass resin. Should have enough of all regular resins and foam to fill current orders.

That said I know I’ll need more silicone to account for some more new items, but I don’t want to do piecemeal orders and get charged a tonne on separate shipping. Since TOMPS can get it to you in 2 days, it’s not worth it. I can just find other things to do in the meantime.

Webshop prep has stalled a bit again, but I’m aware we may be loosing internet here for a short while near the end of the month as our phoneline has to be physically dug up and replaced. Launching only to be unable to receive orders would not be good, so it’s not a huge concern. I would still like it to tie in nicely with a complete set of new moulds though, plus some stock on hand.

New soldering station also arrived on Monday, so with the donated oscilloscope and a repaired multimeter, I’m good to start work on the mecha-ears project again, as well as a few other ideas people may be interested in.

Also a complete fluke-find has gifted me with a LOT of leather in a texture that’s almost identical to vinyl leather I’ve previously used for texturing paw-pads. There’s enough I should be able to revamp the whole range and keep the distinctive look as well as push the foam-filled prototypes to a standard item.

Expo’s a week away!

If you follow my personal twitter you’ll know the last few weeks have been hectic. Family crisis, deadlines, financial issues and a whole bunch more. The final deadline is now MCM Expo in a weeks time, where I’ll be manning a dealers table for Fatkraken while she costumes. In repayment, I get to sell some of my own items on the table.

It’s Halloween, so I’m selling horns.

Presuming the roto-caster I’ve built in the last week starts working again, I should have a number of each. Some of the first final tests came out today.

Yes, there’s a lot of black there. I was testing some calculations for bulk-casting. Meant mixing up a lot of resin in one colour and black shows any defects better. The two “beige” unicorns horns though actually contain UV and GlowInTheDark powder.

The unicorn horns are cast from a hand-made master. These long ones are 8.5″ long and the shorter ones are 3.5″ long. I’ll be making them up in a host of *co-pony-ough* colours, with the fleece at the bottom either black, white or grey as it’s all I have to hand. They’re a shell casting that’s infilled with rigid PU foam. Will likely be putting them on simple elasticated headbands.

These horns are made in the same way but the moulds are taken from real animal horns. These ones are some breed of goat I believe (of the 8 I got, only 6 had a specific species noted). There’s more coming from Jacob, Heriden and Dalesbred breeds of sheep, but the fibreglass mould-jackets are being tricky. This variety will mostly be mounted on headbands and barrettes, though I may also make a few up in foam rubber.

Once Expo’s over I’ll be selling them directly as loose castings for people to use as they will.

Well after after-Expo, when I wake up from the coma.

Pre-expo panicking

The load of disposable vinyl gloves arrived this morning and I thought “fantastic! I can get all the last fibreglass work done tonight afterall!
I go out, come home, hit the workshop and open the gloves.

And find out I’ve ordered 200 in Small size. My own fault, didn’t read the listing right. Fuck.

More have been ordered, but they’ll take at least 2 days to get here.

Tomorrow I’m going to have to go and find some at retail prices because I can’t wait that long for them.

I’ve also got the roto-caster dismantled to a large degree now. I’ve spent some of the would-be-fibreglassing time working out how to make the inner motor drive two spinning frames instead of one. Should be able to get it all fixed up again in a few hours tomorrow. This way it’ll actually be able to do what I intended it to.

Running worryingly short on time now though.

Fun at Expo

I was out at MCM Expo on Saturday stall-sitting. Karen of Kraken Kritters kindly let me sell some of my Ferret shirts on the table too, so there’s some money in the coffers again now! Just in time, as I need new materials.

The prototype horns I wore also got a lot of attention, so I’ll be pushing on with them. I just need to rig up a roto-moulding machine to get even hollow castings.

Gallery is still down, I know. In the intervening time I’ve had to reinstall this computer. On the upside though it’s running much faster now and I’ve found a lot of archive photos I thought had been lost. So new pics should be up soon. Likewise some lovely new example pieces.

Workshop livestream!

The new workshop PC is running fine and a test stream has gone well. So for the next 3+hours I’ll be doing some casting of paw-pads, making up some claws, and probably getting distracted and doing a few other things too.

Excuse the mess, things are still being shifted around. ;)

Watch live streaming video from starborneworks at livestream.com