I made the first cast this morning from the new mold, the mold was not terribly difficult to work with but it’s very large and since the plaster shell of it is fresh it still has about 5 to 6 gallons of free water in it that has to evaporate out, meanwhile the extra weight of the water adds about 50 pounds of excess dead-weight.
I still need to cast a master to store away for future use in replacing the mold, and one for a client’s order today as well.
It took 4 gallons of water in two 5 gallon buckets mixed with the cast-stone to make enough slurry to fill the mold.
Those full 5 gallon buckets are heavy as hell to lift with the wire handle they come with, it’s about 68# each when full and I filled 2 up for the cast of the other gargoyle Nr 170 that I did yesterday not remembering exactly how much it would take. I had mixed up 2 full buckets as my notes from the last time I cast one of those indicated it took 4 gallons of water and I couldn’t remember if that was to completely fill the mold up with some left over, exactly the amount needed, or if was short, so I used 4-1/2 gallons of water to be on the safe side and those buckets wound up taking 50# and then some of the cast-stone. I wound up with almost half a bucket full left over, fortunately I was able to use part of it elsewhere on the spur of the moment.
The first cast in the Old Limestone Grey finish.
