Work in Progress

Vacuum Forming Process (First Attempt)

Photographs, Work in Progress

Vacuum Forming Rope from the River Thames from Katherine Outten on Vimeo.

 

The following photographs are from my first attempt at vacuum forming. The first photo shows the rope and brick after being coated in the white plastic, the second and third are the plastic casts once I had removed the rope and brick from underneath, and the final photo is of the second cast made of the rope. The link above is to a video of the process of using the vacuum form machine, taken whilst making the second rope cast.

As mentioned in a previous post, the vacuum form machine had a lack of suction, so the casts (especially the second rope cast) were not as detailed as I had hoped. Once the machine is fixed I intend to redo these casts, and some others, to try and get as accurate casts as possible of the objects in white plastic. I may also experiment with other colours, to see how that changes things.

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Cleaning My Finds

Photographs, Work in Progress

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Photos of the cleaning process- I start by soaking my finds, in batches, in a bucket of just boiled water and bleach. I usually leave them overnight so that the bleach has time to really penetrate and kill off bacteria. I then remove them from the bucket, and refill the bucket with just boiled water, which everything gets thoroughly rinsed in- some of the objects may still have dirt clinging to them, so this is when I scrub them if needed. Once an object has been soaked, scrubbed, and rinsed it is placed on paper towels to dry. I then pat everything with the paper towels to make sure there is no moisture, and the objects are then ready to be taken in to uni to work with. As you can see I wear gloves right from the moment I pick the objects off of the beach, until they are fully cleaned, as I am very cautious about picking up bacteria or viruses from the river, and also to protect my hands from the bleach.

  1. objects soaking in the bleach and water
  2. some of the objects drying
  3. other drying objects
  4.   a section of jaw found with two teeth still attached
  5. a vertebrae
  6.  almost complete clay pipe