Back to the Bricks

Back to the Bricks I go. Merrily, Merrily, Merrily, Life is but a Brick. I had two great dreams last night. One where the dashboard in my old truck, 1972 Ford F250, was booted up and it ran on the Android operating system. And the second invention in my dream had a computer display mounted inside the wooden frames I am making thereby giving the wall same functions of a flat screen panel. The truck was the most impressive dream world invention, but the flat panels into the wall is the most realistic and plausible.

I had a great success with using acrylic paints as the gel coat and bonding them to plaster, but I am worried that it may only be forming a skin type bond that could release once the plaster dries more. Acrylic paints are strange materials in that they often seem to bond to things, then later they pop off and release from other materials. I was excited by the initial successes and did a few experiments to see just how quick I could get some acrylic to set up and bond with the plaster, but this is when I pushed the process to quickly and failed. I ran out of Tufstone and mixed in some Duracal then attempted to bond that to the acrylic. The problem was that the acrylic didn't dry for more than 2 hours and the mixture of plaster only dried for another two hours, so I think I was too anxious to make things go that quick and that is when I saw the acrylic partially peel away leaving a skin like surface dangling from the cement. I was able to peel that off and with a little pressure I can pull the entire painted layer away from the plaster.

Another failure was with trying to remove a piece from the mold and I broke the brick panel into pieces and even the layers to I had poured separately split horizontally, exposing the weakness of pouring two layers of Duracal plaster cement on top of each other. Even though the Duracal was still wet, less than 30 minutes of dry time, the two layers did not bond and most likely would eventually separate from each other. It looked good in the mold and it looked good when I poured it, but in the end, it failed. Epoxy or some type of resin is the only good way to bond multiple layers of cement or epoxy.

Another failure was a screen painting of brick with a layer of epoxy and a vinyl sticker applied to it. When I cut the piece from the frame it curled beyond recognition. And finally I applied a layer of epoxy to a printed sticker as a top coat and it made a smooth looking print nasty. Bubbles, dirt and everything else stuck to the epoxy coated surface and made it worse than if I never had coated it at all. At least I have a better idea of where to stop when I get something to work.

Silicon molds still seem to be the best surface for working on, although if I end up staying with epoxy as the gel coat, then I can use the cheaper vinyl type molds to make my photographic reliefs. Another success that I had today was in the bonding department. I clamped and attempted to bond two panel sections together at the angles made by my silicon mold. I wasn't sure the panels would hold, but with a nice thick layer of epoxy both the cement and the epoxy panels stuck together without using any bolts. The bonds are strong enough that they can hold a second panel fully extended into the open air. The panels I made take too long to make, but I was happy to see that they would support themselves if I connect them with only epoxy. I am hoping that I can find a different way to replicate the panels in higher quantity that these earlier methods so that I can get to building instead of testing.