Once I completed reconstruction of the glass urn,
I then started thinking about making the fills for the missing areas on the objects
and for this I decided to use two different techniques,
one of them is moulding and casting,
which you can see some of the previously made moulds from another object.
I'm using dental wax, you can actually put it in hot water
or gently heat it with a hot air blower to mould it into any shape you want.
I use a lab seal to actually cover the edges of the glass
so that the fill material like plaster or any other material does not go over the original
surface of the object.
I use several tools, conservation tools and also plaster which I will be making my gap
fills from.
Before making the detachable plaster fills before moulding it,
I use the dental wax first, so I take a mould from a similar area on the neck of the urn
and then once it's set, once the wax cools down I place the wax inside the glass to actually
make a backing but beforehand the lab seal
I use it as a barrier to cover the edges of the area that I will be filling.
To make a plaster fill I have this little bowl
and I fill it with a little bit of water and then I start adding plaster
and for this I will need to use quite a lot of plaster until I can create a kind of paste.
So once the plaster is in this kind of consistency,
as you can see it's quite like a putty, so it's a bit like cooking really
and then I start applying the plaster with my spatula
on to the gap that I backed, I supported with dental wax and the lab seal
Plaster sets very quickly therefore I need to do this work quite quickly too.
You have to put the plaster in layers
and in this case you can see the gap here is quite large
but I decided to do it in two bits because if I fill this in one go,
there's a risk that once the plaster is set it may break,
so I decided that I will do it in two parts
and it is very easy to work with plaster when it's still wet or damp
but once it starts setting it gets a bit difficult so you have to be quite quick.
Once I make the fill, I then leave it for, until tomorrow for it to completely dry and
set
before I can actually remove the fill from the object.
After that, although the fill is made there will be still lots of irregularities
and some scratches and some kind of application tool marks on it.
As you can see in this case here, or I have another example,
I've already made one and started working on the surface
by smoothing it with several sandpapers,
I actually wet the plaster fill, the surface of the plaster fill and then with different
grades of sandpapers
I start correcting or smoothing all the irregularities, scratch marks, tool marks etc.
I then use a conservation grade like a putty,
a bit like polyfiller but this is conservation tested
to fill in any kind of holes or gaps anything like that
because remember my aim is to make a perfect surface
and once that's done and once I decide that my fill is ready.
I can actually start with the mould making process and then taking a mould
and then following make a cast of it by using epoxy resin