From Cracks to Clarity
Cason t -
Hello and welcome back to another post!
Over the week, I spent my time attempting to make some of the pieces for the board. While my attempts were successful in their shape, there were some issues with the original method I used. For the pieces, I used a metal wire to act as an internal skeleton and a base for the clay to be built around. In theory, this method would be great as I could almost use it as a skewer for each individual section of the chess piece. However, an issue that arose was cracking, specifically at the connecting points of the piece.
To connect pieces of clay together, you first score the clay and add some slip to make them stick together. Slip is a clay slurry, or really watery clay, used to join clay pieces. The issue with the wire was that it was difficult to fully connect the pieces together, and even though it visually looked fine, the drying process revealed the poor connection, showing cracks at the connecting points. In my research, the wire also posed another potential problem with cracking. Clay slightly shrinks as it dries, so when the wire is inside the piece, it doesn’t offer any give, leading to a buildup of tension and further cracking. Although the poor connecting job seems to be the larger problem.
From here, there are a few paths I can take. I could try using aluminum foil or, as I’m leaning toward, removing any internal material altogether so it is just the clay. I like the free-standing clay method the most, as I can connect the clay better. As shown in the pieces I made, when I scored and slipped the clay without the wire present, the clay didn’t crack.
One of the primary tools I used for the process was a pick and hook tool set for small details. I used a straight pick to score the clay and the back of the hook pieces to smooth the connecting parts of the clay to get rid of any visible gaps between the sections. While most places with visible smoothing still experienced cracking at the seams, a great visual example of the tool’s effects is the bottom piece. For the bottom, balls of clay were flattened into disks, scored and connected. Then, the back of the hook tool was used to smooth it. See you all next week with a lot more pieces in the arsenal!
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