Finn is not a huge fan of chemistry this semester. Her grades have wobbled between “terrible” and “passing” with peaks and valleys along the way, and we’ve had to stay on top of her studies every night to keep things on track. I can understand her indifference; chemistry was never my strong suit (I had no patience, a raging case of ADD, and a terrible grasp of basic math) but the stuff she’s learning is light-years beyond what I was exposed to in my school. She completely surprised me last night, however, when I showed her the latest iteration of my silicone mold project.
So far I’ve done three metal pours after I got a silicone mold to set properly. The first pour was terrible because the metal didn’t find its way down into the cavities fast or smoothly enough before hardening, so I pulled it out after it cooled and re-melted it. The second time I used the sharp end of a file to guide it into the cavities but the fill was still inconsistent. So I pulled the metal and took the time with an X-acto knife to carve out all of the edges of the mold as much as possible to open things up. Then I did a third pour in three stages. This one was much more successful but still didn’t fill the entire mold. I’ve learned it’s very hard to control molten tin before it cools—I suppose I need to get it hotter than I have been—but even then I’m not thrilled with the results. The tin is very malleable when it’s cooled, making it easy to bend, and my design has a lot of small, easily bent details.
Showing this to Finn, she was fascinated with the cast and asked to make some molds and casts of her own. After I mentioned I was thinking about making some kind of small smelter to try aluminum instead of tin, she idly suggested I try using resin instead of metal.
Sometimes she surprises me with her wisdom.
Resin looks to be a much easier substance to work with, is tintable, and the heat resistant variants get closer to the melting point of tin: I found one at 300˚F, which I think would be good enough for something mounted on a metal box in direct sunlight. It’s worth a shot in any case, so I’m going to pivot to chemistry and leave my foundry days behind.
Update on the kitchen lighting: everything under the cabinets is installed, and the old garbage has been cut away and tossed. I’m using heat shrink butt-weld connectors to join the wiring up with the speaker wire they ran behind the cabinets in 2004, which doesn’t thrill me, but given the low voltage these LED lights demand I’m not as worried as I might be. Something that is shocking, though, is how BRIGHT these lights are. They outdo the old halogen bulbs by a factor of about five. I wasn’t able to find lights by that manufacturer in black, so some plastic spray paint had to suffice. Four of these go at the top of each of the glass cabinets, and I still have to put those in.
The next project is to replace the wall heater in the half-bath downstairs. The thermostat on this thing barely registers, so you can crank it all the way to 10 and it’ll have a long hard think about things before it decides it might kick on. This should not be the case, because the porch areas are generally 10˚ cooler than the rest of the house in the wintertime. And nobody enjoys a frozen toilet at any time of year. The trick with this installation is that the heater went in before I put the headboard on the wall, so it’s going to involve some careful deconstruction of the heater unit to avoid ruining the woodwork. I did inquire into what a replacement thermostat would cost but found that the part itself cost as much as a new heater, and that there were so many different versions of this heater produced I wasn’t sure if I was going to find a compatible part.
My ribs are feeling better after a week of low-impact activity. I’ve learned to pull my knees up to my chest and pivot my entire body when I’m rolling over in bed as opposed to using my core to do the work for me. Stupid stuff like pulling the handbrake on the OG-V , pulling on my socks, and taking stairs two at a time are still out of the question, but I’m not as stiff as I was last Friday. Sneezing still sucks, though.
Friday morning I drove up to the Towson library, loaded a file onto their 3D control computer, hit START and reviewed hundreds of applicants for a graphic design position based in Africa as two new dealer badges printed in a slightly larger size. After the fiasco with my first silicone mold attempt destroyed the first badge and the second printed too small, I needed a couple of examples to work with. Luckily I was able to reserve a block of time long enough to print one decent example, abort a second misfire, and print a third excellent example slightly larger than the original. After work I sanded down the rough edges, built a proper mold box out of foam core and hot glue, and mixed up a new batch of silicone after I’d let it warm to room temperature. After pouring it, I set it on a seed starter mat to keep warm overnight. Saturday morning, the silicone at the top is hard to the touch—unlike my first attempt, which took five days and a heat lamp to finally set.
The next step is to go and find a cheap used pan at the thrift store and melt a lump of lead-free tin I bought from Amazon. This will get poured into the mold and, hopefully, provide me with a metal version of the dealer badge that will stand up to heat better than the plastic will.
The under-cabinet lighting in our kitchen has been dimming and dying for several years now, especially after I switched the annoying halogen bulbs out with LEDs. They are small round unmarked pucks connected by wire snaked in and behind the cabinets and connected with a bespoke two-prong plastic coupling, making their removal or replacement impossible—there is no manufacturer information to trace back to to match the couplings. So I’m resigned to swapping the 20-year-old pucks out with new LED units and splicing the old connectors onto the new units. This does not thrill me, but LED carries very low voltage (the original lights go through a big brick of a transformer, while the LEDs plug right into the wall) and I’m confident in my soldering and splicing abilities. It’s just going to take a lot of time and crouching under cabinets, which is going to be murder on my ribs.