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Journal Entries
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Involving Students
in the Newsboy Sculpture
(the bottom of each page
has student and
teacher information)
Articles Written
About the
Newsboy Sculpture
Newsboy Links
Ordering the Small
or Large
Newsboy Sculpture
(Small sculpture is an
edition of 100,
large sculpture is
an edition of 10)
Gallery of the
Life-Size Newsboy
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February 8-14, 2005
Rubber and Fiberglass
The days have been long and the nights even longer. Many nights I have worked until 1:00 a.m. I am glad the difficult part of this sculpture is almost over. I am exhausted, and I am finding that I need to rest my hands every few days.
The mold is complete now; however, there are a few things I am working on to make it perfect. Here is a little more about how the process went.
THE PROCESS CONTINUES
To the right you can see the rubber on the front of the mold. After the rubber, the fiberglass mother mold is applied.
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Once all of the rubber was brushed on the sculpture, and then each piece of the mother mold applied over the rubber then we had to drill holes in the seams. That connected the pieces. Later nuts and bolts will hold the sculpture together. These will not only secure the sculpture, holding it together, but will assist in quick demolding. Trying to pull apart the mold for the first time, after all the rubber and fiberglass are done, is a job that requires some muscles. My fancy white suit protects me from the pieces of fiberglass.
When all of the pieces are off the original sculpture, the edges are ground down to form a smooth edge and each piece is sanded. The rubber needs to be cleaned before wax can be poured into it. Everything is reassembled for our trip to the foundry and to pour the waxes. The original sculpture is lost in the demolding process. 
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Making a fiberglass mother mold is an itchy, smelly process. Remember I have decided to create a fiberglass mother mold because it will store easier and will be lighter. I had to complete the front part of the rubber and create the mother mold section in several pieces. The photo in the upper right shows my marks on the rubber where I am going to make the fiberglass seams.
When creating the mother mold, sometimes it needs to be divided up into sections, as you can see with the front of the mold. These sections are so that the mother mold can be pulled from the rubber without hurting the wax that will be poured inside. 
Once the front of the sculpture was done, it was sturdy enough for me to lay the sculpture down. You might remember there was a pipe armature in the newsboy's back. This was to hold up the entire sculpture while I sculpted. I could not make the mold around this pipe so we unscrewed the pipe from the base, laid him down and the unscrewed it from his back. Then I filled in the hole before we preceded with the lower half of rubber and mother mold.