iSculpt.org

Anyone looking for a good, cheap copy of Jeno Barcsay's Anatomy for the Artist might want to take a look at eBay right now. There's an auction right now for a 1963 hardcover edition with cardboard box and slip jacket, with no reserve and no bids, with about two days left as I write this. I'm tempted to bid on it myself, but since I'm going to have no income for the next two months while I write a book, I figure I'd better not.

Well, as I've posted, I'm in the middle of a couple of very time-intensive projects, which aren't leaving me time to sculpt. I decided that I would leave some pencils by my desk, though, and when I needed a break, I would do some sketching, so I went out and bought a nice small Moleskine notebook that would fit nicely next to my computer.

I don't know if anyone else has this, but I find a new, blank sketchbook to be one of the most intimidating things in the world. I'm hesitant to put that first mark in it; scared that the first drawing will suck (which it likely will) and that I will forever dislike opening this book.

I think it's a neurosis of mine. I hate for people to see my drawings, but I have no problem with people seeing sculpture I've done, even if it's not very good.

The putty oven just didn't give me the heat I needed. I ripped out the terrarium heating pad and tried something with a little more horsepower - I took the heating element out of one of those single-cup coffee warmers. It produces more heat, but surprisingly, didn't get the inside of the oven much hotter.

I believe what was happening was that the metal box was conducting the heat right out of the lunchbox. Ming-Hua uses special rubber feet designed for this purpose, but since I didn't have much time, I looked around for something in the house that I could use. I found a small piece of rubber on a spare dremel sanding attachment. I glued it down, glued the heating element to it, and tried again.

Much better luck this time! It popped up to a little over 100°F in about two minutes; the old version took fifteen or twenty minutes to get that warm. I'm still testing now, but the inside of the box feels much warmer with this version even though the thermometer isn't reading that much hotter - probably the metal thermometer was conducting some of the heat from the case before is my guess. Anyway, I'm pretty sure this will work for me until I get the good one from Ming-Hua.

The rubber piece from the dremel attachment glued to the back of the box. This should act as an insulator and keep the heat from getting conducted out of the box.

The heating element from the coffee warmer in glued to the rubber piece. Not the most secure attachment. The scum on the heating element is sculpting wax - I used to use this for heating wax until I gave up on sculpting wax.

The "control panel", which is just the circuit board that controls the coffee heater along with part of the plastic case from the heater.

Okay, I know what I said in my last post, but the contracts don't actually get signed until tomorrow, so while I'm working this weekend, I'm not killing myself yet and I had time for a little project.

Anyway, Ming-Hua, who is a fine miniature sculptor and an engineer to boot, as well one of the moderators of the great 1ListSculpting Yahoo! group. Ming-Hua is always posting pictures of ingenious devices, gadgets, and tools he's built to make his life easier, and he recently posted some pictures of a portable putty oven he designed and built.I'm hoping to buy at least one, and more likely two from him if he decides to sell them, because I generally sculpt large size at home and primarily only sculpt miniatures when I travel. Since I'm going to start traveling again really soon, this little oven would be a gem to have.

In case you don't know what a putty oven, it's just a small container (often something as simple as a coffee can) and a heat source (often a low-wattage light bulb) where you can put your miniature to cure faster. The traditional coffee-can and light bulb getup works great, but it's less than ideal to bring with you when you travel.

It's unclear yet if I'm going to be able to buy one of these magic little ovens from Ming-Hua, so I thought I'd see if I could do something similar to tide me over. My results were surprisingly good given that I know jack about electrical or mechanical engineering, though the temperature is a little lower than I'd like, clocking in at about 100°F (38°C). I'm still interested in buying Ming-Hua's, but this will work for me in the meantime. Anyway, here's what I did.

For some strange reason, we had laying around the house, a small heating pad designed to keep a hermit crab or lizard's tank warm. It's a heating element contained inside of a plastic laminate that you can get at a pet store:

I then went to Michael's and bought a small lunch box for about $6:

I drilled a hole in the side large enough for the plug to fit through, then taped the heating element into the box. I put it in "upside down" so that the heat would radiate into the box instead of into the metal. I don't have a picture of it, but I later secured the heating element a little away from the wall and put some insulating styrofoam behind it in order to keep heat from radiating out through the metal.

A little FastSteel putty closed the hole in the box.

I then drilled a hole in the top and inserted a meat thermometer into the hole:

and voilà! Putty oven is complete:

It's nowhere near as good as Ming-Hua's: It can't run on batteries, it doesn't get quite as hot as I'd like, and the overall construction is sloppier but, hey, it's better than nothing.

For the next two months, I'm afraid to say, my right-brain explorations need to take a back seat to some more left-brain ventures. I've just signed a book contract with a very aggressive timeline and also signed a contract to write series of eight tech articles for a major software company. I still have pre-existing obligations for current clients, and I also have to travel next week to San Francisco and the following week to DC, so there probably will be few updates here until the end of July, though I will try to pop in every once in a while when I need a break from writing.

Hmm... I'm going to write when I need to take a break from writing? Perhaps I didn't think that all the way through. Anyway, I apologize for the inconvenience and hope to start posting some great content when I get this stuff off my plate.