March 19, 2021
Following the iron pour, we found ourselves with another week of hard work. We began by devesting our art from both the sand molds and the ceramic shell molds. Not only did we have to carve away the molds encasing our artwork, but we also had to clean the courtyard where we had our iron pour and the cupola furnace. This proved to be a difficult task because all of the remaining iron was hardened and needed to be hammered and chiseled away. After cleaning the cupola we could finally focus on polishing our artwork to the best of our ability. We used Nomadic/Air tools and electric power tools to cut, grind, weld, polish, and shine up our prized pieces. We slowly progressed from cutting off the sprues to beginning to refine our sculptures. Almost all of the sand used in the sand molds was recycled by filling the potholes behind Maytag.
Today, while finishing, polishing, and shining our artwork we talked to a guest artist, who taught us all about forging. Mr. Reid, parent to Cailan and Bailey, was able to teach us the basics, and allowed us to have an open mind and make a forged hook with our own vision. Taking our pieces of metal and placing them carefully in the 1,900-degree forge, we then took our red hot pieces of metal and began hammering them on the anvil until they turned into a hook shape. After getting the general hook shape we could get more creative. After putting the metal back into the forge we then twisted the hook (some of us barely twisted and some of us twisted ours a ton) and put a hole into the top. Every student made their own hooks by hand. We learned many different techniques to make our hooks and got to watch a demonstration of how to make a horseshoe. It was a great last day!
