Still Here

I survived my first tail today. It focuses the mind wonderfully to have your face about 10 inches from 2,200 degree molten bronze knowing that if you screw up, that bronze will be on you. I had a nice little Zen-like five minutes where nothing existed except me, the bronze, and the guy on the other end.

It was so cool. Well, OK; maybe "cool" isn't the right word for having your facial hair singed off, but you know what I mean....

And my prediction came true sooner than I thought. I was scheduled for five boxes (per pour) of 135 bells today. I managed to get them done in good time even though I was tailing (meaning I had to stop molding bells to put on all the protective gear, tail for the pour, take it all back off, then set very quietly for a few minutes recovering). I even worked on some new designs. The only problem was that my scrap rate today was over 20%. Luckily, it wasn't my fault. See, some bells work better if you pour them at the beginning of the pour when the bronze is hottest, others need to be poured near the end after it has cooled a bit. The 135 bells I mold like the bronze a little cooler, so my stuff tends to be near the middle of the pour. But today, most of the bells molded like cooler bronze, so my stuff got shoved earlier in the pour, hence the high scrap rate. But I did get to try out a bunch of new stuff. Each of the 10 boxes was a different pattern with my entire second pour being designs I have never done before. Still refining things down into what I do and don't like, but much happier with the results today than yesterday.