Technically It’s Progress (day 7)

This wasn’t the most productive day, but it’s progress:
I’ve returned to the shoulder pauldron parts I drew up on sheet styrene back on Day 2 – I cut them out, duplicated each of them, and joined them together to make a 3D framework for sculpting the shoulder pauldron.


The spike fringe mold that I made on Day 3 seems ready to go, but as with the other molds I’ve made since beginning the challenge, the surface of the rubber is still tacky, days after pouring the rubber. It shouldn’t do that, I’m not sure if there’s something wrong with the rubber or with my mixing/pouring process. Buying a fresh batch of mold rubber would probably be a good idea – but as previously noted I have so many “throw-away” molds I need to do for this project – molds that I will make, use once or twice, and then not need again – that it makes sense to use up marginally-bad mold rubber if I’ve got it on hand. The spike fringe is one such mold: I need to duplicate the spike fringe and integrate the copies into the pauldron, but in the end I’m going to mold and cast copies of the finished pauldron, and the spike fringe mold won’t be needed any more.
The cross-sections I made for this build… might not be the most helpful for building the shape of the pauldron itself. The cross-sections are where they are primarily to aid in placing the spike fringes at the right location and orientation. I may add additional guides to help get the general shape of the pauldron correct, before I begin sculpting out the shape with clay and epoxy putty.
One of the interesting things to me about doing this 100 day challenge is that, apart from helping to keep me constantly making some kind of progress (even if only a little, like today) – because part of the challenge is also to post my progress every day, I also try to make things that people reading my posts will understand as some kind of progress. I wind up trying to “finish” something each day, even if it’s only a tiny thing. I’m not entirely sure if that’s a good thing or not. The upshot is that it may help fight my tendency toward immobilizing perfectionism – I don’t hold out for the perfect version of the work, I instead commit to what I can achieve quickly, so that I’ll have something to show. The trade-off, potentially, is that if this leads to my work getting too sloppy, then instead of truly being progress it might just be wasted time. I think it’s been more beneficial than not so far, but when considering parts like the forearm (primarily the work from Day 4 – in which I took a part that was symmetrical about an axis, and cut it up and joined it together to give the part an overall curve) – that was tough because I’m not confident that the parts are aligned the way they should be. Continuing the integration in the next two days kind of doubles down on that, potentially increasing the consequences if I decide later that I need to go back and straighten up the forearm parts.
As for today’s work, there might be parts of it that wind up not being used, but it should be useful.

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