Greetings from the woods of Stanwood Washington where I am teaching in the remote paradise known as the Pilchuck Glass School. Session 2’s theme is Play and our class has been playing with methods of creating glass castings from digitally generated sculptures.
As part of the class we are CNC carving graphite molds so I brought a bunch of graphite that I bought on eBay. I had previously carved blocks that I had bought from this guy with no problems so I was bamboozled when I started to have carving issues with my molds here. I spent the better part of the last two days wrestling with the XCarve, thinking the axis slipping was mechanical. Then I realized the carbide bit was totally shot and realized the problem. The CNC is finally back to carving the other/ softer graphite like it was butter. I finally carved this mold I’ve been trying to make, but only did the rough pass. I think I like the terraced stepping… What do you think!?
In the meantime, please enjoy my latest work with graphite glitches….
Frederick G. Kahl 