Well, I made my first foray into using Polytek’s urethane rubber for mouldmaking on some egg & dart bordering in a vault about the courtroom in the Historic Federal Building. There’s a section of it missing in same that the owner wished to repair. I had a choice of putting some material up there and carving into it, which I estimated to be to time-consuming and would create a lot more dust in the carving process. I chose to just re-produce it in a plaster cast and then adhere that to the spot.
It was a little like brushing honey on your average ceiling, only 18 feet higher with the challenge of keeping it from dripping. In hindsight I think I could have waited five minutes to start using it, but the instructions say to start brushing imediately. Being more liquid it would have less tendency to bubble in the deeper undercuts, and it does call for two to three layers. It gradually thickened up to a taffy-like consistency where it would not drip anymore. I was supposed to wait an hour and put another coat on, but I decided that for a one-off casting I could risk it tearing during the de-moulding. I got a good sense of what this brand handles like. There’s no substitute for experience.
I made a small box to form the backing compound into a rectangle, sealing and waxing it for ease of release, then I went about supporting that whole apparatus by some thin boards upon the top ladder rung.
I let it cure out one whole day, then put the setting gypsum behind it in its box. I used a twenty minute mix so I could take it off the ceiling the same night and see if there were going to be any problems in using this particular rubber. I put a layer of fiberglass mesh tape between layers for a little guarantee of stability and then brought it down after that hardened.
Notice how I’d pushed shims under the supporting boards. Somehow the whole mold had moved up, or the ladder has crept back, or out.
The resultant product in hand.
Today I came in to work in the courtroom. My brother re-assigned to paint trim in an office one floor below. Turns out he never showed up today at all. The cornice got sprayed gold all the way around by Kenny, our spray man. First hour was spent being an expensive janitor, hauling everything we did not need to the basement. I pointed out to my dad, my boss, that were were now 80% done with painting, except for the walls over the tops of the windows, which had been masked off to the wall. We were 100% “not even started” on that wall. And so I went to it. Re-masking, patching fragile holes no one had even investigated. I finished up about nine PM.
