Electroforming continued

Hello Everyone!

I have an update on my electroforming project. After about a week of cleaning the copper daily, my pieces have finally been sufficiently plated. Here are some photos of the results. I'm really pleased as to how they turned out and I think will make a beautiful finished project. The bumpy growth is due to rapid build up of the copper. This can be caused by having the voltage too high or the piece being placed too close to one of the dangling copper plates. But as they were natural forms and were already sort of lumpy, the bumps don't bother me at all!

My group of five objects

The smallest of the wreathes.

And the largest.

A detail of the leaves of the largest wreath. You can see the bumpy texture the object got.

Another wreath.

In this picture you can see where I cut off the copper wire that was attached to the piece. The dark spot is glue. You can see around the lgue the thikness of the copper build up. The pieces are still pretty delicate. 

The next step for these pieces is a trip to the burn out kiln. The pieces still have the orginal twigs inside the copper plate. These will be placed in a hot kiln and the material removed by burning it out. Then the pieces will be hollow.

Until next time,
Brigitta

Electroforming

Hello Everyone,

I thought it might be interesting to show you all a little bit about the process of electroforming. Electroforming is a plating process. Anything can be plated-plastic, natural objects, fibers (like your baby booties that are forever bronze)-it just needs a coating of copper (or silver paint) so it can carry an electric current. The object is attached to a copper rod which is then dangled in a bath of electroforming solution that can carry an electric current. There are also copper plates suspended around the bath on a copper ring. These plates provide the copper that will plate the object. When a negative current is applied to the objects you want to plate and a positive current is applied to the ring with the copper plates, some copper is robbed from the copper plates, travels through the solution and is deposited onto the copper painted object resulting in a copper coating. This coating grows depending on how long the object is in the solution. It could take a few hours or a few days to build the coating desired.

Right now my pieces are still in the bath being coated but I will keep you updated with the rest of the process.

I want to make some twig wreath brooches which I will later enamel. I could have cast the wreathes but they were a bit large for our casting flasks. And electroforming will result in a much lighter product than casting. I've only tried electroforming once before and the results were not what I had hoped for so I wanted to try the process again.

Here is one wreath. Real twigs were coated in copper paint.

A detail of another wreath with leaves.

The electroforming bath. The wreathes are hanging from the bar across the bath and the plates are suspended from the ring around the bath. A fish tank heater keeps the bath at around 72 degrees and a bubbler is used to keep the solution moving. The puffy Xs floating on top of the solution prevent evaporation. A lid is also kept on the plastic tub.

Until next time,
Brigitta