It was May of 2006 when we realized we need a fresh way to display. So we went into the lab and started designing. After drawing up some plans, we did some research into making molds and casting shit. First we had to construct a hot wire cutter, I think we blew the breaker like 50 times making this. It is basically a wire in your wall socket in a loop, the wire gets hot and can cut foam and plastic. We used our doorbell transformer somewhere in there. Then we got a big block of blue foam.
With our newly made hot wire cutter, we cut the basic shape. With the basic shape cut next was the task of carving all the details and pockets. Lots of sanding going on. Dremel time and respirator too. After the main relief sculpting we then went back and filled in nicks and other undesired shapes with a filler compound. Then fine sanded the whole thing down. After that we coated it with a layer of sealer (elemers glue diluted in water). Then we painted it blue and gave it pearl finish. We then used this scutputre to create a mold out of really dense plastic called REN. The REN mold is used to vacuum form the sheets of ABS plastic.The mold is created by transfering our design into a CAD program. Once 3D scanned, we cleaned up the lines and pocket depths to all be even and nice. That file is then used to control a CNC machine to cut the REN.
At this time it is about July of 2007 and we hooked up with George, he has an old vacuum former from the 1950's. It is from his dad's old plastic factory that was in Brooklyn, now people live there. It is real cool. There are oven coils that heat the plastic to about 700ºF. Then the hydrolic clamp pushes the plastiic over the mold. As it does so it is necessary to push a reverse mold into the pockets by hand. Then then vacuum is activated to pull the plastic tight to the mold. That all happens pretty fast. Then cool the plastic with some compressed air. Pop it off the mold and there you have it, a form that needs to be die-cut from the sheet. So we made a die cutter out off plywood and some metal and used a press to cut these guys out. We integrated 2 E-Z hanging holes into the design at this stage. So after doing all that 100 times we took the forms back to the lab and went to work painting and numbering them.
We used only the finest spray paint. Montana Gold Series. This shit is sick. The colors are real vibrant, the pictures don't do it justice. And that gold is so blingin' you'll think it is real. First we bagged each shELF before spraying to avoid getting any paint in the pockets. Then we gave the ear a nice fade of color for the base coat. Then went back and as carefully as Pollack dripped paint on top of the base color. They were all hand numbered in silver paint marker on the underside of the foot.
We choose a Pearl White as the base color for the first form. We won't use Pearl White again. If these are popular and there is a demand for more we will make another 100 in another color. thanks so much for checking these out... enjoy.