Jan
5

Animeyes – production glazing

By DW

Tonight I pulled the trigger and went into mass production, glazing 30 eyeballs with epoxy. My side experiment with the acrylic alternative concluded. I resolved the orange peel effect in the acrylic finish by covering the wet piece with a bucket. So it was likely either dust or too-fast drying that caused that. Nevertheless, to get the same depth of shine as the epoxy I had to apply three coats of acrylic. So epoxy wins for this gig.

More after the break…

Made this rig out of 1″x2″ and dollarstore bamboo skewers. Abandoned the previously planned wire hangers as too fussy and figured the skewers would hold the eyes steady while I applied the epoxy. That was a good decision.

On went the eyes at just the right angle to drip excess to a non-critical area of the eyes. That worked well.

My good buddy, Gus, came over to the lab to keep me company, and…

cleaned his new find from Talize…

the mighty RoboSapien. (Now only $6, down from $200)

Rigged up some poly dropcloth this time that would double as a dust-cover post-glazing. This is a 9′x12′ poly sheet from the dollarstore. Proper prep this time around made the job a lot easier. I also had a better feel for working with the epoxy, which helped.

Moment of truth. Mixin’ time. I find the “Enviro” part of “Envirotex Lite” a little ironic given all the poison and corrosive warning labels. Best method for mixing was pouring out equal parts of resin and hardener into separate cups and the pouring back and forth between cups. Followed that up with 90 secs of vigorous mixing with a dowel (also dollarstore).

Post-epoxy-application. It was a bit sloppy, but I wanted a thick coat. I had to mix up a bit extra to finish the last 4 eyes, but then that left extra after the job so I dipped a naked USB drive in the epoxy to hopefully form a very slim, but strong widget. Gus formed a tape cylinder and had me pour the remaining epoxy into it to see if it will release the bubbles in the mix in the form.