The dental plaster

This post is about overcoming challenges, and I didn’t know what to write, so I'll just talk about something that happened to me recently.

While Santiago was on fire these last days, I had to stay in my house with my two sisters, mostly to take care of the little one while our parents went to work. So, I thought to take advantage of this time between cooking and dishwashing to finish some university projects I was delayed with. In Workshop IV we have to make a desk object with resin and another material. I’m doing a portable drawing table, with a simple support system, I choose to use wood apart from the resin. But this project is giving me flashback to another project I had to do last year (the horrible table with resin that never dried).

Again, the hard part to work with is the resin, but this time is different because I haven’t even touched the resin, because first I have to make a mold for the piece I want to make with the resin, and that is the part that is giving me problem. I took the suggestion to make the mold with dental plaster because the drying time is shorter, but without anyone to give me more indications, I had to say that the first try was a total failure. The thing first was too liquid, so I threw some of the extra water for the drain and I keep mixing, but I suppose I took too much because one second to the other the paste was drying, and then it got hard like a rock. I panicked and put more water in it, hitting the paste with the spoon to try and crack it. It was a mess.

I let the end result some days in the sun, to see if for a miracle the mixture will dry. It did, but it was cracked and fragile and utterly useless.

How I get over it? I sulked a little, but went to buy some more dental plaster when the store opened again. I did the mixture again, with a little less water, and watching the texture, and when it looked like it was getting thicker, I emptied it in the mold right away.

AND THIS TIME IT WORKED!