The name i had pulled out of the hat at the beginning of winter was that of Matthew Washington RE, our vehicle operator lovingly known as Denzel. Knowing i had a few weeks before midwinter's day (which was the day we exchanged our gifts) I felt there was plenty of time to achieve what i had in mind for my gift. How wrong was I!
As there had been quite a few clocks and picture frames made in the past, i had decided to make a clock which was a picture frame for Denz, only i was not going to use the normal materials like wood or metal, I thought it would be a good idea to make mine out of salt dough and bake it, being a chef and all.
This, 'I thought' was a great idea, Until the time came to actually make it and I was so pleased to have started it when I did, as I encountered a few problems.
Making the material (the salt dough) was not as easy as i thought, I had made salt dough before for christmas decorations and small ornaments but never for anything this big. So i had to experiment with different quantities, different thicknesses and one or two different ingredients. I tried a different ratio of flour to salt and varied the drying method, from baking in the oven at various temperatures to placing in a hot cupboard and even air drying.
Ingredients used for my salt dough
The best Recipe for my use was equal quantities of plain flour and sea salt, made from the sampling water of Ryder Bay and half the quantity of warm water. Having had several attempts at this dough, I found by adding a good squirt of PVA wood glue and a splash of lemon juice to the mixture it actually hardened better.
Once the dough was made i worked it and kneaded it until it was soft and pliable and placed it into zip lock bags, where it stayed until i was ready to use it. This kept it airtight, workable and stopped it from drying out.
When i was ready to use it, I rolled it out on parchment paper placed onto drum lids between two pieces of wood that Paul Samways had shaved to the correct thickness. This was so i did not have to move it once i had the correct size.
Once the dough was rolled to the correct size, using a stencil and a scalpel i cut out the where i wanted the pictures leaving the square in the middle for the clock mechanism
The problem i had was that i needed to make two of these, one a little thinner with slightly larger cut outs. This was so that the pictures could sit in and not fall through. But the drying was proving to be a nightmare, especially with the thinner disc, I tried all sorts of techniques and left it for days and every time it would crack or bow, I just could not keep it straight.
Because the air is so dry here it was sucking all the moisture out of the dough and drying too quickly, causing the cracking and bending.
By week 3 i was starting to get somewhere, although it was still cracking it wasn't bowing as much.
I finally did it by placing it high on a rack in the boiler room, It stayed flat and eventually dried out to a nice hard finish, although it did take nearly two weeks. So 4 weeks later i eventually had something i could work with, which was good as i only had 2 weeks to complete it
The next stage was to glue the two together which was an issue, due to the fact that the thinner disc was not quite flat enough and would have made the clock too heavy for the mechanism to hold. I had no alternative but to use the tin template, given the time restraint. This actually worked really well and would give the clock more stability, now for painting it and for this i used acrylic paints to paint snowy mountains with a map of Antarctica in the centre.
I was quite pleased with how it turned out and even made a couple of penguins out of salt dough and stuck them on the face at 5 O'clock and 11 O'clock
The reverse of the clock was then painted black and my next worry was the screw in clips used to hold the pictures in place might crack the dough? I needn't have worried as the pins i put into the dough while it was still wet, acted as very good pilot holes and all screws went in without a problem
With all clips in place to hold the pictures, the next job was to fit the clock mechanism which went in without any fuss thanks to Will our mechanic. He took it to his workshop and strengthened the whole thing by forging a bracket which was threaded onto the centre spindle and moulded around the body of the mechanism, this enables the bracket to take the weight of the clock and hang on the wall.
Once the clocks hands were in place i stuck silver letters to the map of Antarctica which read:-
TIME SPENT AT ROTHERA
WAS WORTH EVERY SECOND
Then on the bottom of the clock I wrote:- WINTER 2017
The clock nearly finished, just waiting for the pictures
All the pictures are of our season together, with 12, 3, 6, 9 being group photo's of memorable moments. The last thing that needed to be done was to back the pictures to stop them from falling out, my original idea was to use the salt dough that i cut out to make the holes, but they did not dry square or flat enough. After a lot of hunting around base, I found some thick card used for mounting pictures in the art room, that was perfect as it could be cut to any size and kept the weight down.
Winter gift finished and wrapped in a pillowcase ready for giving.
As you have already seen in my post of midwinter's day, the pool table laden with all our winter gifts.
And the actual giving of the gift to Denzel
I think he likes it?
I was very pleased with the outcome, a lot of effort, a lot of time, a lot of frustration and a few sleepless nights on top of preparing midwinter's meal. But it has made it a very special memory, one where we will not forget our time through a winter season at Rothera!
Awesome idea with awesome results; nice job!
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