Day 1: I cut off a piece of bronze 15 x 7 inches.  Then I cut a piece of wood that I could later screw my piece onto to make it easier to work on.

Day 2: I started annealing my piece so that I could pound out the inside and make it more of a caved out look.  I worked for four hours but could only pound it for a few minutes each hour, the rest of the time was spent heating it and then cleaning it in the acid solution.  It was small enough for all of it to be in the acid at once, so I had to do half at a time.

Day 3: Found out the reason that the pounding wasn’t working very well was that I wasn’t getting it hot enough.  The metal needed to be glowing red.  Things are going much quicker now, and I can accomplish more between annealings.

Day 4: More pounding.  It is finally starting to take shape.  I have a nose that is definitely out farther than the rest of the face.

Day 5: The face is in the right proportions, but the whole thing needs to be pushed out more now.

Day 6: Have pounded it out enough so now it is time to fill it with pitch.  The pitch will help it keep it’ s form once I start pounding on it.  I annealed it once more before putting the pitch in.  Then I turned my piece upside down and put the pitch in the caved in side so it rested in it like a bowl.  Then I had to melt the pitch into it.  I used the torch for that, trying not to catch the pitch on fire.  Once I had enough melted, I flipped my piece over on my board and screwed it in place.

Day 7: I have to draw the face on the mask so I know exactly where I need to be working.  I used a grid to do that.  I drew the grid on my picture then on the mask and then I used the grid to draw the features on.

Day 8: Now it is time to start pounding it back in.  I worked around the nose mostly, trying to make the nose stick out in proportion to the rest of the face.  Then I pounded in around the mouth and the chin a little because they need to come out from the face a little too, though not as much as the nose.

Day 9:  I had to remove the mask from the pitch because it needs to be annealed again.  To do this I unscrewed it, then, using a torch, I heated the mask slightly so the pitch would warm up and release it.  Then the mask just came right off.  Once I had annealed it, I had to pound the nose out a little more from the inside.  I annealed it once more before placing it back on the pitch.  I heated the pitch again then put the mask on top and screwed it back in place.  As the pitch cooled, it again fixed itself on the mask.  After annealing, the face that I drew is almost gone, so I have to redraw it.  This time I use a tool to carve the eyes in so that hopefully next time I won’t lose them.

Day 10: I worked on pounding in around the nose a little more.  Then I had to take the mask off and anneal it again.

Day 11: Mark showed me how to put the face on.  Lots of lines that are time consuming because I have to make the line, anneal the mask, make the line again, anneal the mask, etc.  The work is easier now though, because I can see where I’m going with it.

Day 12: I had to take the pitch of the underside and put it on the front now so that I could work on pushing some of the lines out.  The first time I did this the pitch didn’t support it enough, so my work cause it to cave out (ruining what I had done earlier).  Then I had to put the pitch back on the underside and fix what I had messed up.  I had to push the eyes back down and develop the cheeks.  The area around the nose needed to be pushed down as well, and I did some work on the chin and the mouth, trying to shape them.

Day 13: This day was just a lot more back and forth with the pitch, moving it from side to side to work on different aspects.  That was a pain, and took a lot of time.  But the face finally looks like it is pretty good.  Things are lopsided, and off-centered, but not bad for a first time job.

Day 14: Mark cut out my piece for me then showed me how to sand it down to where I wanted it to be.  I sanded the top and bottom but saved the sides for the very last.  Mark then helped me punch circular depressions going around the sides and bottom of the piece.  And lastly, I sanded the sides down to where I wanted them to be and then made them smooth.  Then I let it sit in the acid to clean…I came back later that day and Mark showed me how to finish it.  First I used pumice mixed with a little bit of water to get it super clean.  I rinsed it with hot water and then painted it with a mixture of water and liver of sulpher.  I used too much water in that mixture the first time and it didn’t work very well, so  I mixed another batch and tried again.  This time it got much darker.  I again rinsed it with hot water, and using the pumice I selectively took off the black that I had just put on.  I left it on the recessed areas, and took it off the areas that stuck out like the nose, and the mouth and chin.  This left it looking like it had shadows and made it look a little older.  After rinsing it once more, I used a little steel wool on it and I’m done!!!!!!