Pointing is Perfection

Pointing is the act of filling the joint in plaster pieces. In order to connect the pieces to look like one continuous segment, the joint needs to be clean and perfectly matched up. There are many different steps to pointing. When pointing, it is best to use a material that is easily workable that doesn't dry out too fast. This is referred to a "retarded" mixture. To create it, you use a special mixture of water and rabbit skin so create a pasty texture. The rabbit skin allows the plaster to be workable for a longer amount of time. 

The first step is making a surface to apply your plaster to. We made a temporary board just for practice. We screwed a piece of sheet rock to some plywood for support. 

We choose our piece that we wanted to practice on and using a saw we cut it so we had 3 pieces. One piece with 2 straight edges and the other two pieces had 45° angles. The pieces had to be lined up so that we could mark the board for guidance once we took off our pieces to apply the plaster. 

Its important to scratch up any of the edges that will have plaster on them. This helps the plaster have something to stick to and make the pieces hold together better. Once all the edges are "roughed up", they need to be submerged into water so that the dry plaster doesn't pull all of the moisture out of the wet plaster too quickly to be worked. 

The next step is to apply a thin layer of plaster onto the plaster  piece. This layer should be evenly spread about 1/8 of an inch. After that, it can be applied to the board and the excess plaster can be cleaned from the edge. For applying the next piece, not only the bottom needs buttered, but also the edge where the joints are going to match up. The joint between the pieces should be around 1/4 inch which is marked when the pieces are laid out in place. It is important to make sure all of the surfaces of the pieces line up and are level before the plaster dries. 

Once everything is lined up and even, you can start the actual pointing process.  The plaster mix dries quickly so before applying more you have to spray the joints so it doesn't pull all of the moisture out too quickly. Once the water is completely soaked up, you can apply the plaster mix on the joint using precision tools and smoothly peeling it off using a "scraper" as shown above. 

This is me using my tool to scrape off the excess plaster.  This scraper has an extremely fine straight edge and is easy for scraping off unwanted material. You repeat this step normally 3 times or until the joint is completely smooth and invisible. 

Fort Dorchester Plan

For our Fort Dorchester project, we created a detailed proposal layout to present to the park officers were working with. 

This is the plan view of the lot that we are proposing. These are the foundations that the archaeologists found below the ground. We are going to elevate them to show what would have been there. 

This is our interpretation of the entryway. We had to  change the plans from what was found in the ground to adjust to what we think the doorway would have been. The bottom drawings are the views of the fireplace. 

The Real Deal

For the past few weeks, we have been practicing bricklaying and learning the techniques to it. We would build a section of a wall then break it down so we could reuse the bricks for practice. This time we are building a permanent structure. On the walls that we previously capped of with slate, we are continuing to build them up to make it an amphitheater shape with each level rising.

We started by building up the corners so we could run our string line for the center portion. 

This is my section of the wall. After setting up the corners, I was able to build the center up and then I laid my brick according to those corners. 

This is the corner that I built based on the brick below. 

Here, I am working on the infill structure. The bricks are dirty because they are the ones we practiced with and they will be covered so no one will see them. We will be building along the other side for our mid-term exam for the class. 

The Corinthian Order

The Corinthian is stated to be the most ornate of the orders, characterized by slender fluted columns and elaborate capitals decorated with acanthus leaves and scrolls. The Corinthian order is the last chronologically of the three principal classical orders of ancient Greek and Roman architecture. The other two are the Doric Order which was the earliest, followed by the Ionic Order.

For Drawing and drafting, we drew this column on frosted mylar paper with micron ink pens. 

This is the final Product. It has over 20 hours of work in it and the real challenge was waiting for the ink to dry before moving to another section of the column to keep from smearing.

This is a close up showing the detail of the ink. The idea was to focus on shade and shadow using ink lines.