Personal Narrative-College Essay

Words: 426
Pages: 2

As the liquid aluminium filled the plaster mold, I wondered if it would explode in my face. Sinking my hand into the alginate, I thought I might never break free of its tight enclosure. Worst of all was the fear that I might burn the house to ashes. Yet, my house and I ended up just fine. Through a couple sleepless nights emerged my prize-an exact model of my fist, cast in aluminium. Three years ago, the addiction began. After watching a metal casting video, I decided to build a furnace myself. I spent hours upon hours researching metal casting and how to avoid a trip to the ER. I began casting ingots from aluminium. Eventually I thought of casting my own fist (though in a different gesture), and began researching. Most methods like greensand or die casting wouldn’t work, and I had no means of …show more content…
My initial plans didn’t work, and it took weeks to find one that did. I decided on one that involved several molds and you guessed it-danger. First, I had to bury my hand in alginate (the modeling material that dentists use). Once I reclaimed my hand from the mold, I poured plaster in. This was followed by cutting the plaster hand free, and submerging it in silicone. After freeing the plaster hand again, I was left with a silicone mold to pour hot wax into...for another mold. I threw this wax hand in a container with wet plaster and sand. In one of my failed attempts in making a wax hand, I unintentionally created a massive fireball with wax-Apparently wax is flammable. I baked the mold in an oven for 8 hours, hoping the wax wouldn’t catch fire. At that point, I was nervous. If there was too much moisture in the mold, the aluminium might splash back in my face. This wouldn’t be enjoyable. The mold could’ve been half full of wax and underbaked, but it was the last night before the end of a holiday break and I needed to finish it. So I brought the hot mold out and poured the aluminium. Although it bubbled