Les Bonnes Choses

In case you're parachuting into the story and want to be able to easily jump through the narrative, here are links to the rest of my tale:
Prologue
Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4
Part 5

We're in the home stretch, and it won't be long before I return my efforts to critiquing authority figures, people with too much hubris, and "the system" in general.

So I cunningly crafted my molds. I found the next step rather fun and exciting, though whether it was because I was seeing the transformation of a vague idea into physical form, or because I didn't have adequate ventilation while working with solvents I cannot say for certain. The plastic resin comes in two parts to be mixed equally. Wanting to be as precise as possible without contaminating my cookware, I obtained some 30ml oral medication syringes from a pet store to measure out the materials.



Each piece was approximately 25ml, so allowing for waste, I measured out 26ml of each component to cast two pieces at a time. Later on, I got up to casting three tiles at once, though because the chemical reaction that causes the resin to harden begins immediately, and it takes some time to carefully pour the resin into the molds, I wouldn't advise being more ambitious than that.



The resin was the colour and consistency of table syrup, but quickly becomes cloudy and then fully opaque -- about the colour that my teeth will soon become because of the amount of tea that I drink. After about five minutes, the tiles can be removed. Rinse and repeat.

I do not literally mean to rinse the mold. It's a figure of speech.

I did not cast all 100+ pieces in one sitting. I understood from my reading that the molds need a rest to cool down (the chemical reaction within the resin generates heat). Instead, I made perhaps a dozen at a sitting. Generally, my casting sessions would end at that point in the evening when Ghandi and Queen Victoria finished their tea and suggested I crack open the window a little bit.