My Quest to Build a Better Sphere

Ball covered in glue soaked flannel.

As I mentioned a few blog posts ago, I am working on a few projects at one time.  I am also playing a bit to decompress after finishing an intensive project.  At times like this I come up with some weird ideas.  I just want to play around with bits and scraps and see what happens.  At the moment I am playing around with a ball and some leftover fabric.  Hmm...., fabric some glue, and a ball....what could I do with that?  Lots of things actually.  I may have to make this project more than once to test out these ideas.

Concrete over papier mache' ball from 2014. Photo taken this morning .

  A few years ago I had been challenged to find something other than a bowling ball to use as base for making mosaic gazing balls for the garden. While it is  not impossible to find old bowling balls, they do not exactly grow on trees either.  I made a mold of a ball from papier mache' and used it as the base for a garden ball that I painted.  However the ball was rather cumbersome to make and required  extra supports from wire mesh to hold the Portland Cement outer layer.  I begin to think that perhaps there was a better way to make the support.  I set the idea aside until I was ready to work with it again.  I think that time has arrived.

My first thought is that if I could stiffen the fabric with glue and mold it around the ball, it might me stiff enough to hold its shape after the ball was removed.  If it did hold its shape, could I be able to use it as a mold?  If I was going to make a mold, could I use it to make some type of gazing ball substrate or as a base for some other project.  I decided that I would find the answer to that question.  And so the experiment began.

I had some small pieces of flannel left over from the Belsnickel project.  I cut it up into strips.  I had a ball that I covered with cling wrap and coated with a mold release product.  I mixed some Elmer's multipurpose glue 50/50 with water.  For the first course, I started adding strips to the ball and soaking them with the glue mixture.  I allowed the ball to dry completely.  It took about a day and a half.  I added a second course of the flannel, but this time a full strength layer of glue was painted on to the ball, then the strip of flannel was added and soaked with the 50/50 mixture.  The same thing for a third course.  Now I am waiting for the ball to dry.  It is almost there.

I plan to remove the mold from the ball soon.  Removing the ball will destroy it.  If I had thought about it a little more, I would have made sure I left an opening so I could deflate the ball.  However, I did not do that and the ball is covered in a solid layer of fabric.  Will it hold its shape once the ball is removed or will it collapse into a misshapen object?  If it does collapse, is there some way to make it more rigid and salvage it for the sphere project?  I won't know until I take out the ball.  Check back next blog post to find out.

For anyone who might be wondering if my ball with the papier mache' substrate has held up, I posted a picture I took this morning.    The ball was completed in 2014.  It is a hollow ball made from papier mache' and covered with Portland Cement.  Then it was painted with acrylic paints and sealed with an exterior sealer.  The ball has set outside summer and winter since the spring of 2014.  So far it has held up well.  The blog posts of the build of the ball are still online if you scroll back to the 2014 section on the main page of the blog.  The blog posts of my Hypertufa cast balls are also available.

Check back on Sunday and I will have unmolded the ball.  We will see what happens.