First there was the design. Here you can see the bass player penciled in lightly. The shapes for the ceramic slabs are darker.
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Bisque fired ceramic slabs placed over image to see how they will look when finished.
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To mount the slabs onto the board wires are put through the feet on the slabs and through holes precisely placed and drilled into the board.
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Slabs glazed and finish fired and mounted onto the board. The white piece was added later and is not glazed as yet.
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The almost-completed piece. It was at this moment that I decided I did not like this piece as it was and that it would have to be re-made.
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To re-make the piece I would have to clip the wires that were holding the slabs onto the board. This is a picture of the back of the board to show about 1/4 of the wires that would have to be clipped.
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This piece has wires already clipped.
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Closeup of clipped wires. Wires were clipped while the ceramic slab was attached to the back of the board and then by pulling up on the slab it came free of the board. This left me with a board full of holes that were all in the wrong place.
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My next challenge was to fill the holes so I would have a board on which to place new ceramic slabs. To do this I cut pieces of ordinary wooden skewers and made them about 3/4 of an inch long. I then gave them a coating of glue and lightly hammered them into the holes. Then I filled the top of each hole with spackle and sanded the top smooth.
In the picture above the arrows point to 3 of the holes. If you look closely you can see maybe 20 holes that have been filled and that have little pegs sticking out of the back of the board.
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Now I finally had a board that I could use to make the new Mr. Jazz Bass piece. Below is the finished piece. That is the end of the back story. To see the story of how I make these pieces click here – how made.
