Aluminum rods used to reinforce styrofoam armature

Here I embedded a 3/8” diameter aluminum rod in the legs in order to support the weight of the dog sculpture. Aluminum is used because of its lightweight and softness in case the mold maker needs to sever the legs to make a multi-part mold.

Tomorrow I will proceed with the clay-up on the remaining exposed foam.

The groove, which houses the rod, will be filled with molted clay.

Styrofoam poodle rough cut for armature

I started off with a 50" x 40" x 15" block of Styrofoam and used the hot-wire tool to cut out the rough profile.

I modified the tool and create a somewhat hot-wire jig saw... worked great.

Here you can see all the scrap pieces. They will be used for future sculptures. If you ever priced Styrofoam, it is expensive, go figure.

Here is the poodle profile cut-out. Perhaps Friday or Saturday I will revisit the poodle armature with a hand held hot-wire and work on removing the excess foam. We want to get close to the poodle's life-size measurements. I plan on making the final clay dog sculpture an additional 5% larger in order to off set the shrinkage we will encounter during the foundry procedure.