[PSUBS-MAILIST] Bruce Beasley Acrylic Casting

[Jon Wallace]

Nice job Alan.  I always wondered where he was, he seemed to disappear after his work with Stachiw ended.  We should see if he's interested in being a guest speaker for a future conference.

--------------------------------------------
On Sat, 10/12/13, Alan <alanlindsayjames at yahoo.com> wrote:

 Subject: [PSUBS-MAILIST] Bruce Beasley Acrylic Casting
 To: "Personal Submersibles General Discussion" <personal_submersibles at psubs.org>
 Date: Saturday, October 12, 2013, 1:26 AM
 
 While in San Francisco I looked up
 Bruce Beasley's contact details.
 He is one of Americas pre- eminent sculptures & a
 pioneer in casting thick sectioned acrylic.
 I thought I was heading to his gallery but it ended up being
 his home & studio.
 For those who are unfamiliar with the story, Bruce was
 attracted to acrylic as a sculpting
 medium but no one had cast it more than two inches thick. He
 managed to cast a 4" thick 
 model of a proposed 13ft x 4ft art work that he submitted
 for a competition for a State of California public
 sculpture. The judges awarded him the prize & finance to
 built it. Unbeknown
 to them the technology to make it didn't exist. 
 Du Pont the acrylic manufacturer told Bruce they couldn't
 offer him technical assistance as he had already exceeded
 what their chemists could achieve, but would supply him the
 raw product free.
 He observed the formation of bubbles in the polymerising
 acrylic through windows in an autoclave & discovered how
 to eliminate them & the cracking, that were the Achilles
 heel of the process. 2 castings later he created The 13ft x
 4ft casting. He said if he hadn't have made it he could have
 been sued. 
 It was at that point that Jerry Stachiw from the U.S. navy
 approached him to make thick acrylic spheres for deep diving
 submersibles. There were several failures before success
 & the price tag on these failures was the equivalent of
 a new VW.
    Anyway he ushered me in to his living room
 & chatted away. I have a background in art
 so we related well, & he ended up giving me a book which
 was a retrospective of his sculpture,
 including the story of his acrylic sculpture. I think he was
 quite impressed that someone from N.Z.
 knew his story & had tracked him down.
 He still has the secrets to manufacturing large castings if
 anyone wants to purchase the technology.
 So again I've been totally spoilt.
 Alan
 
 
 
 
 
 Sent from my iPad
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