We’ve been working on a project update in the background… (Patreon)

Hey guys! So, we’ve been working on a project update in the background that I was really nervous about: attempting to fix Chunk 2.

What do I mean by “fix”? Well if you saw the Aftershow for that video, you may remember that our resin cube pumpkin, Chunk 2, started bulging a few days after we demolded him. Shortly after that, we also saw that he was “sweating” and a bunch of liquid was collecting around him. Which made us conclude that there were biological processes happening and we decided to put him in the fridge to slow that down. (As a side note, I think the reason this DIDN’T happen to Chunk 1 is because his resin cured SO FAST he didn’t have time to even start rotting before he cured).

 In the meantime, Evan started brainstorming how we could prevent the bulge from getting so big it cracked (which is what happened to Meatball) and he thought it we could drill into Chunk 2 and preserve him with formaldehyde or something, maybe that would prevent him from continuing to rot in the resin.

But we weren’t sure if that was safe or if maybe another preservative would be better, so after gathering a list of potential chemicals to pump into Chunk 2, we reached out to our friend Nigel (NileRed) to get his opinion since he works with chemicals all the time. We wanted to find something that could help preserve him, wasn’t SUPER toxic to work with, and wouldn’t degrade the resin. After our chat with Nigel, we landed on Phenoxyethanol, which is used to help preserve cosmetic products (diluted in oil or water)

Evan came up with a very clever way to drill into Chunk 2 in two spots, tap the resin to add threads, insert a port that can later be plugged, and attach tubes to the port so we can run the Phenoxyethanol into one hole, and push all the existing fluid and air out the other!!!! 

We did that and checked on him a few times until there seemed to be no more bubbles left, then we used mineral oil to push out the Phenoxyethanol (we didn’t know if keeping the chemical solution in there long term would be bad) and we sealed the ports! A bonus effect of filling him with fluid is that he no longer is frosty, he’s fully orange! Which just goes to show that our theory was right, the frosty look was just due to the air between the pumpkin skin and the resin as he pulled away/shrunk a bit.
 We’ll post the full video and the results of what happened soon!

-Katelyn