Just a quick one tonight, on that handy standby the Measham teapot which I bought for £1.50 in a charity shop and which Jim is repairing. Having roughly moulded the new spout and and lid knob from Milliput, last night he fined the shape down with sandpaper, followed by finer wet-and-dry (used dry). Having got the shape as near as possible right, it's time to move onto the finish. This was an experiment, as it was going to be difficult to get the dark brown colour to cover the pale gray Milliput. So he mixed the pigment (Liberon earth pigment in burnt umber) with Araldite, which is used anyway to smooth off the shaping. It seems to have worked really well. The colour is perfect and the finish looks almost exactly like the original glaze. It still isn't finished however as it's not smooth enough, but the colour is there now as a base for the final coats. The difficulty with something like Measham is to avoid making it too good.
As it's quite a small pot - but still a nice one - and not perfect, this is the one I think we will keep on Warrior. I have measured up for a shelf in the table cupboard, and hope to get that fitted and the inside of the cupboard painted on our next visit. It's currently painted in a deep pink. I know it's not traditional to have graining inside the cupboard, but I thought it might be a good place to practice on.
And here's a reminder of what the teapot looked like when I bought it:
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