Years ago I was given a very badly mutilated Hagen Renaker 'Daisy' sculpted by Maureen Love.  I think this Mustang mare may have been OF buckskin originally so this truly made me sad.  Some one (not me) tried to sandblast her original finish off to take her back to unglazed bisque.  Well, that sort of worked in a technical sense in that it did remove most of her glazed finish, but it also stripped off her sculpted detail, left a reptile like texture, and holes in her neck.  She still had two glued broken legs and was missing her front leg.  By the time she arrived to me, she was in horrible shape.  I was frankly quite at a loss what to do with her!

Recently I got this piece back out to give her some thought.  First I needed to remove the old glue from her two broken legs by firing her clean.  Then I needed to get rid of her reptile like texture and fill in the holes in her neck.  To do that I roughed up her body texture even more and coated her all over with bisque mender and then clay in a thin layer.  This further obliterated her details but she was already so messed up I figured I would have to resculpt everything back in later.

Here is the same bisque  now coated with clay to smooth out her strange texture.   She is ready for me to use diamond coated tools to deeply score the breaks in prep to reattach her legs using bisque mender.  I forgot to take a photo of her legs at that point so I'll insert a photo of a broken bisque Okie Rio's legs that I also scored at the same time so you can see how I have done it.   The deeper the scoring, the toothier the texture, the better!

This gives a nice roughed up surface to interlock with the newly added clay to reattach the legs.  For the missing leg on both bisques I also drilled out a hole and added a kiln rod to sculpt the missing leg back into place.  I could just sculpt & slip stick it on but adding the rod makes it harder for me to accidentally knock it off while I'm working!  The unfired legs when attached are very fragile and easy to break while cleaning up.

One way around that is to stand your piece up on a card.  I initially attach the legs to the piece with her flipped upside down as this is easiest to make sure the legs are straight before they can bear weight.  A hair dryer helps the clay to firm up quickly.  Once she is standing on cardstock it allows me to make certain all of her legs are the right length and her hooves flat.  It also makes it easier for me to do the rough clean up to shave off excess damp clay with a knife /without/ knocking the fragile leg repairs off.  Once dry I flipped her over and peeled off the card so I could finish initial cleanup.  As I can continue to do refinements after firing there is no need to get too nit picky the the details at this stage.

Now she is back on her feet and able to stand on her own!  Mind you that the repairs are not yet fired so she's fragile.  Handle with care.  I decided to go ahead and start resculpting her mane and tail as you can see here.  These areas are scored and bisque mender applied, then clay added.  The bisque mender with it's added flux & gum Arabic helps act like glue for a firmer bond to the bisque.

After adding more to the mane & tail, as well as her ears, I began to carve detail and coat texture back into her body using normal sculpting and dental tools.  Remember to work the clay damp if possible using a spritz of water to keep down dust.  Clay dust is very bad for your lungs so wear an appropriate mask or respirator rated for silca.  I also like to do any sanding over a dampened towel to catch dust as it falls from my piece.  I resculpted & refined this girl about as far as I dared while her legs are so easy to rebreak.  I did in fact knock off her repaired back leg THREE times while I was working on her.  Just be patient & reattach it however many times it takes.  I set her aside to dry by this point as I decided I wanted to bisque fire her repairs before I continued working.

And here she is after bisque firing in my kiln to Orton cone 04 (1945 degrees F).  Tada!  She now has four legs firmly attached.  There are some thin cracks to fill in with watered down bisque mender.  This piece is now ready for me to continue sculpting.  To build back her knees and add more to her tail I have to go back & deeply score the bisque all over again using diamond coated rotary cutting discs.  I will continue to refine and detail her legs, hooves, face and so forth until I have pushed her as far as I can.  When ready, I'll bisque fire her in the kiln at least once more before she will be ready for custom glazing to the color of my choice.  Probably an overo pinto!

Thank you for joining me for this blog segment.  I will make a new post in the future so you can see how this trashed Hagen Renaker Daisy gets a second chance to be appreciated when finished.