side table

The mycelium component of the foot stool is now dry, and I baked it to kill off the fungus. There are some brown/orange spots and the seams don’t line up, so I might sand it down and put some kind of finish over it before adding the bamboo top, but that won’t happen for a while. It is now a single piece, so the growing the slices together worked.

Today I removed the stacked mycelium from the incubating bag and set it out to air dry. The slices seem to have grown together well, so it should stay in one piece. The areas where the bag touched the mycelium are not fully coated in the white powdery coating, but I’m fine with it. The white part seems to flake off and get all over everything in my previous tests, so I may need to scrape/sand it off, or maybe even seal or paint the final piece.

Because I only have three slices, the resulting foot stool should fit into my oven, so I have brought the piece home to air dry, and I will bake it when I have a chance.

Yesterday I worked on my presentation. I created a diagram showing the textures of the mycelium throughout the growth process, and I redesigned some previous slides.

Today I removed the slices of the side table from their molds. It was surprisingly easy to remove them, much easier than the plastic mold I purchased from grow.bio. I was able to get out the spacers that I had put in to reduce the amount of mycelium needed for each piece, and then I stacked the three slices. I put everything in a larger bag, and after sealing it and poking holes for condensation to escape, I put two heavy textbooks on top to keep everything in place. In two days I should be able to take the piece out and let it air-dry. I am a little bit worried about the three slices growing together because the sides that touch are not fully flat, but I think it will be more of a visual issue.

Today I broke up the three bags of mycelium and filled the molds to form the slices of the side table. It did not go as planned.

I think I miscalculated the volume of mycelium that I would need, so I did not have enough to fill all of the molds. I noticed that the three packages did not look like much when I received them, but I did not think anything of it. It took 2.5 bags just to fill 2 molds, so I wanted to place cups in the center of the molds to take up space that would not be structurally important to the final shape. I could not access any cups in time, so I had to resort to crumpled up paper towel wrapped in plastic wrap. This is not at all sustainable, since I will probably have to through it all out later, but my work is more of a proof-of-concept. If this were to be manufactured, no paper spacers would be needed, just like cardboard and tape molds will not be used in a manufactured version.

I also ran into a timing issue, so I had to stop working and cover everything in the morning before coming back to work in the afternoon.

I ended up with two almost fully filled molds and one that will be thinner. The piece will have to be a foot stool since it will probably only be 10 inches tall (I couldn’t make all of the slices). Now I have to wait 5- days until I can start growing the pieces together (I still have to figure out how to hold them together without a stabilized clamp. I need to make sure they can at least air-dry by the time winter break starts, then I will bake the piece after break.