Manual work (Swilling the pigment)

In this week, we are going to experience swilling the raw pigment for the pure one. The lecturer just told us, that this is just raw pigment and it will not be used for color testing. The pure pigments is the one that we will use for color testing.

Swilling equipment

Raw pigment produced

Cleaning up the grinder

Cleaning up the boxes

 Storing them into plastic bags

Plastic bags are labeled

When we arrived at the workshop, there was a good amount of pigment processed but the lecturer told us that this pigment was not final and requires swilling to separate them from the larger rocks.
Of course we had to clean up the equipment we had used, we also had to help store the sand for later use. After cleaning, The swilling needs to be taken place in the toilet as it will become dusty and to keep the studio clean. We are also required to wear masks as the dusts of the pigments will float on air. We also took our turns doing this, and each of us took a very long time.

The Toilet work space

Swilling

Produced Pure pigment

Swilling is a very tiring process, we are to shake the swill up down left right in order to get the pure pigment. For an hour or more , I have swiveled and only produced a small amount of it. It is also very hard to see if the pigments are falling because they are so small, the only way to know is to tip the obtained pigment to one side and swivel to observe signs of the pure pigment. After my turn, my face was covered in red pigment and it was indeed strong. Some of my peers even got it on there cloths and shoes too. After the swilling process, out of the bag of raw pigment we had produced a half of the jar of pure pigment and ready to be used for color testing next week.