Mosaic Bowling Ball - Part 2

Today major progress was made on my 'time bomb' art piece. I mixed up enough grout to to fill the finger holes on this and one other bowling ball. As mentioned in Part 1 of this project, I put some caulk in the finger holes, stuffed paper towel about half way full, pushed it in tight with a screwdriver, then topped it off with grout. I used the screwdriver to poke any air bubbles out, then leveled the grout to the ball surface.

With the leftovers, I watered down the last bit of grout to use as a slurry rub on a blank bowling ball. I'd read that giving the ball a couple layers of thinned down grout would quickly cover the ball and create a nice rough surface for gluing mosaics to -- thus eliminating the sanding and scoring I did on the first ball. I won't know if this is a good technique or not, but certainly thought the time savings alone was worth the effort to find out.

While grout was setting up in the finger holes, I positioned the ball on my work stand and continued gluing mosaic pieces to the ball. I'm happy to say, I finished all but the finger holes... they still need to cure completely. My goal is to grout the ball this weekend. This is definitely a staging process and not to be rushed. Be back soon. : )