Oh, and go boil your head.

From the blog postings of Colin Berry:

It has clear advantages over Mode 1, [discussed above]. in that ANYTHING with 3D properties can in principle be imprinted, not having to be heated. That might be bas relief templates and/or fully 3D statues.  It may even conceivably have been a person, living or dead.  All that was needed was a coating of white flour (or a comparable dry powdered substance providing reducing sugar and amino groups), probably with a binder material to ensure even coating (the vegetable oil in the present modelling, but other options exist).

But I don’t see how with 3D statues, bodies and whatnot, we are not facing the well-understood contact-wrap-around problem. What am I missing?

But there’s a tricky step in the procedure – namely the final roasting of the flour-imprinted linen that has to convert the coating to tan-coloured melanoidins (Maillard reaction products) without too much dicoloration of the linen. It can be done in  principle, on a small scale laboratory basis, given the exceptional chemical and thermal stability of cellulose, by far and away the major component of linen fibres, relative to the starch, proteins lipids etc of wheat flour.

There’s a great deal to think about right now. Best to stop here and post the experimental results. Maybe others can see things I have missed that might offer a way forward through this thicket of new possibilities, each with its own unique difficulties.

To those who claim I select and/or manipulate experimental data I say this. Go boil your heads (old English expression of endearment).