Posted

Feb 4th 2006

"Chunk" has been cloned!

I bought a mold-making kit from http://www.smooth-on.com/ about a week ago and received it on Wednesday. I took photos of the process and I thought I'd post them here in case any one might be interested...

First, I embedded half the sculpture in sulfur-free oil-based modeling clay (I used Van-Aken, which you can find at Michael's, but Chavant TSP, Klean Klay and a few others will work as well). Why's sulfur free clay important? If you're making a silicone mold, the sulfur will inhibit the silicone so it won't cure properly (bad times!).

(The acorn nuts in the corners are for registration keys to keep the halves of the mold.)

Next, I put the whole thing in a mold box made by :iconskulpturro:.


Then came the silicone! This is OOMOO 30 from Smooth-on:


The next morning, I took apart the mold box, removed the clay, put the whole thing back into the reassembled box and poured the other half of the mold:


Six hours later, I took everything apart, and removed the original. Here are the two halves of the mold:


Finally, I put the two halves together, and poured resin (Smooth-cast 300) into the mold. Here's the finished product, next to the original:


I made a few mistakes with this one, but I learned a TON doing this, and it was fun!

I have a few castings of this for sale, so please send me a note or an e-mail if you are interested! Prices are as follows:
Unpainted, or ONE color (no detail work): $25.
Painted, any way you want, and mounted on a wooden base: $40.
The casting is 2.5" tall, about 2" wide, and 3" long.

Larger versions of these photographs are here: http://www.pbase.com/rgyoung777/moldmaking