EMERGENCY ADVICE NEEDED! Anyone have any ideas how to salvage this mold?

[duck]

Hey everyone and anyone, looking for some emergency advice. I have an Ultra Cal mold for a mask I sculpted. The plan was to run it in foam latex, but I have been nervous about the learning curve (I had $300 of the stuff sitting here for the past 4 projects!), plus I was running out of time and just wanted something simple I've done a dozen times before. So I sealed the inside of the mold and applied release agent and did it in liquid latex, figuring it would be more like an appliance than a mask.

Well, after 4 days of adding a ton of coats and drying it bone dry between coats, I went to remove the pice ... absolute 100% catastrophic failure. Every single section of the latex tore, shredded, stuck to the mold- total disaster. I have no idea what went wrong and frankly, I'm so behind schedule on so many things, I don't care. The latex was a little old, but I had just used it with total success on another mold 2 weeks ago, and that was a much, much bigger piece.

Anyway, now my mission is to see if I can save the mold. I have about 90% of the latex cleaned out, but I have some impossible to reach nooks and crannies in the deep set eyebrow region and in the teeth (it's a skull sculpt). there is simply no way to get to this crap. So I'm looking to the RPF- any suggestion on how to remove that crap? I have thought about some pretty insane stuff, like burning it out with a propane torch (!!!) figuring the Ultra Cal will either hold up and not crack (much! Hahaha!) or the whole thing will just be a complete loss. Honestly, it can't get worse.

So any ideas? Soak the trouble areas in some sort of liquid to break it down, like, I dunno, rubbing alcohol or nail polish? Flame thrower? Pray to Cthulu? Let me hear you ideas, because I'm about to do something wonderfully drastic and insane in my drive way with a torch! Thanks in advance!

 

[HeroOfThePeople]

To paraphrase The Graduate: "I have one word for you: Solvents" I haven't done a lot of work with it but I'm certain there must be a solvent that will dissolve your Latex without harming the ultracal. As with all solvents wear a respirator and work in a well ventilated area.

 

[krisdoce]

Hey everyone and anyone, looking for some emergency advice. I have an Ultra Cal mold for a mask I sculpted. The plan was to run it in foam latex, but I have been nervous about the learning curve (I had $300 of the stuff sitting here for the past 4 projects!), plus I was running out of time and just wanted something simple I've done a dozen times before. So I sealed the inside of the mold and applied release agent and did it in liquid latex, figuring it would be more like an appliance than a mask.

Well, after 4 days of adding a ton of coats and drying it bone dry between coats, I went to remove the pice ... absolute 100% catastrophic failure. Every single section of the latex tore, shredded, stuck to the mold- total disaster. I have no idea what went wrong and frankly, I'm so behind schedule on so many things, I don't care. The latex was a little old, but I had just used it with total success on another mold 2 weeks ago, and that was a much, much bigger piece.

Anyway, now my mission is to see if I can save the mold. I have about 90% of the latex cleaned out, but I have some impossible to reach nooks and crannies in the deep set eyebrow region and in the teeth (it's a skull sculpt). there is simply no way to get to this crap. So I'm looking to the RPF- any suggestion on how to remove that crap? I have thought about some pretty insane stuff, like burning it out with a propane torch (!!!) figuring the Ultra Cal will either hold up and not crack (much! Hahaha!) or the whole thing will just be a complete loss. Honestly, it can't get worse.

So any ideas? Soak the trouble areas in some sort of liquid to break it down, like, I dunno, rubbing alcohol or nail polish? Flame thrower? Pray to Cthulu? Let me hear you ideas, because I'm about to do something wonderfully drastic and insane in my drive way with a torch! Thanks in advance!

I'm not sure if you still need help with this but I had a similar problem and all I did was use some latex again (I know) it was scary but was able to pull all the old latex with the new latex.
Just let a thin layer sit till it's cured and then carefully pull it off.
I think it's also very important to see what went wrong in the first place. In my case it was actually an old can of crystal clear I used. Not sure if the old part had anything to do with it but it took me many hours with acetone to finally clean my mold the right way.

After I had a nice clean mold I had no problem with sticking latex.

Hope this helps in some way.