Gun molding questions

[steamfunk22]

Hey everyone.

I am currently making a sci-fi gun prop to mostly waste my time (which I have an ample amount of nowandays). I plan to make a master model of plywood and sculpey, and then make a molding of it to make it lighter and a bit sturdier. However ive hit a snag. It has a retractable stock, which would be quite hard to do a single mold of (which is all I can afford). does anyone have any tips or something for what i should do?

 

[PTK]

i'd have to see the design, but is it possible to maybe just mold the gun, and just re-fabricate the retractable stock for each copy of the gun.

how exactly are you molding it? doing something like a silicone matrix mold with a fiberglass jacket usually lasts longer and uses a fraction of the material that a standard silicone block mold does.....the only difference is that the matrix mold takes more time and is a little more complicated (especially if its your first).....but like you said, you have time, so maybe you could do that and now you could afford to make multiple molds with the more efficient mold.

 

[G17RDY]

I cannot comment on casting, as i have yet to do it myself.

Good luck with your project, remember to have plenty of patience as wood / sculpey combo although worked for me, was very testing at times.

The only real advice i can give you is plan, plan, plan. Think about what you want to do, and use as many reference pics as possible, If its your own design then you may want to sketch it out and work out your dimensions etc.

One thing to note, is when using sculpey, it obvioulsy has to be baked to harden. Which when working on a big project such as my own, meant some elements of the gun had to be baked over and over again, as each new piece was added. This caused some damage and cracking etc to the existing baked / hardened scupley.
However all was not lost, bondo has solved all the cracking issues etc, all in all the project using wood & Sculpey worked out just great.

Thanks

Gordy

 

[robstyle]

if youve got a moving part on the master and want to keep it functional on the casting, you need multiple molds and separate parts. You could always try and model the retractable part around an off the shelf peice and maybe make a one part mold work for you based around said off the shelf parts. Simply remove that section off the cast part and replace it with the existing peices...