Poor man's mold making

Sl0100

New Member
hey everyone,
i just finished a little experiment and documented it,thought i would share the results.

i wanted to see if i could make a mold using over the counter items instead of expensive smooth-on(which i do buy and love)
i recently picked up the slave leia statue to go with my jabba.i plan to build the dias that jabba has and needed to replicate the little monster heads that go around the sides.one came with the slave leia so i figured that would be a great item to test this on.i also had a little trooper helmet my friend needed for some custom SW bust ups.

alright,
basically the plan was to coat the items in latex,once that was built up i would use 2buck silicone from walmart to fill in a small box mold.the cost of this is really cheap once you have the latex and silicone.
so i grabbed the mold maker latex from the craft store,and a cheap tube of silicone from walmart
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i then glued the 2 small parts down to a peice of plastic
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and began coating the latex on
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every few hours i would take about 60 seconds to coat on some more latex
after a day or 2 i had a good little coat of latex built up
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once i had spent a few days ading latex i was pretty set to box it up.i cut out a strip of cardboard and made the wall.taped it down with masking tape and then coated the inside of the box with the latex.
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i added a few more coats to the walls and then once it was dry i pumped in the silicone

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i let that sit for about 24 hours,the silicone wasnt totally hardened but it was ready to pop out of the cardboard box.
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i then let it sit over night and this morning tried to pour in some resin,and SUCCESS!!

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i made a bunch of parts and the mold worked as good as an expensive one.
the upside to this is its CHEAP but the downside is TIME.
i think the whole mold cost maybe 1 dollar cause my latex is still completely full and i barely used any of the silicone.

thought this might give some insight to anyone wanting to make small parts for their costumes or predator-alien models and dioramas.
 
hey skipjenn, nice thinking
but you don't need to use the latex, you can go straight to the silicone caulking. but you have to do thin layers like you did the latex coatings so that it cures.
a trick to help it cure faster is to mix in acrylic paint. water cures silicone caulking.
my first mold for my Salem sculpt was all caulking. i got the technique from a thread on here.

http://www.thehunterslair.com/index.php?sh...amp;hl=caulking

good job coming up with it on your own!!

this is the same silicone colored

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i like the ideas here,
ive made molds and been using various smoothon products for a while.just thought about playing around with other stuff i could buy locally.

question, do you squirt out the silicone into a cup and then mix in the acrylic? then come back onto the subject with your hands?
it also looks like you have a bondo shell around the back? how did you make the flare ?
 
yeah i put it into a plastic cup and mixed it up with the acrylic paint. the used gloved hands to spread it around. it is very tacky, as you know, so take special care to push it into all of the detail.

the "flare" is my mold wall made of WED clay. because i put a plaster mother mold over top of the silicone


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This is my prefered method when just messing around with a casting.

My 8yo son made this scupture for a name plate.
It's partially smashed and the resin copy has been painted but this shows if you want a low number run and your patient it's the way to go.
This one I was very perticular about the detail coat and then put one more coat to build it up and got an excellent copy of it.
No mother mold but the high spots on the silicone was level so when you flip it over it's level for the resin.
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i love build threads,thats why i took pics of each step!!

Anubis,
so by the looks of it,you used the regular silicone?
and what kind of dry time is it with no paint added in? and is there any issue of catching the details one way or the other?
i used the same latex (as on the project) a few years ago to create all the body parts for my Alien costume.i found that the latex dries fairly fast as long as you dont goop it on too thick.the silicone i just tried on this little mold isnt as hard as the latex,but i kinda found that helpful when removing the resin parts.
i may try to play around with this silicone while i have it out and nothing to do with it.
 
Anubis,
so by the looks of it,you used the regular silicone?
and what kind of dry time is it with no paint added in? and is there any issue of catching the details one way or the other?
Yep, part of a small tube of what was labeled silicone adhesive. the first coat was left to dry a couple of hours. I've learned to be patient with the detail coat because if you have the detail like the lettering then the stuff in the groves need time to cure. Since it's clear, you can kind of poke at it and see if it's shifting around at all. My sons name plate even copied his finger print, so there is no problem with catching the detail. Just make sure you get the silicone every where you want it. I apply the small stuff with a little sculpting spatula tool and use a poky end to make sure it's in the grooves. Then I build it up at least one more time and try to make a level surface out of it so it will stay level when flipped over. That coat gets left overnight. I've done this a few times on the smaller scale.

I've done a scale version of my bio that I've used over and over. That mold I've repaired a couple of times too. This stuff doesn't have an issue sticking to itself.
This is the original in Klean Klay and a failed attempt to pour Classic Clay.
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i havent done a latex mold because i don't want the shrink factor. but the caulking method works greats. great detail and curing time isnt that bad. you only need a small amount of paint in it.i use the hobby craft paint from walmart. those 89 cent applebarrel ones.

the major drawback- it wreaks to holy hell. and you need to do it outside.
 
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