Blade Runner SUSHI BAR + SLICE OF LIFE making of

Hey Joberg, thanks a lot on your tips! I'll definitely give them a try!

I prefer plaster of Paris btw, not heat resistant resin

Can you please elaborate why do you prefer plaster mold over a silicone mould? And is the plaster mold for one-time use?
Also, how hard is it to remove a casting from plaster mould since it is not flexible?

Thanks! :)
 
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The plaster mold lasts for at least 4 good pieces (mint) another 2 pieces after that (good) and maybe 1 last piece (fair). The soot will make your un-molding easy, especially yours: it's an open mold, so it's easier to get your piece out of it. Always heat the mold before pouring the lead in it. Very important! You'll get rid of bubbles (not all of it, mind you).
The plaster should be below the temp of your lead...but not by far. Since the lead will contract when cold, it's going to easier to un-mold; worst comes to worst, put it in the freezer for 20 minutes and it's going to fall of the plaster mold by itself;)
 
wow, i've just gone through all 11 pages. totally awesome stuff.

Yo guys!
Crappy cast! Too much air was trapped in the mould every time and every cast turned out like this.
i believe hot metal casting is normally done with a centrifuge to avoid that problem.
 
Hello guys! Updates!

These days I'm working on a TV commercial so movie stuff is going slowly.

In my spare time I've tried the things Joberg advised- making a plaster mold. I cast a positive in wax, and poured plaster over it. Here's two plaster molds drying:

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Here it is hardened, and you can see wax stuck to the bottom. (At the left is POLICE 995 pin, at the right is collar pin)

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Then I heated the mold and wax melted away, leaving a nice plaster negative. Now, I powdered the mold every time, I heated it so the pewter doesn't harden that fast, but no matter what I did the casts were not perfect.

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This was definitely an improvement over the silicone molds, but pewter would never get into all corners. I googled pewter casting techniques some more and realized that people often make a closed mold, like this:

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I figured I should give it a try. So, I fastened an MDF board to the back of the plaster mold and poured pewter through the hole at the top:

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And wouldn't you know it - IT WORKED!

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At that point the mold was full of imperfections, and I ran out of pewter at the top, but it filled all the corners and notches! Why does it work like that, and not when it is an open mold I don't know. But the important thing is that it works!

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Unmolding broke some of the letters from the mold. I made two new plaster molds and they are drying till tomorrow. I hope tomorrow I'll have a perfect cast!
Joberg, thanks again for your tips - it helped me to get to this point!

In other news a set of cop patches arrived in the mail today!

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They were somewhat expensive, but are very cool!

I have to finish the helmet and figure how to crack the "sinisalo armor problem" next.
See ya!
 

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YEAH BABY! It worked!! :cool

Today I tried to cast another Police 995 pin and I got a perfect cast! Same method - MDF board clamped to the back of the mold, and poured from the top. Here's the back side of the pin:

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I polished it a bit, and painted the letters black:

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I'm really happy. Metal is such a cool material, I'm glad it worked.. So, with most problems solved, now I need to get busy and make the rest of the badges!

Bye!
 
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Hi!
I've managed to make two reasonable pewter casts of the collar pins and today I've poured some colored epoxy into them.

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I'm still not too comfortable about my casting process, but I'll keep practicing. I never planned to do a run of these but if I decide I'll definitely send you a message Andy! No problem!

The lead is not that difficult to come by. For my tests I bought some at the fishing store actually! It was quite cheap. But I figured it is much too heavy for pins and badges and I decided to use pewter instead! The pewter on the other hand is hard to find in my city. In the end I found it at the tinsmith's shop. Castings are reasonably light, but it is much more expensive.

Btw, I soldered the pins on the back of these "collar pins" and now they are fully functional! :)
I hope tomorrow I'll have more updates!

Good niiiiiight!
 
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Pins are looking good! Lead is much easier to work with and, as I said before, as long as the molds are heated up, you should have no trouble obtaining a decent piece.
Love the coloured epoxy; good idea!
 
TWO WHOLE WEEKS??????????? :eek
I know, I know.. I just didn't want to admit that to myself.

It's not like I didn't do nothing for the movie, it's just that everything I did was a failure..
But you asked, Ville, so hear me complain a little. :lol

In the next few days I'll go to a friend who is a fashion designer, and she'll help me tailor the police costume - chest, shoulders, wrist part... So, I decided time has come to tackle the Sinisalo armor chest protectors..

As some of you know (and I probably learned that from you), BR costume designers took a motocross protective armor, and probably did vacuumform pulls over plastic parts. Then painted them black and attached them to the police protective vests. Here's the pics:

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I couldn't find the original armor on Ebay, and if I did it would probably be expensive, so I had to figure out how to make those plastic parts myself. I figured the easiest way would be to model it out of clay, but I delayed it for as long as I could since I don't like working with clay..

The day finally came and I made two bottom shapes:

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In the middle you can see the simple tools I made for denting holes. Then I coated them with a thin layer of AIR DRYING silicone that stinks of ammonia and it is disgusting to work with. Since I live where I live that was the only silicone I could find a year ago when I decided to make molds for something. It's incredibly hard to find a two-component silicone here.

So after a few layers and three days later I had a cool negative and things looked promising:

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Then I sprayed the molds with mold release, mixed some polyester, tinted it black, and spread it in the molds.
The next day I excitedly came to my workshop to find that the polyester stuck to the silicone and when I tried to separate it I just broke everything !?!

Then I rested for a day or two because I was angry.

I searched all over the city and managed to find some small shop that sells two-component silicone for a reasonable price. But the guy had to order it from a neighbour country and I'm still waiting for it to arrive at this point. It would be much easier to be able to buy Smooth-on products locally. I know I could order them by mail but that wouldn't be cheap.

Anyway, I decided this was a good moment to try the ancient technique of vacuumforming which I wanted to try for a long time. So I built myself a small box (around A4 format):

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At the right is a hole for the vacuum cleaner.. I wasn't sure if the vacuum cleaner would be strong enough but that was the first thing to try, right?

I also made the frame that sandwiches a thin sheet of PVC plastic and I heated it in the oven at 200-250 degrees for 30 seconds or so.

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Then, as it's usually done, I quickly press it to the box and over a form I made:

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And, of course, I couldn't get a proper pull since materials I work with are crap > since I can't buy proper materials > since I live where I live. The vacuum cleaner seems to be strong enough, though.. But the plastic I have is obviously not the type that can form over all details. The problem is I don't know where to buy the correct type of plastic so I'll have to search for it all over and waste a couple of days as usual.

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And so two weeks went by and I did mostly nothing, apart from partly finishing the helmet:

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...which actually is still missing the bubble goggles I ordered, but it's been over a month and they still haven't arrived, so I opened a case at E-bay and I'm waiting... for something to happen..

So there it is.. Nothing much.

:unsure
 
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I am not 100% sure they vacuum formed the parts over the Sinasalo armor pieces, I think they may have just cast from them. The chest protectors also were not usually too expensive. I picked my set up for about 25$. Of course I used saved search for a while before I got the set I wanted, and the parts were only on the front of the real chest protector, but on both sides of the movie version. I know someone here made them at one time too, and I picked up the police cod piece from them. I forgot who it was though, sorry. I will see if I have the info somewhere..

Andy
 
I think you can resolve the vacuform problem by drilling holes into the master plug through the part, such that the vacuum can pull the plastic into the openings better. You won't get a better resut with better materials, if the force generated by the vacuum has no chance to come to the points where it is needed.

And for the silicone: Have you tried to talk with your dentist? He might have access to these kind of things - or knows technicians who do so.

Thorsten
 

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