Just Gowjus…
If this weekend was a bad weekend for casting from newly made molds - nobody told me! I lined em up, sprayed 'em down, filled 'em up, and popped out a few pieces. It's a bit more involved than that, but you get the idea.
What we have here are the 3-part-molds for the top and bottom of Amy's lighter case. The orange colored ones are the 2-part mold for the Rook, and the little ones in the upper-right hand corner are for the Pawn.
You may have noticed the use of dominoes in one of my other mold making tutorials. I don't know why I have so many of them but, I use them to help build-up a level wall around the piece. Otherwise I'd just have gobs of clay all around it.
The mold for the second half of the lighter case goes just like the first half except BETTER! As you may recall, for the first half, I carefully followed each step of the process as I had with previous molds using a different rubber. The problem came when I tried to remove the three halves from one another and discovered they formed into a solid block. My theory was that I was either having an issue with the clay (to build the walls) or the spray-on release agent.
As you can see, for this experiment I've used the same grey clay as last time and the same release agent, only this time I'll let the release agent dry for 30 minutes like the directions for the rubber say (the directions on the release agent say 5 minutes). I was pretty sure this would work. So while I waited, I prepared the Pawn for the same treatment...
I realized I had more blue goo mixed up than I needed; luckily I had a couple other pieces on standby, ready to be molded just in case this very thing occu.
Once the rubber was dry I removed all the clay from the mold. It was gooey, which meant that what happened before happened again... something reacted funny. I gave the rubber a few more hours to dry and began building the next wall to pour part 2 of the mold, this time using a different clay. Besides the color, I'm not really sure what the difference was. It was a wet clay that came with a mold making kit I bought years ago... so that was promising.
After pouring the next batch of rubber, letting it dry and removing the clay from the opposite side. The rubber was dry... apparently it was the clay after all. I had found my solution. I poured the third part of the mold, proud to have finally figured out the problem.
Well... it stuck together again. dare I say, even worse than it did the first time BUT it came right off the sculpture wihtout harming it a bit.
So at the least I can conclude a couple things:
- if I let the release agent sit for 30 minutes before pouring the rubber, it saves the sculpture.
- This blue rubber, seems to work best as a ONE part mold.
This is a one-part mold - easy peasy, one two threesy.
Although the demold went terribly for the complex molds I have been able to cast a few pieces. They need to be sanded, painted and finished. But here's what they look like now:
