A cast of thousands

Or not.

So here's what I did. First of all. I took plasticene and pounded it pretty flat. Then I pushed a flat piece into the impression mold and pulled it out. I'm fairly sure that vaseline would help all this, but I didn't use any, and the whole thing worked okay.

For the next step, I mixed up a little bit of paster (2 teaspoons, 1 teaspoon of water) and poured into the mold. Then I took a stir stick and carefully skimed across the top so as to even the paster throughout the mold and also to get the mold fairly even on top (no big bulges).

I let it dry and, after a few hours, I had a flat panel (one sided). I simply peeled the plasticene away and it was done. All I had to do was sand the back by floating it across a piece of 220 grit, and it was ready to ornament whatever installation I wanted to deck out in crazy techno looking stuff.

But the panel was about the thickness of three dimes at its thinnest and it was one sided. I have since set out to make the experiment a bit more challenging.

The results of those experiments are as follows:

First of all, don't go thinner than three dimes or so with plaster. You get chips. They break, they don't hold together at all, and well, you're wasting your time. Even three dimes is a bit thin, and if you get it to work you'll see what I mean. Whatever I put this panel on, I had better not drop it or the thing is going to fly into a million pieces.

So, I got myself some of that nylon resin that I've been hearing so much about these days. The problem with it is that you don't want to use too much of the hardening agent because it's dangerous, but then you don't want to use too little or the stuff comes out like a wacky wall walker. Maybe its the thickness factor, but you want enough of the activating agent to make the stuff hard. But that's easier said than done. The back of my box says 15 drops per ounce, and well, my molds hold about 1/10 of an ounce. Let's just say, I used two drops and it wasn't enough, but it did harden somewhat...it just feels kind of rubbery. At least that's how it worked for the one sided molds of the some power poles I got with Battle for Macragge. I can glue them to the side of a building, but they're not exactly sturdy.

My success story, however, came from my two part mold. I made a two-parter of the Ultramarine commander's powerfist. Here's how I did it. I took two beer bottle caps, filled them with plasticene, put the fist in, pressed them together, sheered off the excess plasticene that had squeezed out, pulled the fist loose, and wallah...I had a two part mold. Moreover, it worked. The fist looks about as good as the original--including the double headed eagle holding the skull and the coils on the power fist. Yeah!!!

Here's the thing, and this is my new project. The plaster breaks away from the plasticene clean. The resin does not. It doesn't mix or anything, but you do get a gloppy mess of plasticene that you have to clean off. There's got to be a better way of doing this, but I used Q tips and turpentine to clean the things. Still, it would be better if I knew some kind of release agent for plasticene. I'm thinking perhaps PVA (Poly Vinyl Alcohol), so it's another game of going to the store and finding a store to go to. Cleaning one of the power poles ended up breaking two of the coils off.

Speaking of the store. Nylon resin seems to be about the only thing that you can't get at Home Depot. I finally found it at a local upscale art store. I did not find any at Joanne's where the molding material is kept in the children's section. I have not checked Michael's.

Lastly, I switched to Nylon resin primarilly because the Fiberglass resin sounded too scary. Nylon resin is far less dangerous, but it still has its problems. It stinks like gasoline being the worst of them. Whereever the stuff is, it seems to put an odor out just underneath everything else. I was hoping to use the stuff indoors but I'm thinking that, even with proper ventilation, that might not be such a good idea.

I'll fill you in more when I have more information. Hopefully my RTV rubber molds will be here soon and I can play with those.