Mold making

Avram has been waiting patiently for me to tell him all about my successes at making molds. Yup...waiting.

Listen Av-ram, if that is your real name, which it isn't...I...

Okay, so here it is. Avram got me this book on making molds so that I could, well, make molds. The point of all this is that no matter what I build I cannot sell it on ebay for more than $10 because its homemade. Oh sure, its reinforced with hard board, but everyone knows its still made out of some stuff I found at a hardware store. Now, if I were to make a mold of that stuff I found at the hardware store and cast the entire thing in one piece, they'd glad pay $20, $30, or even more, and that's unpainted! So, I am not without my desire to follow the advice of Avram and learn how to do this shit.

Here's the thing though. First of all, I like making models out of stuff from hardware stores. I suppose that no matter what I still will be making the intial thing out of such pieces, but still... Secondly, the book is flawed. Why? Because it starts you making molds out of plaster of paris which is by the way, very near to impossible and then it tells you that the only thing you can cast in a plaster of paris mold is a a plaster of paris cast. Aarrgh! So, once you've finally got the molding process down, you have risk ruining the mold in order to make something. I have recently made a very good mold of a land raider door. My goal today is to see if I can cast such a thing in plaster of paris. My recommendation, don't hold your breath. I might as well be making the thing out of wet sand.

The real thing to do is obvious. Make the mold out of RTV rubber which is step two. I bought some RTV rubber over the internet. Not much but enough to see if any of this is feasible. If it is great, because for the most part RTV rubber isn't really all that toxic! You just need to use it in a room with some ventilation. That's not too bad (even though it is 32 degrees outside). The only problem is that once you've made the mold, the casting material suggested is Fiberglass resin, which is so fucking toxic that the book actually recommends that wouldbe workers with fiberglass should consider swimming with sharks to be an alternative panacea for their death wish.

And if that weren't enough, all of these directions involve bits of fiberglass fabric to be added to the fabric to give it some oomph. Great, except I'm not making a fiberglass boat, I'm working with pieces the size of a dime, and I don't want touch this shit at all (though I should be okay with rubber gloves as long as I throw them away afterwards).

The good news is that if the fiberglass resin shit works I'm going to save quite a bit of money on Raveners as they will be my first test case. GW must be mad if they think I'm going to pay $150 for a squad. Don't worry. I won't be selling those, just scenery. But all this is a moot point now because I am not going to do anything with fiberglass resin until I can open windows and etc.. Until then, I'm buying a breathing mask, goggles, and rubber gloves.