Casting party

Casting is the most frustrating step in making resin statues, as there are so many moments when something can go wrong. And something usually goes. There are details on every sculpt where some little annoying air bubble can park itself and then there will be another resin copy without some fingers or buckles. Or, when pouring to several moulds simultaneously (usually I mix a little bit more resin than needed for bigger parts, I'll use the rest in small moulds, like hands or tails), resin could get too thick too soon and not flow to all the parts. There are some tricks to try to avoid this, but there's no guarantee that they will work. I don't think even pressure pot + compressor could really help.

Anyway, I've been trying ot pour some copies of my statues lately and usually the whole session doesn't turn out that well. From 7 details I get 2 or 3 which are more or less ok. Some statues are especially pretentious. Like Ilsa - I have several copies with one or more fingers missing. It's just a nuisance!...

Sometimes there are pleasant surprises. First one from today was, that I actually managed - finally! - to get an Ilsa copy with all the fingers intact. So, it IS possible... The first Ilsa mould was better, but I made some modifications to the sculpt and was forced to make a new mould. Although it MAY be possible to modify the old one... But now I just need to get a couple of more good copies, paint one or two for myself and forget it. By the way, polymer clay original is broken now, after all those mouldings.

Second surprise was, that I actually had made a new and different mould for 7 inch Hellboy's legs! I had no resin at that moment, so I just packed it away to wait and then forgot about it. And it turned out to be better than the first mould! No trapped air in revolver or pouches, all the belts and buckles are ok. Nice!

And 7-inch Hellboy body, now with separate hands, turned out OK too! Cool! All the other details - base, tail, hands - are much easier to make.

I already have my painted Liz bust, so a couple of more castings and that's it for this one.

I'm sorting out the decent castings, then I'll fill a small box with some of them and send it to USA. Next I'll paint some statues for myself and then it's probably time to try to make something new. I'd really like to feel again the urge to sculpt, but for some reason the drive has been gone in recent months. It just feels like I couldn't make something I will like or enjoy.

I have some new ideas... but they feel too complicated. It's so much easier, faster (and cheaper) to just buy ready made stuff... But the problem is - no one is producing statues I'd like to have.

Small sculpting update

Small sculpting update from way-too-hot-weather Tallinn...

I've been working on Indiana Jones likeness, but it just drives me crazy. I think I should take a break, make some sketches for base and overall design of it and look my Abe Sapien with fresh eyes instead... Maybe I learned magically how to sculpt back muscles on the months I haven't touched it.

Trying some digital sculpting... just for learning some new tricks - subtools etc. I'd like it to be easier than it is.

I'm in the process of pouring new moulds for my Ilsa statue - since I made my first set of moulds I made some corrections/additions to it. First silicon side is curing now, I hope to have finished mould in a couple of days. Then, if everything goes right, I'll try to pour some copies on next weekend, both 7" Ilsa and Hellboy, as I don't have any decent copies of them now - Hellboy has separate hands now for easier painting. Then hopefully some brushing...

This is my second try at making silicone part of this mould... and it went wrong. Another try...

Liz bust - moulding and casting #10

Here it is - second resin copy I'll try to paint on next days...

Liz bust - moulding #09

First test casting with some stones in resin. (I mixed a little bit less resin than needed, so I just sunk some stones there.)

Liz bust - moulding #08

Liz bust - moulding #07

Liz bust's mould right after opening...

(There is neat optical illusion on the next photo - look at the face in the mould!)

...and after some quick clean-up:

Actually, there were some annoying bubbles, but I tried to fix/fill them with some silicone and a needle.

Liz bust - moulding #06

Here it is - silicone cube with Liz bust somewhere inside it, cured and removed from the Lego shell... The question is - can I open it? Was there enough vaseline, so the mould will open without using a knife?

Liz bust - moulding #05

Second side is curing... Now I just need to wait and hope there was enough vaseline, so the mould will pop open when ready and I don't have just a block of silicone with statue in it...

Ca 1/3 of the mould is recycled silicone from older moulds, cut to small cubes. On my similar older moulds I used cardboard inside the Legos for better sealing, but not this time. The cracks between the Lego blocks don't leak that much, but I bet that the cleaning will be pain.

Liz bust - moulding #04

First layer of silicone for the second side.

Liz bust - moulding #03

First side of the mould is ready.

Liz bust - moulding #02

It's hard to get air bubbles out from the silicone without pressure/vacuum tank and a compressor. But it doesn't really matter if there are some small bubbles in silicone. If the surface touching the original statue and later the casting material is bubble free, then the castings will be okay.

To ensure that, it's a good idea not to pour all the silicone at once, but at first mix just a small amount of it and to brush the statue's surface with a thin film of silicone. This layer will get to all the cracks and cavities and cover the statue with smooth uniform silicone layer. Small air bubbles will not get trapped to the deeper corners of the statue's textures and details, but they will surface and pop. It's good idea to help it with air blower.

When this layer is hard, it's easy to pour in all the other silicone and to recycle older silicone mould pieces as a filler.

I didn't invent the idea of using Legos in mould making. But it works and it's actually a pretty good trick! Here's my Liz statue with one side of it in "plastiliin" (look at the earlier picture in part 1) and other covered with silicone. Big part of it is not the freshly mixed silicone, but small cubes, cut from older moulds.

In some 18 hours it should be hard, then I will open it, clean up the other side, cover silicone with vaseline to keep mould sides separate and start making the other side. Again - first just the thin film of silicone, the same way as on the first side. Then all the other silicone. On the next day the mould will be finished and is ready for casting first resin test copies.

Liz bust - moulding #01

It's 1:45 a.m. here and I'm gonna mix some silicone. It's simple enough statue, so the mould will be a simple box mould with two sides. I included some punching tools on the photo, used them to make those syncro-elements. One channel at the bottom of the bust is for air and another for resin.

Mould making tutorial, Part 8 - 1st silicone side

Editing...

Next step is to sculpt and to define the area separating two silicone sides of the mould. This is the most important and presice part of the mould making. Also, this is the step needed also when making box mould.

Before insering the statue back to the clay I'll cover the clay with cling-film. I'll push the statue (and film) to the clay, remove it again and cut the film so it will cover just the area between statue and clay. This way most of the statue will not touch the clay and will be clean. Also, this way the statue will stuck more to the silicone and not to the clay side of the mould, which is also very important.

I'll smooth the clay and make the surface as clean and precise I could. Open side of the statue must be absolutely clean from the clay, on the same time there couldn't be any openings between the clay and the statue.

There will be 3 air vents inside the silicone. Two of them are made from aluminum wire. Third, very short one, which is connecting left thumb to the longer vent, is made from soft wire isolation plastic. (It's hard to see on the photos, but it's yellow-geen and it's there.)

Then I'll make all the syncronization details, using several different tools. Most of them are from this steel punch tool set I mentioned in part 5, but for small details I'm using Fiskar's dual-tip stylus.

Mould is ready for silicone!

I'm mixing small amount of silicone and, using the rough brush, cover the statue and the surrounding area with thin film of silicone.

It doesn't really matter if inside the silicone there will be some air bubbles. It's important that there will be no air bubbles touching the statue's surface. This is the reason I'll fill the mould in two steps - first this thin layer and then the rest. I'm using the air blower (made for cleaning photo lenses) for blowing some air to all the bubbles I see, to help them pop.

Soon the silicone will be thick enough to not to flow anymore. I hope by this time there will be no air bubbles...

Then I'll close the mould, using masking tape, clay and plastic strips.

And then I'll pour the rest of the silicone.

16 hours later it's time to open the mould...

And here it is- finished side of the matrix mould!

There's some excess silicone around the mould. I'll remove it later, for now it will work as a sealing between the plaster sides.

Mould making tutorial, Part 7 - corrections

Like I wrote here in Part 5, I planned to use the opening at the end of the mould for pouring the silicone in:

But I made a test and it looks like it's very hard to get the silicone to flow through the pretty narrow space to the other end of the mould. So I made some modifications to the plaster shell. I drilled and sanded some additional holes, including the big one to the middle. Really, I should've done it right away...

Mould making tutorial, Part 6 - 2nd plaster side

Second plaster side was made exactly the same way as the first. Here is placeholder for second silicone side, made from clay/plastiliin; plaster is covered with vaseline:

First layer of plaster; cardboard base was handy for keeping the mould in place when messing with plaster:

Layers of plaster bandages:

Finishing layer of plaster:

After some quick clean-up and careful knocking on the sides the mould with hammer, the line between the sides becomes visible. Mould is open! Without vaseline it would have been totally impossible.

Here's the opened mould; it doesn't matter that one "ball" is broken:

And here's the second mould side after cleaning and with a couple of air vents drilled in:


Next: modelling the silicone.

Mould making tutorial, Part 4 - 1st plaster side

Here are the materials for the next step of mould making - plaster, plaster bandages, water and some paper towels for cleaning.

First layer will be plaster, just to smooth all up. I'd recommend to use resin plaster, as it's harder and somehow finer than ordinary plaster. It' just gives the mould much nicer and not so brittle surface.

Then layers of plaster bandages. This gives the shell fabric armature and makes it much stonger and not as brittle as pure plaster. It is also possible to use pieces of rough fabric, to soak them in liquid plaster. But with bandages it's just so much faster and easier.

Then finishing layer of plaster. Every mould will need some cleaning, and it is not that easy to get smooth surfaces when the fabric is right there.

Here's the mould, removed from the cardboard base.

And here it is, the first plaster side. Some clean up is still needed, but that's after other side is ready.

Now I need to put the statue back in and to make clay placeholder for another silicone side...

Mould making tutorial, Part 3 - 1st clay side

The next step is to cover everything with clay. (Or with plastiliin, as the material I'm using is called here. But I'll use the world clay.)

The mould will consist from 4 details - two silicone sides and two part plaster shell. The first mould part I'll make will be one side of the plaster shell, so for now the clay should emulate everything this plaster side will touch.

First I cover the cardboard base with smooth layer of clay. This surrounding flat area will be later made from plaster, it will become the other side of plaster shell. Here I define how the plane between two rigid plaster sides will look. There couldn't be any undercuts!

Then I cover the statue with ca 1 cm clay layer. This will become silicone, the most important part of the mould, so it can't be too thin. But, it doesn't need to be too thick too. This part of the mould sculpting defines how the silicone will look. I don't smooth the clay up too much, as I'll clean and smooth the finished plaster shells anyway, before pouring the silicone. Statue is inside the plastic bag, as at the moment it is practically just a placeholder.

As I already said, the area covering the sculpt (the one with "ribs") will become silicone. All those details will fix silicone mould to the plaster shell and will keep it in place and from moving.

There's another very important detail to keep in mind - air vents. Actually, there are 2 clay details on top of each other (see next photo). First one is "funnel", connected to the copper tube/peg below the leg. It will become the channel for pouring resin in. This part is made of clay at the moment, but on finished mould it will be empty. It's covered with another layer of clay which will become silicone, surrounding this "funnel". There's also room inside the silicone for other air channels, one coming from other leg, another from fingers. It looks complicated, but it all will become clear later.

And this is when this tutorial became handy. When writing this text, I discovered, that I didn't make the "silicone" wide enough... I need to get another air vent from statue's left hand's fingers, or there will be no place for trapped air to get out. So I widened the area. The difference is visible on photos, last one is taken before the corrections.

So, this is how it all will (hopefully) work:

Of course, there's an additional joke in here - Hellboy's Ilsa character lost her life inside of Iron Maiden. And this plasticine cover looks very much like Iron Maiden...
:-)

Next: Part 4 - 1st plaster side

Mould making tutorial, Part 2 - Base

There are several ways to start. I like to use common cardboard we here call "lainepapp", "wavy cardboard", to build the base for the mould. It doesn't need to be that complicated. But I like it, when base gives me the visual interpretation how the mould sides will be separated - usually it is not flat, simple plane. And this way I don't need to build everything from clay.

Here it is, like some sort of sculpture itself... :-)


Next: Part 3 - The first clay side