resin casting and mold making

Depending what you are doing, you might be able to get away with making a mold from tube silicon sealant. I've had no luck with this method, but I know others have, Kreative Kim being one. Also kneadatite can work for small molds with no undercuts, so that's worth a thought.

I dealt with a crowd in Aussie a while back who I believe offered sample packs, but to be honest I gave up on them because they were so hopeless, and can't even remember who they where.

Another thought, if you happen to live near another sculptor / moulder / caster you might be able to persuade me him to do you a favour

Green stuff casting does work well. A tad pricy if you use the gw stuff tho.

I've seen what the pirate wants cast. trust me, no simple methods are going to work!

If your in auckland, know a place, aslong as its not copyright infringment.

Hey Dustan those look very interesting, are you going to do some experimenting?

They all seem to be for short run casting though and I suspect resin casting using those products will really hammer the molds since it tends to destroy Ultrasil molds in 10-20 casts.

Hmmm except for the Siligum product, but at that volume for those prices you'd be better off order some Ultrasil from TopMark imho.

I imagine the Latex product is also designed for body casting too.

Yeah I don't really need to be using album considering I pay for hosting at Orcon. Its just I havent got an easy way of dumping the photos there. I should find some PHP gallery software.

I would try some siligum cause it makes me think of silly putty for modelers, able to lift impressions etc but your right Stu, I would need more cause I am a hapless modeling junkie with an addiction factor of 10/10.

Latex is a pain to use, I used to have a jar of it some 12 or 13 years ago. its a product that realy suits someone with patience as you have to apply layer after layer after layer... The trick to a good mold is paint a thin layer with all the brush strokes in one direction then the next layer with the brush strokes at a 90 degree after a 5-7 layers like this you paint a layer on ther lay thin mesh cloth into the wet latex folloed directly by a touchup layer to cover the cloth the another 5-6 layers like the first... it takes a good 8 hours for a thin layer to dry in nice weather.

After all that (a good weeks woirth of work) build a box and fill it with plaster, this makes a snug frame so you dont get any deformation when you pour.

Why would anyone use latex. well its good for taking texture impressions like from rocks, that way you can 'wrap' the mold around a hill and cast the mean as cliff faces, there is a great guild on woodland scenics regarding this. So all in all its good for small or large low complex detail (undercuts etc).

Its not a product I would want to use again purely for the time consumption (and its uber-stinky)

Less layers will result in a one or two use mold whilst lots of layers with reinforcing cloth will last a good while.

Blah

I've used gedeo stuff - overpriced and not that great.

Latex certainly has it's uses, I've got a couple of latex molds lying around, but I don't use them much

I think I mentioned a while back that i wasn't using album any longer for the same reason, but if you fiddle with your piuc urls you can link to them (about 90% of my pics here are on album)