Thomas Vaughan: Mold Making and Casting Hair!

Now that the hair was sculpted and baked I could now start the molding process.

Again, I am making a mold and going to be casting the hair out, to cut as much weight from the puppet as possible!

The university ran out of water base clay at this point, probably due to everyone claying their own sculpts up, therefore I had to use plasticine. Plasticine is not bad to clay up in, but the reason I usually use a water based clay is, when the clay needs to be removed from the first half of the mold I can just use water and brush the clay away from the sculpt without worrying about the sculpt melting away as I usually use a oil based clay to sculpt with. However if I were to use plasticine to clay up in, it will be harder and more time consuming for me to remove the clay (haven't tried it before, but thats my thought process). But my sculpt is baked this time, therefore I can used lighter fluid to remove the clay after and my baked sculpt will be A-Ok!

I started by blocking up plasticine around the hair

Once I had it to the mid way point I began levelling it all, and started smoothing the plasticine.

Lastly I used a ball tool and made half circles in the clay for 'keys' so the 2 halves of the silicone mold can link together later. I also put a 'squiggle' down the sides to act as a alternate key.

For some reason I don't have an image of me boxing this up, only when pouring the second part I have a boxed in picture.... any who you know the process I box in with, from previous mold making posts.

Foam board + Hot glue :)

I left the silicone to cure for 16 - 24 hours and the next day I came back and opened my mold.

The first half turned out great!

It was now time to pour the 2nd half.

You can see my set out below, the most important item there is the vaseline.

Vaseline was put on to the first half of the silicone mold to act as a release agent when the second half gets poured in. If this was not applied silicone would just fuse to the first half and incase the hair sculpt in a big block of silicone.

Vaseline was also applied to all sides of the mold just incase any silicone spilt down the sides.

When pouring my molds I will always pour from a height and to the sides of the box. Pouring from a height can help pop air bubbles trapped in the silicone caused while mixing the silicone and catalyst.

After waiting 16 - 24 hours to cure I could then open it

As you can see silicone did creep down the sides but as I vaseline the all sides of the first mold the silicone could easily peel away. Any excess silicone is cut away with a scalpel to make the mold look a bit cleaner :)

Now comes the problem of removing the hair! ...

Removing the hair was quite difficult, due to the shape of the hair, it wrapped around the silicone therefore I had to cut into the silicone to prize it out. In the process of removing it some pieces broke off....

Finished Mold!

Now on to casting the hair and hoping it doesn't snap when removing!

Casting the Hair

As the casting was a very quick process there's not much to say.

Same with the head I casted the hair with fast cast resin.

Although I forgot one thing before.....

Somewhere to pour the fast in when the mold was closed!!

It's only when I was at this stage my thought process was just .... Ah ......

Never mind it's all learning! I know for a fact I wont make that mistake again. What I should've done is place a syringe in the mold making process. Then once the mold was set, remove the syringe and I would have a had a perfect hole for a fast cast filled syringe to pop in and fill the mold up...... but the reality is I don't, so I have to find another way.

The only way I thought and still have the hair cast in the next 10 minutes was to pour the fast cast in the 2 halves, once the fast cast began to thicken I would then, at that point, close the 2 halves as the thickened fast cast would give me more time to close the 2 halves than it would if the fast cast was still liquid. Once the 2 halves were then together I would do a whole lot of praying in that 10 minutes for the hair to work!

So that's what I did,

and ....