Well, project Vinamold-Mould have been abandoned.
It started well (see previous post) but soon took a turn for the worst.
I got to the stage where I needed to place the model in the mould, no problems there... melted some more vinamold... slight problem with only being able to melt small quantities at a time there.
Pouring the vinamold to flood the model provided to be a little trickier than expected, maybe i hadn't heated it enough (for fear of burning it and rendering it useless) but as the liquid rolls, it cools, and as a result it wouldn't level out and fill the gaps, it just set on the top, exactly as i had poured it. none of that shaking malarkey to level it out either, nope siree, that didn't work either. I was also hugely concerned that the fact that the vinamold wasn't flowing as easily as i had hoped, resulting a lot of gaps underneath, meaning the mould wouldn't work, but this was something i'd have to check after i'd finished and took the plasticine model out...
So i continued to melt down small amounts in the hope i could just fill the gaps, and trim any mess with a craft knife as it's pretty easy to slice. This meant pouring the melted vinamold as close to the edges of the model as possible, and meant i still couldn't get a level finish which i needed so that when i made the second part of the mold they wouldn't fix together and could be easily separated...
I tried to trim a few bits off and found that the layers came away easily... very easily... TOO easily... none of the layers had bonded to each other. Faced with a 'laugh or cry' situation, i fortunately managed to see the funny side of it... partly because the vinamold peeled away from my model easily, and partly because peeling it off was so satisfying!...
Little Alice managed to remain pretty much in tact! She had a few minor bumps and scrapes but nothing that couldn't be easily fixed, the box for the mould also survived, and the vinamold can be melted down again, so it wasn't a total loss!
These are some parts from the mould which revealed that i was right to worry about there being gaps in the mould, it had done exactly what i though it had. I've roughly drawn on where the model was positioned so that it makes more sense what it is i'm showing! The first photo is from the neck and shoulders, and the second from one of the hands...
Sooooo... plan of action...
off to college early tomorrow, to use the box i saved and make a plaster mould! same technique pretty much, but quicker and a lot more tried and tested! I should also get the silicone into the mould tomorrow too, which means i shouldn't really lose much time as the plan was to do the silicone with this mould tomorrow anyway! so fingers crossed!
I've also made a start on the head, but i'll wait until i have more photos to document the process on that!
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