Missinfish Posted September 12, 2011 Report Share Posted September 12, 2011 I'm just getting into this and have made two unsuccessful molds so far. I made a Pop mold that for some reason stayed soft, its a week old now. I can dig right into it with my fingernail. The pop was a few years old I had it around from another project, does it go bad? I'm going to try sealing it with epoxy to see if I can get a few out of it to make a multi cavity mold from something else, since the original sample broke when I cast the mold. I don't know why the Pop is soft. My second attempt was to duplicate some worms that I like that Zoom no longer makes, I have about 8 left. So i decided to try a fiberglass resin mold. Glues 4 samples in a pyrex dish and mixed the resin according to the directions. Looked great when I poured it, I let it sit overnight. The next morning the mold cracked right down one of the worms. so now i have a one worm mold and the other half has 2 worms. Maybe I should try less hardner? I think it may have cured too fast for the thicknessof the mold and generated too much heat? Is that possible? Lastly I have been using superglue gel to glue down the worms. Both times I had mold material creep around the samples. So now I have a lot of clean up around the edges. Not so bad with Pop but the resin is much harder. If I put too much glue it creeps out and I'm thinking it will leave a bad edge on the mold. How do you deal with this? Does liquid superglue work better? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
powerworm Posted September 12, 2011 Report Share Posted September 12, 2011 i have always used 2 sided tape and made small box sides out of the kids legos then siliconed it down to a piece of glass or plexiglass. sounds like your pop moldis junk id make another if it hasnt dried out yet. as for the resin mold how deep was it? im guessing not very deep which allowed it to crack Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Vodkaman Posted September 12, 2011 Report Share Posted September 12, 2011 I recently had a plaster failure. Plaster does absorb moisture and once that happens, you need to buy fresh. If it feels damp and clumpy, it is no good. The plaster should be super fine powder that easily slips through your fingers. Correct, too much hardener. Do some Google searches, there are published tables of hardener ratios. Dave Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
