Back to the Daedalus project most of the day was spent running around town picking up necessary items.
Some nice smooth press board to cut up and mount the individual master parts to. Nuts and bolts for the case molds. Styrene strips to extend the edges of the masters. EM 210 layup water based clay for the case molds.
And I picked up a vacuum pump and a pressure pot converted into a vacuum chamber. An old friend of mind had it on hand a just gave it to me! Talk about lucky me. The one I looked at two days ago was 600 bucks.
At this point you are probably wondering what a case mold is. We made plenty of these at the studios as it was the best way to do two things. Save silicone, and make and even thickness, smooth silicone mold.
This is how it works. You mount your master to the flat surface. I tack glue them in place to be later removed while keeping them inside the mold (this helps with doing the cores). Once mounted you build a smooth even thickness of water based clay over the master. What you envision here is the eventual silicone mold jacket. You also use half rounds and make a nice set of keys around the base. Later these will be used to capture the core.
The clay should be built up at the top in a cylinder. Like a volcano spout. This is where the silicone will get poured in.
Now you mix up the Ultracal 30 which is a tool stone over very hard plaster. You build it over the clay and down on to the base. You make a flange all the way the way around the base.
Once the tool stone sets up you drill holes through the flange and through the wood it’s all mounted to. These will be for those bolts.
Next remove the tool stone mother casing and clean all the clay off the masters.
Next mix your silicone and brush a coat on the part. Put the mother mold casing back on and bolt it down. Pour the silicone into the open hole up top until you fill the mold.
When you open this mold the facing side of the mother mold is all smooth and even, the mold jacket is of an even thickness. About ¼ inch will do.
I’m starting the actual molds so you’ll see better what I mean. But after you see this you’ll never do brush up molds again. This gives you real control. And saves you money.
As you can see the parts count on this kit will be low. They are all clean and ready to star molding.

Believe it or not it took all day to lay in the styrene strips, mount the parts to their boards and key them. The styrene raises the master parts up above the mounting surface rather than having the edge of the part butt against the surface. It also gives you a nice crisp line to cut and flat sand once you have the part cast.
The pegs are keys that will later key the cores.
The inner lines are where the silicone jacket will be and the outer the stone mother mold.
Tomorrow I’ll make the mother molds and drill them through for the bolts.
You can just see the dark dots where they will be drilled through the stone in order to key the mother mold back to pour the silicone.
More tomorrow,
Steve



__________________