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Home Depot Tubes of Silicone for Molding - budget mold making.


MeanGene

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Way back in 2000-2001 I sculpted my first Bio helmet.

Humble beginnings. 🙂

We are start somewhere and I wanted to show my embarrassingly amateurish sculpture.

Was sculpted over a home depot spray foam base.
Used Roma Plastilina Clay.

The basic idea was a segmented armor helmet that had a "samurai" vibe to it.
I ended up getting silly with the paint. Blue and lots of dots.

The reason I am putting it here is that the helmet was molded using Silicone Caulking tubes.
They are cheap, readily available and can render a quick helmet. A good entry level practive project before you graduate to expensive silicones.

The idea being. Make all your mistakes and learn on cheap materials. 
Lessens the sting of failure.

My room was  god damn mess.

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Probably used 5 tubes by the end of this.
I remember hearing from Pete Mander that you can mix acrylic paint into the silicone.
Reason being: This type of silicone dries by reacting with water vapor in the air. So if you introduce water it dries faster.
I did not use that trick, but the trick is useful. If you build up too many layers to fast the silicone may remain uncured underneath.
Must build up layers slowly letting each dry.

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Blue paint works I guess???
Got some silver metal scratches.
The white dots were meant to be a tribal - stitching effect.
 

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Thanks for checking it out. Post your experiences and results below.

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  • MeanGene changed the title to Home Depot Tubes of Silicone for Molding - budget mold making.

Here is some helpful tips from Pete Mander on the old hunter's lair.

I use the same deal with the paint as chuck mentioned,,,Ive mixed an entire tube in one shot and it will cure in about 15-20 minutes,,only issue to using this stuff is its tricky to get in any magor undercuts and sometimes get airbubbles,,but the magor of them all is the silicone shrinks over time,,give a year you will notice the difference.

most of the time i use this fro basic molds say if I wanted to sculpt something do a cast and sand and or change things later get it perfect then mold with gI 1000 or moldmax 30

The bios I did for seed are still off the same silicone and its been about 3 years now? and the molds still hold up, just abit smaller then when I first cast them..,again its all in the undercuts and how you look after the material..

the stuff smells real bad too.. Do not do this inside.

The mix for silicone and paint is identical to automotive bondo, the more paint you add the quicker it sets,,its helps too to change the color of paint when layering just to see where your aplying,, the mothermolds i d this the same as chuck also..

i just wish there was a way to thin it out,,tried a few things including astone and nothing seems to do it..

Pete

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