Making tiki mug original sculptures..any advice??? - Tiki Carving

T TikiMaxton Member Portland, OR Joined: Mar 25, 2002 Posts: 559	T TikiMaxton Posted posted on Fri, May 13, 2005 12:54 PM We are learning about mug making in order to help produce the NW Tiki Crawl mug. Here's the process we went through: Original was sculpted from Magic Sculpt modeling resin. We then made a silicone mold of the original. The silicone mold was then filled with melted, non hardening oil based modeling clay; we made 4 clay originals in this way. Next, the clay originals are cast in #1 casting plaster to make the ceramic final mold. We made 4 to maintain mold integrity and also to speed up production. The reason for the 2-step process (hard original sculpt cast and re-created in soft clay) is that the plaster mold is much easier to remove from a soft original, but soft clay is not always the preferred medium for sculpting the original, plus it gets destroyed in the process. We'll be slip-casting our mugs in the next week or so and will let you know how it all turned out.

We are learning about mug making in order to help produce the NW Tiki Crawl mug. Here's the process we went through:
Original was sculpted from Magic Sculpt modeling resin. We then made a silicone mold of the original. The silicone mold was then filled with melted, non hardening oil based modeling clay; we made 4 clay originals in this way. Next, the clay originals are cast in #1 casting plaster to make the ceramic final mold. We made 4 to maintain mold integrity and also to speed up production.

The reason for the 2-step process (hard original sculpt cast and re-created in soft clay) is that the plaster mold is much easier to remove from a soft original, but soft clay is not always the preferred medium for sculpting the original, plus it gets destroyed in the process. We'll be slip-casting our mugs in the next week or so and will let you know how it all turned out.

Post #158673 by TikiMaxton on Fri, May 13, 2005 12:54 PM