Resin beginner looking for advice.

Aloha!

I have been looking around this side of "Creating Tiki" for a change. Usually I'm on the carving side. However, yesterday I saw Clarita's thread on her LED tikis. Long story short, I've looked around some more and become interesed in trying my hand at casting some small, clear (and probably in technicolor)tikis. I've looked around online and on youtube and found some good advice, but a lot of it is either to cast opaque copies or fake jewelery. Thus far, I'm asking for "A" and getting "a", if you catch what I'm throwing. Anywho, any advice, links, instruction would be greatly appreciated.

-Mahalo!

Cheers :drink:

Well, what exactly are you looking to do??? Casting stuff in Resin is easy, and if you're lookin for tips to make molds to cast the pieces in, I can give ya some pointers there too. I used to make molds of various kinds for mass production...it's time consuming if anything, but fairly easy.

I'm looking to make some small tikis, about an 1" high and 1/4" diameter.

Something to the effect of these

On 2008-04-20 11:15, Clarita wrote:

But I'm going to make them look more like my first tiki below.

I learned how to make a mold box, general saftey, and how to make and color resin, but that's about it.

I'm not sure what to make the mold of, or what to make the master model of, or what needs to be done to properly cure them. Any help is greatly appreciated.

-Mahalo!

Cheers! :drink:

Well, some people here will have other suggestions obviously, and that's because of what they've been doing and how they've been doing it.

With that said, here's what I've done, and I wish I had pictures available for you, but simply put....A silicone Mold would be best for use with Resin casting. There's so many different methods to doing it all, but since your pieces will be rather small, a simple Box like mold, in 2 pieces mind you, will be your best bet. Actually, now that I think about it, you can get it all with 1 pour at that size.

Make sure the piece you're molding is glued down to the board you'll be using under the Tiki to Mold. AND....one of the most important parts, make sure you spray that sucker down with some release agent. Mold release you can buy probably at Home Depot or Lowes. Better yet, Spray on fixatiff works very well. Just make sure you spray EVERYTHING, and EVERYWHERE. (obviously you're gonna wanna do this step outside). Once your wall around the Tiki is made, you're gonna wanna mark off what part is facing Front, and back, because once the silicone is set, you'll want to make an incision in the back (as long as there is Nothing on the back of the tiki that's been carved, like your name or something that will be messed up with the razor) because that's how you'll be pulling your resin pieces from the mold. You'll want to go as high as you can into the Mold, so that when you pull the pieces out, you don't rip the Mold open more, thus ruining the mold altogether.
you can also make a 2 piece mold, which'll take a little bit longer, and have a bit more cleanup for the size you intend to cast these in, but it's also a little more fun to do, and if you do it just right, you won't have to worry about wasting silicone or too much cleanup. the choice is obviously yours, and I can give you tips on that, but we'll jsut stick with the basics.

You'll probably jsut need a 1 gallon Kit of silicone, which comes in 2 parts, the Silicone Base, and the activator. Make sure you follow the rules in ragards to the whole process. SILPAK here in SoCAl is pretty good with giving you what're gonna need. They also sell the Resin and stuff you'll want, and they're very helpful people who can help you out great. I think it's Silpak.com if you want to check them out and buy your stuff from them.

Hopefully that's helped a bit.

Check this thread:

Bowana's Mold making and casting thread

Oh! Glad you got inspired! I did what tikiman77 says, and I used magic sculpt for the master.