Creating molds

I stumbled across two 2 feet tall concrete tiki's. I want to make a mold out of them but do not want to sacrifice the tiki's in the process. Does anyone know how to make a mold out of them, specifically without damaging the poor guys?

I use a silicon rubber mold material called silpak for my candles. It works fantastically but I do pretty small items so I'm not sure about 2 foot concrete tikis! It probably would work but it would get a little pricey....the stuff ain't cheap! Maybe you could make a sand mold like in foundries...actually, calling a foundry might not be a bad idea! Good Luck!
Kevin G the Suburban Pagan
http://www.suburbanpagan.com

tikitrevor
welcome to tikicentral.
silpak, located in north hollywood, is a supplier and manufacturer of silicone for molding as well as plastic and urethane products. molding the statue is possible, it would involve using the correct release on the statue itself. if the statue has texture, like concrete, you may find yourself pulling out little bits of silcone that have anchored themselves in the crevices. As mentioned, a statue that size would cost you a few hundred. there are also a few ways to mold it, the cheapest way using silicone would be to do a brush up, you can use less that way. also consider a straight fiberglass mold, making the mold into enough peices to avoid locking and under cuts.
if you decide to seriously try molding this, send me a personal message and i will give you further info.
good luck

Welcome to TC, TikiTrevor, Glad to have ya.
My search for the same thing is how I found TC, although once I got here I went nowhere else it seems
One place I found on the web is:http://www.smooth-on.com/howto.htm
However Tikitanked's offer sounds pretty good also.
I did searches in Google for Art Duplication, Mould making and Sculptor supplies, stuff like that and got enough to last forever. Good Luck

Check out Lindsay Technical Books. They have alot of books about casting, mostly for foundry work, but they have some for plaster casting, jewlery, pottery, build your own injection molding machine... Ask for a catalog, they have many more books in the catalog.

I've done the sandcasting - it's so easy it's ridiculous, cheap too. A bag of sand will cost you less than $10 at Home Depot. Just lay out the sand, dampen it and imbed your object into it leaving the impression. Mix some smooth concrete and pour it in. The castings are rough looking if that's okay for what you're making. Plus you can only do one side at a time, not all the way around.

Hey everyone, thanks for all of your help and suggestions. I checked out a few of those links and they were helpful. In college, I took a few classes on Casting and sand molding so I'm pretty familiar with that process.

What I might do is make a sand mold first just to get a template model so I can clean up some of the lines on the tiki. Also this way I won't have to worry about loosing him if I try other process/materials for multi use molds. If I do a sand mold, what do you suggest I make the tiki's out of (i.e. concrete, plaster, ceramics...) My concrete tiki weighs like 50 lbs and I'm trying to see if I can reduce the weight a bit.

Try adding pirlite, or pertite, I can't quite remember, but its the white small foam balls you can buy at Home Depot for lightening soil. Also, you're suppose to add wire mesh shreads for added strength, I can't remember where to get those. I got the formula from a Martha Stewart article for making peat moss large concrete planters.. it may be on her website..? Another idea for taking a casting, Art supply places sell plaster-guaze for casting body parts. You just layer strips of moisened plaster guaze over your oiled up original. Do one side at a time, then you can make it hollow by placing a fat PVC pipe in the mold while you fill it with with the light weight cement.
If you do the sand thang, the cement dries first on the edges that touch the sand, so you can scoop out the middle when the cement is strong enough on the edges yet wet enough to still scoop out.
Also, you could put in coat hanger wire sticking out the back of the concrete, so that when you are filling the back side of the tiki, you lay the first half on top of the wet cement which injects the hangar wire in the wet cement of the second cast.
Sorry, I just took my medi.. steroids for poison oak, I'm a bit rambly. email me if you have questions, I could send you a drawing of what I mean. I'm betta with pictures than words.

It's called Perlite. You can get it & instructions for adding it to concrete from your local Hardware or home improvement big box store.

You can get mesh shreds by cutting window screen into strips. You can get window screen by the square foot @ hardware stores, but you can sometimes get it really cheap @ yard sales.

You might want to check around to make sure you're not ripping someone off by making molds of someone elses work. I make molds and concrete castings of my original Tikis and have sold more than a few in SoCal. I myself would not be too pleased if someone started duplicating my work. Just a thought.

Don't worry. I'm not looking to re-pop this for a profit. The two that I have are pretty beat up. I just want to re-make a few so I can clean them up and make a few for my backyard. I'm not in that kind of business nor I am looking to get into it. I'll post a pic of them when I get a chance.

I want to learn how to make molds and do it for a profit. I have a job at Kinkos and a lot of tiki people come here.

sorry, just go around to taking a pic of the guy. check him out. standing at just over 2 feet tall.

great job!!! lookin real cool!!

Yeah, great job. Looks really cool!

I've been following this thread for a while, and you got TONS of great advice. 'Just wondering what you ended up doing to produce such a nice looking tiki.

I didn't mean to mislead you, but this is the OG one that I found. I have yet to make a mold from it. I found 2 of them. The other one is in ok to bad shape. He was in 2 parts when I found him, so I put it back together with concrete putty. I want to make a mold of the bad one so I can fix any flaws on it. One day I will make a mold, I just need about 48 more hours a week. Once I do, I will post a pic. But damn that guy is heavy.