Monday, October 11, 2010

Had to stop playing around for a day here...

BUT in the meantime I spoke with the casters and they seem to feel it's the Smooth On 305 that's the likely culprit.

I have a couple of castings that are prototype-worthy to add final details to. But I'm going to see if they can get a cleaner one for me. For the cost of the USPS flat rate box... and a few bucks to them for resin, it's worth it for me not to waste a day playing around with bubbles if they can get a better one. The mold is pretty nice and while I've been beating on em with casting after casting - and a bit or two torn off from mane undercuts... yet I think they've got lots of life left.. ;)

I have a MOST awesome bunch of tips coming up about pin-holes and bubbles next though. Gotta recharge camera batteries. These are just too perfect as examples not to use to share the info. Trots off to bed now & to pop the batteries in the recharger. ;)

1 comment:

Ramie said...

Ohhh adventures in resin-casting! It's fun. It's horrible. It's addictive. It's awful. I spent some happy, if stinky, hours messing with casting resin!

Anyway, just as a FYI, FWIW, whatever acronym you like, a pic of four casts I did with two being good and two with issues that I know *exactly* what they were:

http://dragon.pucemoose.com/resin-casts.jpg

These are all Smooth-Cast 300 except for #3.

Right to left:

4.) Moisture contamination. I tried to tint the resin with acrylic paint. Yeah, no. *G* The bubbles are HUGE, and distinctively rise above the surface. The back of the thing looks like foam.

3.) Mechanical contamination. I kept getting bits of the nose missing, so I very angrily POKED and POKED at the resin with a paintbrush. I stirred bubbles into the resin at it hardened. The surface is weirdly smooth although I wouldn't want to sand it. The rest is un-bothered resin. The hardness difference between the Smooth-On and the Alumilite is *amazing.* The Smooth-On is butter by comparison.

2.) A pretty good cast in the Smooth-On! Just a few pinholes.

1.) Suuuper smooth partial cast! I brushed a thick coat of Pearl-Ex copper into the mold, and tapped out whatever would fall out. Maaan it looks cool.. :D And although there are plenty of bubbles on the back from where I shook the resin instead of stirring, there aren't any on the face, where the powder was. It looks ever so cool. Couldn't be sanded, though. I've tried mixing Pearl-Ex into the resin as well - casts fine, but the sheen is very low. The resin just looked gray instead of silver even with a LOT of Pearl-Ex stirred in.

Last note, I live in TN where it's as humid as it gets anyplace that's not Florida; I opened my containers of Smooth-On 9 months ago and they're still.. knock on wood.. fine as of two days ago (when I did the little copper face as a test of the resin.) Granted, I do work indoors and crack a window, not outside... but I kiiiinda wonder if you didn't have some moisture-contaminated resin. So far, for me, pinholes are always UNDER the surface; it was the moisture-contamination bubbles that rose up over it.

Anyway. Casting will doubtless be added to my List O' Things To Leave To The Pros (top of the list at the moment? Framing. *shudder*), but it was still weirdly enjoyable.