Monday, February 6, 2012

Cement everywhere!

So, I spent the weekend wrestling with the Silurian again. I finally mustered up the courage to start molding the cast, and I worked on that pretty much the entire time.  It was definitely a learning experience, and took a lot more cement than I had anticipated, so I was glad that I had purchased the 100  pound bag instead of one of the smaller containers that you usually find online!  Unfortunately, I was so wrapped up in it (and I was usually covered in cement slurry), that I didn't remember to take pictures of the process.
I cracked open the mold yesterday, and it went pretty well. There seem to be very few air bubbles, but I still have a great deal of clay to clean out of the mold. The front half of the mold did decide that it wanted to be two separate parts instead of one, and cracked down the thinnest part of the cement, where the top of the the center crest  was, but it was a clean break, so it shouldn't be too hard to fix. I kind of figured it might happen, so I wasn't entirely devastated.

I did take a picture after I cracked the mold, so here's a pic of some chaos!


Now to clean out the clay...

3 comments:

  1. We are doing this as well, independent of you, we found your posts after we finished the cast of the face, using Ultracal. We got it loose and clean. Here's a tip, if you don't know itto loosen the cast, first coat the clay with babyoil as a separater, and then when it's all dry and ready to pull soak the whole thing in boiling hot water, that will soften the clay and may loosen the vacuum

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    Replies
    1. Yeah, I coated it with cooking spray as a release, which worked extremely well, but the place where it cracked didn't have any reinforcement in the cement, so it wasn't as strong as it could have been. Oh, well!

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  2. I keep telling myself, "Plaster is cheap!"

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