Casting Help Please!!

I am casting my small baby ball python sculpture. The mold making worked great, but I can’t get rid of the bubbles in the cast no matter what I do. I’ve tried two different types of plaster (with and without “bubble-be-gone” spray, made it thinner, made it thicker), I’ve tried a resin/plaster mix (this stuff expands- creepy!- and still has lots of bubbles in it), and just plain resin (I still get bubbles!?!). I really want to use plaster for the finished products if possible. Resin just feels so.. cheap. I also don’t get the finished texture I want for painting that I can get with plaster.

I’ve tried using the bubble spray. It only helps (a little) right where it sticks when I spray the plaster in. It sort of doesnt’ stay put on my silicone mold, just sprays down into it.

I’ve tried vibrating the plaster inside the mold (with, ehm, a vibrator) 😮 and tried vibrating the mold itself, I’ve even set the entire mold on a table with a sandless sander running full blast for about 10 minutes.

My mold is open, so I can’t really shake it. Any helpful ideas? Mostly I end up with lots (LOTS) of tiny pinhole size bubbles, but I do sometimes get big ones that are more the size of a sewing pin head.

Help please! Any artists out there already gone through the headache?Tiny little pin hole bubbles are from the plaster not acting right. Maybe it is just too old, but we’ve had whole truckload batches of it that does that because it was manufactured wrong. You can’t fix bad plaster unless you are a chemist! Vibrating it won’t help. Try switching plaster brands.
Are you whipping excessive air into your plaster when you mix it? Put the dry plaster into the water little by little so it all melts down and does not trap air, and then mix it under the water with your hand.
Small bubbles trapped on the upper surface of the piece (when it is right side up)might be from pouring the plaster in a way that traps bubbles against the mold.Try filling the mold carefully by pouring into the lowest point and filling it up from the very middle. Don’t let the plaster slop onto the sides.
Once you know where they form, big bubbles can be removed pretty easily by poking them out of the mold after it is poured, with a paint brush or with a little bit of shaking or vibration while the plaster is still liquid. Too much agitation of the plaster when it is setting causes water marks (vertical grooves) on a piece. Ten minutes is way too much! My art teachers just would thump the table the mold was on a few times with their fist.
We regularly patch bubbles, no getting around ’em completely !

Okay so I’m trying to cast an Emperor tail. Long story short, I paid I think like $25 bucks for an Emperor Dragon a few years ago. The reason I got it so cheap? It has no tail and no feet!

He still stands on his own but barely! I have been spending months trying to find a material I could use on an Emperor Dragon I have already to make a mold, but I didn’t want to damage the paint on mine of course. SO I finally got a nice amonia free latex and made a mold! ……..aaaaaaaaaand that’s all. I don’t know what to do next? I suppose I need to submerge it into sand or something so it retains the shape for the most part and pour plaster into it and let it harden? Is that what you do? I need to use something that will come out of the latex mold easily, but also be able to be modified and sculpted so I can try and attatch it to the break sites as seamlessly as possible, but of course be hard enough to last over time once it’s painted to match. The mold took like a WEEK to make to so I don’t want to use something that’s going to harm the mold incase my first few tries don’t work out.

Any advice from all those wonderful sculptors out there?I have a queation.. does any one know how to glue sculpey to things? I haven’t had much luck!

I might be able to help, at least offer suggestions. If you have an undamaged Emperor you can borrow for a while, make a mold of the entire area of your damaged dragon plus an extra 2″ or so on all sides beyond that, where it’s not damaged. Use plaster-cloth strips to build over the outside of your mold (this will give it strength instead of sand), and let that dry. Pour your plaster (or whatever you plan on using), in your mold, and insert the entire statue in there, so that (theoretically) it will fill in the damaged areas. I don’t know about how well it will bond with the statue itself, but it should line things up pretty well to glue it on later.

Another option would be to fill the mold you already have with the pink-peach colored Sculpy clay. (I think it’s called Super Sculpy). You can demold the piece, attatch it/sculpt it onto your original, then touch up scales where you have to. I love the stuff myself because it’s really easy to work with (once you knead it a bit), and doesn’t dry out. It has to be baked though.

I think that’s Melody asking a question that got lost in all the quotes? 🙂

Um, depending on what you’re trying to glue the sculpy to, I’ve had decent luck with:

*The thick, white glue sold in the plastic brown bottles: It’s better if both pieces of your work are roughed up a little bit before you glue them together.
*super glue (um, it’s called E6000 I think): this stuff bubbles up quite a bit so it’s definately for things that wont’ be seen on your work. It smells awful too, but it is pretty strong once dried.
*High-temp Hot glue: very limited uses where this works well. I pretty much only use it when I’ve got holes in sculpy that I’m putting wires in or something, and use the hot glue to fill in the gaps between the sculpy and the wire.

I think the first glue you mentioned is Tacky Glue. There’s also fast-setting epoxy (the kind that you mix together, like this one). It also stinks to high heaven but I haven’t found anything that it couldn’t bond permanently! I haven’t tried it on clay, but I use it a lot on resin kits. In fact, I recently used it to glue this very top-heavy model to a wooden base (and she’s standing tip-toe on one foot!). She won’t be coming off of that base now unless I break her off of it.

I think that’s Melody asking a question that got lost in all the quotes? 🙂

Um, depending on what you’re trying to glue the sculpy to, I’ve had decent luck with:

*The thick, white glue sold in the plastic brown bottles: It’s better if both pieces of your work are roughed up a little bit before you glue them together.
*super glue (um, it’s called E6000 I think): this stuff bubbles up quite a bit so it’s definately for things that wont’ be seen on your work. It smells awful too, but it is pretty strong once dried.
*High-temp Hot glue: very limited uses where this works well. I pretty much only use it when I’ve got holes in sculpy that I’m putting wires in or something, and use the hot glue to fill in the gaps between the sculpy and the wire.

What are you trying to glue it to? Maybe i can come up with something else.Yeah my question got snarled up with another comment there… I was trying to glue sculpey to wood. Nothing I used worked. The sculpey piece would always fall off.