Can anyone make a mold of a young oriental tail?

drag0nfeathers might be able to help you there. She made a mold of an emperor’s tail to cast a new one for a damaged emp that was missing a huge tail chunk. You might want to ask her.

Been chewing on some ideas…

It might frankly be simpler to resculpt it, but I thought of something for casting.

(keep in mind, this is theory. I have not done it, nor do I know how the materials will behave, nor the best way of keeping things from sticking to other things!)

Take the intact young oriental, and pack one side (mostly the tail and back area) with a clay that won’t harm the acrylic finish. (sculpey, perhaps?????) Sculpt the clay smooth down the center/spine of the piece, but add,
A. Two or three pushed-in finger impressions (keys, to make sure the mold halves line up nicely)
B. Two built up half-cones coming from the top, one for air escape, the other for plaster to be poured in through.
C. Some kind of border surrounding the area, so when you pour or build up the flexible mold material, it will behave nicely.

Build up or pour a flexible mold around the exposed half of the back and tail.

Once it’s cured, gently remove the sculpey to expose the side without the mold. You should see two or three pressed-up finger impressions in the half mold, as well as a pressed-down half cone. Then,
A. Build the borders surrounding where you’ll want to cast the other half.
B. Fill the half-cones with sculpey till you have full-cones of sculpey, with half standing above the flat mold surface. This will let you cast the other sides of the pouring cones.

Then pour the other side of the mold. (and for all that’s good and merciful in the world, throughout this project, use good amounts of a Windstone-friendly mold release!)

When that’s properly cured, you should have two sides to a mold that will fit nicely on the broken dragon’s back, and can be clamped there. This will make a seam all the way around that’ll have to be cleaned, and you’ll have two ‘buttons’ of unfinished material where the cones were when you cast, but that isn’t too sculpting intensive to clean up. (when you cast, the place where you have the air vent, should be angled to be at the top of the empty space.)

Good luck, hope this made sense, and please take with a ginormous grain of salt!