Adventures In Mold Making....

[magkelly]

More expensive does not mean better when it comes to casting compounds apparently. I'm not impressed at all with the purple Easy Mold putty. It's pretty oily stuff. A bit unpleasant to use. I made six molds out of it for doll shoe bottoms. I made them pretty much the same as the ones I did out out of the Bounce Putty. Guess which ones seem to be working? Yup, the cheap BP ones. The BP ones were if anything probably a bit deeper and a bit more detailed than the silicone ones but in every case with the putty the resin just seemed to well up and run out the sides and I was very careful to mold the sides and not to fill them up too far. I'm ticked. Spent $13 on that crap and I could have done, did better it seems with BP? I put vaseline in the 2 BP molds to make sure they'd release. I'm hoping they work out okay or I guess it's back to square one.

One thing I did realize though. When using putty you don't mold the feet apparently. You mold shoes you already have or forget it. I tried molding Kitty Collier's feet at least 3X to make heel bottoms before I gave that up and molded Gene doll shoe bottoms instead. So far it looks like the Easy Mold was a total waste of $13. I'm glad I only bought the 8 oz kit now. It sure wasn't worth it at all. Ah well, at least I only used up about an oz or so of the resin and I have plenty of bounce putty. Looks like I am going to have to figure out something else for soles for Kitty's shoes though. Gene and similar shoes I have got, but I don't have any shoes at all in her size so I can't just mold off of a pair I already have. I think I can make the heel part okay. But I might have to use some leather for the bottom of the foot instead of resin like I was planning. Looks like my 16" girls will be getting some fancy resin shoes maybe though. I just hope the BP didn't color the resin and make it fuzzy or something. I'm a little afraid it might do that, mold release or no mold release. It's drying now so I guess we'll see soon enough.

I may try a 2 part mold too eventually, but right now I'd be happy if I could just cast a dozen sets of clear bottoms to make my own shoes on. I have a pair of platforms that I want to try next. I've always liked the bottoms to those and would not mind making a few more pairs. In general I'm not a platform shoe fan but I like those. I also want to try to make some flat shoes too. Some of my Alex dolls can wear those but those I don't need the resin for. I'm determined to make my 16" girls some fancy lucite type evening shoes though. Eh, it's running a bit out of the BP molds too. I just don't understand why it's doing that. I wasn't overfilling them and they're plenty deep. I'm going to be very lucky if I get one pair of shoe bottoms out of all this work. F-!!!!

[Dirili]

eesh, sorry for your troubles and the waste of money but at least I know so I don't waste time and money on the same thing at some point!

Hope that you can find a better method of shoe making.

[magkelly]

I just checked the resin and it looks like it might be setting but not fully as yet so I'm not going to mess with it for a day yet at least. I threw out the purple molds.They just did not work at all. All the resin ended up on the wax paper and not in the shoe molds. You know it's funny when I was pouring and mixing the stuff it wasn't smelly at all. Now that it's set a while it stinks. I hope that's a good sign and that means it's curing okay. I used clear cast and it looks like it's staying clear. All these people using this stuff in the videos make it look so easy. NOT, lol....

[magkelly]

Bounce putty definitely equals one time mold. Even with a mold release I couldn't get the heels out of the mold once they hardened without ripping the mold apart and there was still some BP on them. I'm going to have to try this again but modify the heel box by hand. They cast and hardened okay, in fact they were hard a day earlier than I expected, but the space between the heels and the rest of the shoe came out way too thin and the heels are going to be way too fragile to be usable. The mold needs to be deeper and the heel box needs to be thicker. I may try making them square with a stick or a bead or something. What I wanted to do was mold the doll's foot to make a bottom then just cast a heel separately but that's not really working either. I'm thinking I might just try to cast the heel upside down this go too. Just to see what might happen. Maybe I can get my bottom sans heel that way.

[DollyKim]

The greasy one sounds like Amazing Mold Putty which makes food grade molds. I made some push molds a few years back and those that didn't tear because they were too thin are still usable. They've degreased a smidge over time. I've messed with the cheapish Intamold mix, the original must be able to get wet, and if it's thick enough it's fairly successful. I was able to put heads face down in the stuff and get some useful plaster positives. It works best with shallow stuff as the molds can collapse with gravity so it's not the best for glove molds. There's also a brush on rubber Mold Builder for inner layers.

Making a mold of a doll's foot, a last, is a good idea. The shoe book I had showed them making a glove mold in a cup which produced enough positives to work on. There's good old plaster or wet sand to experiment with.

[SetsunaKou]

Have you tried 'ComposiMold' or 'Alley Goop'? I use them all the time for my mold making work and they never fail me.

ComposiMold is reusuable so even if you only get one set of heels out of it, just remelt it and mold again. ^^

Alley Goop is permanent but a super durable, flexible silicon mold compound. I've had some molds I made over 4-5 years ago, still working the same as they did back then and I've used the same mold at least 20 times or more.

ComposiMold is inexpensive, Alley Goop is costly---but both do their job well.

I hope you can get all the heels you need from this batch you've made, though, already!! :hugs: Good luck!!! ^^