Simplified (简体) Traditional (繁體)
Updated: Added in Chinese translations
Over the past two weeks we have seen artistic iterations of Sancho’s progress from concept to reality. This week we are in for a technical treat as Daniel shows us what it takes to transform last week’s clay sculpt into a realized resin master to send to China for manufacturing. To illustrate the process we have several in-process pictures as well as a very cool time-lapse video.
To make the resin casting, Daniel first had to make a silicone mold on the clay. The first step of the mold making process was to mount each piece separately. Sancho consists of several pieces and the ostrich even more; the tail required three pieces for the tail alone. Each individual piece was sprayed with a crystal coat acrylic then vents and gates were added to allow the resin to flow in and the air out.
The second step is to create a well around each piece that is to be filled with silicone rubber. For the small pieces, plastic and paper grocery store cups were used, but the larger pieces required custom wells that were individually built out of clay and coated in plaster to prevent leaks.
After the silicone was poured it required an overnight curing time before the wells and plaster castings, “mother molds”, around the cured rubber could be removed one half at a time. The smaller molds don’t need plaster castings as they fit snuggly in the cup from whence they were poured.
The overall process requires a large degree of skill, precision, and practice, but Daniel has almost ten years of experience working in this field and makes it seem effortless. One great benefit to this process is the option of possible bronze editions to be cast.
While we’ve briefly mentioned resin casting before on Vinyl Pulse, this week’s article + video is definitely the best introduction to the process we’ve seen. Sancho is well on his way to vinyl glory. Join us in two weeks for a look at the tooled “master” as well as Sancho’s accessories! Btw, the Chinese translation will be posted later today.
Is it just me, or does the video cut out for anyone else after a few frames?
It looks great though. It’s got a lot of character and originality compared to most other vinyl pieces.
I get the video just fine. It was very interesting to see the steps they had to go through to get a resin casting. Although I was impressed with the mold-making process… I wanted to see the finished casting!! Guess i’ll have to wait a few weeks. Boo! But I’m excited to see what it looks like.
Awesome!
Now I’m gonna ave to pull my finger out and have a go at resin casting 😀