"Help!" for: Molding

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23Magnum

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This thread will contain general first hand knowledge of molding and the materials, methods, and techniques involved to hopefully ensure you get a great casting.

People who don't know: Post questions.

People who know: Answer those questions.

Please be as clear and detailed as possible with your questions and/or answers. Repeated questions or variations of certain questions may be consolidated over time into an FAQ section in the post following this one.

Always ask and answer questions as if you were asking/answering your mother or grandmother. In other words, politely.

Rudeness and/or impatience will be met with an infraction. You don't want too many of those.

These threads are meant to reduce and hopefully eliminated the need for the numerous 'I need help threads' that seem to generate endlessly in this section of the forum.

They are not a be all, end all to all questions that could ever be asked though. Some questions will be project specific and you may need to ask those IN the project's thread itself. However, some may not see your questions there so you may post a link to said project thread in the appropriate "Help!" thread when you need the attention of a few extra eyes.
 
Tutorials that involve this thread's subject matter and are approved by the site staff will be linked in this post. Please review them as they may already contain the answers you seek.

Tutorial Section:
 
Don't want to troll or anything,but I'm really looking at molding as an alternative, but unfortunately I haven't been very sucesful in vinding a tut.
can anyone help?
 
There are many general molding tutorials out there on the internet. As far as molding tutorials here, you'll have to be more specific at what you're trying to achieve in order to get a better response to your question.
 
How would I mold a weapon, like a Reach Magnum?

You would want to mold it with a brush on mold liquid like Rebound-25 for instance and after you have a few good coats on the pistol use a exacto knife to seperate the mold into two halves down the middle, after that you can put a fiberglass jacket over the mold, so it keeps the rubber rigid during molding.
 
While these may not be videos of armor molding, there are NUMEROUS vids and tutorials of different viarieties of silicone mold making for different applications on you-tube. Some of the best are from Smooth-on, Reynolds, brickintheyard, and freeman mfg.

 
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Hello im new to the 405th and ive been researching Helmet making. I dont understand molding. To make the helmet dont you make a pep,resin,fiberglass,bond,sand, then paint? Where does the modling come in and what does it do?
 
Hello im new to the 405th and ive been researching Helmet making. I dont understand molding. To make the helmet dont you make a pep,resin,fiberglass,bond,sand, then paint? Where does the modling come in and what does it do?

You are absolutely correct. The steps you mentioned are the process for making your "master". This is the primary template for your armor piece. Lots of folks go no further and use their master for wearing and showing off. Their master is the finished product. Molding has nothing to do with this process.

What molding does is allows you to make very accurate copies of your "master" piece out of urethane resin or other slush castable materials. That way you dont have to pep, resin, fiberglass, and bondo an entirely new suit just so you can have one red suit and one blue suit. You can just make a mold and cast out as many as you want. This is fine and smiled upon if you do this to the armor YOU built. This is bad and frowned upon and their will be weeping and gnashing of teeth when making molds of armor someone else built without their permission.

Hope this helps. Best of luck.
 
How do you split molds like in this pic?
sniper047.jpg
 
I'm brand new to the whole molding part of the process and have a shoulder and boot that have been fiber glassed, but only have one of each, and was wondering if it would be a lot quicker to try to mold them instead of just making the second of each?

-Plus I don't really know which way it would be easiest to do (and cheapest). Split mold with canvas and fiber glass, silicone mold, or something else?
 
I'm in the UK and would like to have a go at moulding my armour pieces. Unfortunately I can't find Rebound 25 for sale in the UK. I did find it at one online shop but it was more than double the price you pay in the US, so I assume it was imported. Does anyone know of a UK equivalent to Rebound 25 for moulding and where I can buy it?
 
Those vids were great. I learned alot real fast. thanks Hollywood

While these may not be videos of armor molding, there are NUMEROUS vids and tutorials of different viarieties of silicone mold making for different applications on you-tube. Some of the best are from Smooth-on, Reynolds, brickintheyard, and freeman mfg.

 
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I was wondering, insted of buying rebond 25, could I just make a two sided mold useing plaster wrap (the same material use for casting borken bones)? After takeing the object out of the plaster mold, Could I then vacuum form copies of the object.
 
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