Small Time Casting

I Thought You Might Get A Laugh From The "Measuring Cups" I Use For Mixing The Resin For The Lamp Castings.

Top are the two parts EasyCast resins. Below them are the two part rubber mold with a light and linepole armature placed inside. And at the bottom are my measuring cups!

Yep, a couple of water bottle caps. They provide just a bit more than enough resin for a lamp casting. And they are cheap.

The caps actually have an inner cap that are filled with the resins. Then I pour the two part resin into a larger soda liter bottle cap and mix. It took some trying different cups, but eventually I found that these water bottle caps are just the right size and plentiful around here. Lucky me? Yes sir! Lucky me!

Dandy

Casting Fail

These Lamps Are Way Too Hard To Build To Have Failures Like This!

I can't tell you how disappointing it is to open the mold after 3 days of curing to find it to be a complete fail. It takes a better part of a day to build the armature and to pour the casting resin around it. It's too time consuming and costly to have this happen!

I'm not sure where I went wrong, I didn't do anything different. The only thing I can guess is that the resin ran when sandwiching the two parts of the mold together, creating these bubbles. Surface tension of the resin and no escape routes for the trapped air didn't allow the resin to fill in the voids. This clear resin takes much longer to set than the Smooth-Cast resin does, so its much more liquidy when to two halves of the mold are sandwiched together.

I'm amazed at how delicate some of these structures are. The resin stayed in the corners and edges creating this skeletal look. Unfortunately, I can't think of a way to save this lamp. The resin would have to be pried from the armature, which would damage it. Maybe- I could fill the voids with resin and put it back in the mold? Maybe?

So put it in the past and carry on. Since then I casted this perfect casting. This time I was sure to "paint" the sticky resin onto every surface of the armature before closing the mold so that it would be less likely to run away. And it seems to have worked! So- 3 useable lamps down, 9 to go! Sheesh!
Live and learn? Yes sir! Live and learn!

Dandy