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Monday, June 09, 2014

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

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