Welcome to the first of our newsletter “Skill Set” series where we collectively learn a new skill together. First up: Basic molding and casting. Since I don’t want the newsletters to get too long-winded, I’ll mainly be pointing to curated articles and videos that tell you everything you need to know.
To get things started, the best mold-making and casting resource I can point you to is
Paige Russell’s class on Instructables. For our series, we’ll be doing a simple one-part mold, a block mold, and a more complicated two-part mold with registration keys. She covers all three.
Let’s all choose a small, flat object for our first one-part mold (see Paige’s instructions). Also, I recommend buying a casting kit that has everything you need for creating molds and casting several small objects. Molding and casting products are not cheap. A starter kit is the most inexpensive way to get stuck in and then you can invest in stand-alone products if you want to take it further.
Here’s the kit I’ll be using for this series. It comes with small bottles of 2-part RTV (room temperature vulcanizing) silicone rubber for molding, 2-part resin for casting, some modeling clay, cups and stirring sticks.
If you’re going to be participating, please
shoot me an email to let me know and feel free to ask any questions.