Eagle Statue - Zapins

Thanks. Haven't tried too much in clay though I think it might be a bit easier in some ways to work with but maybe harder in other ways. Do you work in clay?

 

I am 3 coats deep. Waiting another 45 mins or so until the last coat goes on. The directions say 3/8" thick is the minimum recommended thickness. I think I drastically underestimated how much of this stuff I need to finish the bird. I bought 3 of the small "trial" containers (2 lb each). But I think I need about 5 total to finish it. Which means I am going to need to go out tomorrow morning in a few hours time and hunt some down because I don't think I can get some fedexed to me fast enough that I can finish the molding and cast it before next saturday when I drive back to TN.

I think there is a shop nearby that sells the stuff. I seem to vaguely remember seeing it there. If I can't find it at the art shop then I'm basically fked. So I hope I can find 2 more bottles.

This mold making business is expensive.

20171230_220527 by Zapins, on Flickr

20171230_204939 by Zapins, on Flickr

20171231_035431 by Zapins, on Flickr

The stick it will sit on
20171230_220519 by Zapins, on Flickr

20171231_035342 by Zapins, on Flickr

 

Looking good man... On coats 3 and 4... Find some junk silicone cookware and chop that shit up into little 1cm x 1cm pieces.. Add it to your mix, you will build up thickness quickly this way and it will cost you less in silicone. Art from France taught me this brilliant idea. I now have my wife pickup ever POS silicone cookwear she can when it's dirt cheap from goodwill, garage sales etc.

If you cant get more silicone, dont sweat it. The additional layers should stick to it just fine.
BTW, he looks fantastic! And yes, this is the expensive part of the entire operation!

 

Good idea! Does the junk silicone stretch properly when demolding? Does it stick to the rebound or peel away?

I'm excited to finish the bird. Really hoping the store is open tomorrow and has what I need without charging me a body part or two.

Can't wait to have it done. But damn it's expensive. Like 5x42 bucks for the rubber and more for the epoxy and fiber glass.

The epoxy stuff I bought better work lol or this will have been a very expensive mistake. Don't really want to buy another bottle of resin unless I have to.

 

Wow, sorry im late to this party, this is epic!!!
I like being late sometimes cos i can binge on the thread without having to wait.
You have made good progress Zapin. I wont comment too much now as im going out shortly but just a quick message to say that i do add old waste silicone moulds to my mix of fresh silicone to lengthen the (bloddy expensive!!) mould making process. 2 things to mention- 1 ive not used waste silicones i dont know the origin of, like baking moulds, for fear of having some sort of reaction (not bonding etc). This is fairly unlikely as most silicones stick to each other but sometimes it does happen. Platinum cured types dont play nice with the others and wont set!
Ive also not used the brand you are using so im no expert but 3/8 sounds quite thick to me. Especially on something this size. I wouldnt worry if you dont reach full 3/8, it will most likely not distort too much.
One final point before my girlfriend yells at me again to get a move on. I didnt see a pouring hole in your mould to allow you to get the wax inside the closed mould. I could have missed it tho as i did just give the pics a "man look!" As my girlfriend says!
If you did forget (i have done this!) to build one into the mould you should be able to cut one in with a craft knife as your silicone is nice and thick . If you have put one in no problem.

I will come back to this thread when i get home. I may comment more then but i will warn you, i will have had a sherry or 2 and the quality of my comments may be questionable.

John

 

That is an impressive piece of work.
If you pull off the casting as well as the wax work, I will really be impressed.

 

Managed to find rebound 25 from a local art place. Got 3 jars (6 lbs ) for 90 bucks (there goes what's left of my xmas cash). Also bought some auto bondo brand fiberglass resin like jag mentioned from walmart. Hopefully it works well.

Haha have fun art! Always appreciate the comments ineligible or not (drunk).

The other silicone rubber I use is tin based so I guess it won't play nice with the platinum rebound 25. I'll just suck it up this time and use pure rebound. I want to make sure I know what the hell I'm doing before I start modifying the procedure. That way if something goes wrong I can work backwards and figure it out.

Pat - I hope it works out !!! Otherwise that's 100 to 200 hours (or more??) down the drain of work and like 350 bucks of mold making stuff lost!! The casting part should be the easiest part of all this. I'm fairly confident I can get a usable casting from the bird if I can produce a hollow wax. My time is running out though. I'll be cutting it close if I get to pour by Thursday or friday.

Alright time to get fiberglassing.

 

Screwed up. I mixed the wrong ratio of resin. I missread the mixing instructions because of the way the sentence text wrapped around the edge. Ugh and of course I didnt catch it until I had coated my whole damn bird. This is going to suck to wipe off now. It isn't curing. Damnit.

 

I just finished wiping it off. Not sure if the thin sticky coat that remains will screw up the next correctly mixed coat or not. I'm going to do a test pour to ensure I have the right mix. The directions say work life is 8 to 12 mins. Does that mean it will be hard at the end of that time? Or that it needs the full 2 hours to be hard?

 

Work time is how much time you have to work it, move it, push it, spread it etc..... After that, it's onto cure time.

 

Hmm makes sense. My test piece set up nicely. Hardened and can't be moved but the surface is tacky.

I'll attempt to remix it at 10 drops per 1 oz as per the instructions.

I wonder how many sheets of fiber glass I should layer onto it? I'm thinking 2 to start then a third one after about an hour to finish it off.

Also cutting that fiberglass - even with a coat on - is itchy AF. My arms are super uncomfortable. Also the house stinks of the resin despite having all the windows open. Too bad I don't have a heated garage.

 

Wish I would have read your post earlier about the non activated resin.

You could have just mixed a batch of properly activated resin, applied a coat with the initial resin coat and start working the second layer into the first layer with a brush. (Brush mixing)

It would have finally activated, just slower than normal.

This works with all the resins I’ve used to date so it should also work with the Table Top resins as well.

Is the activator for the TT resin MEKP by any chance?

The only thing you have to be careful about when applying urentanes and resin is to NOT mix a hotter batch of secondary or proceeding top coats and apply over the previous coats/layers.

If you do what you end up with will be a crinkled gatored craze effect.

What happens is the top/last coat applied cures at a faster rate, bites into the previous applied coat and starts pulling on it resulting in the crinkled effect.
It also creates a weak bond as it literally pulls the previous layer away from the substrate surface.

Don’t ask how I came to know this knowledge.

 

How do you ensure the second batch isn't hotter than the first?

I see a few crinkled areas or bubbles under the surface. But not too many with the first coat. Hopefully it wont matter too much for my purposes as a stiff backing shell for the silicone. I'm going to add another layer of fiber glass. Not sure what the final thickness should be but I've got 2 cups of resin and maybe 1.5 layers thick of cloth on it so far.

I'm using bondo car resin instead of the epoxy I got. Yes it has MEKP

 

Accurate measuring of the MEKP.

I either use the little ml medicine cups or a syringe to measure when playing with resins.

Very long ago I was in my old shop on a Saturday cleaning the place up.

Towards the later part of the afternoon I started clearing out a storage room in the back which had a bunch of automotive paints, etc. in it.
After removing everything out of the room I started drinking beer,,,,,,
Ended up pulling my old F100 around back, sanded that sucker down, mixed up some paint, sprayed a couple coats on it, mixed up some clear and sprayed a coat on.
Little later I sprayed another coat of clear on it,
Cleaned my spray gun and out the door I went.

When I walked in the shop on Monday morning My entire truck was crinkled.
WTF?

Got to thinking about when I painted it and quickly realized the 1st coat of clear had Zero activating it. <Bang head on wall>

I just left it like that and a year later a Hispanic guy paid me big bucks for that truck because of the crinkled paint job.

Note to self,
Don’t get drunk and paint vehicles.

 

Quick question for you. I did 2 coats with 2 layers of fiber glass on the bird and about 1 on the stick. The shell looks about 3/16" thick. Will that be enough?

The guy in the video I watched put 4 coats on and seems to have a 1/4" thick shell.

Also, can I add more fiber glass and resin to my already cured resin or will it not stick?

And finally, when I'm making the two halves of the resin how do I prevent them sticking to each other? Should I just spray it with the urethane spray I used for the silicone?

 

Gotcha. I finished picking the clay off the back side from the wood perch. About to start the bird. Then I'll add the release and add silicone then resin.

Still feeling a bit iffy about the thickness of the fiberglass shell. Doesn't seem super thick, but also not super thin. It's kind of brittle though in the thinner sections.