Thursday, June 11, 2009

Foamy urethane goodness or not.

This is where I really have no idea what the hell I'm going and I'm really cutting it close, too close.

For Bimbo Zombie Killers! I needed jugs...moonshine jugs I mean. And lots of them. Only 3 have to work, and I've got those - now I just need to figure out a way to make copies. Fast, cheap and simple copies.

The mold was no problem, I've plenty of good ideas there. the only thing I could come up with for a reproduction material was some kind of expanding foam.

There's a, I guess what you'd call, "artist grade" version of the stuff, expensive as hell though. So after a lot of searching I managed to find something sort of local and supposedly pretty similar. I'm not really familiar with the stuff, so I can't make any educated assumptions at all here.

Tonight I gave it a try, using the Voodoo Spirit Bomb mold. It's small, has some fine details so I figured if it worked here it can repro the jugs just fine. Well, I can't say my first test have me overly excited.

you can see here how much the foam has expanded out of the mold. This was 2 tablespoons of the stuff, and it ended up filling about the equivalent of 3 cups approximately. That's pretty impressive and you can demold it almost right away.
Here's where the problems set in though. The stuff is brittle, really brittle. It's a flotation foam, so it's filled with bubbles. I just thought it'd be a little tougher though. Some chunks broke off when I demolded them - however, it's a pretty tight mold so that could have a lot to do with it.

You can see here the first one on the left is my first attempt, it was pretty ugly. The middle one is my second attempt. I used way less, about 6 mL in total, I actually used an eyedropper I used that little and it expanded by and inch or so out of the mold. The last is the original, cast in plaster - you can see the difference.

I'm still not entirely convinced this is the way to go. I'm debating about a hard shell, made of non-foam urethane filling it with this stuff - I could even use that spray in crap you can get at HomeDepot - that'd work just fine too as filler.

It's looking like there's no easy way of doing this, at least no cheap way of doing this. A pint kit of the urethane is about $30, I've no idea how far that'll go mind you. I'm hoping I can do this for around $200 - the mold alone is going to cost me about $60. We'll see I guess.

I'm looking at the calendar and realizing just how close to out first shooting date we are and very little is done. Hopefully I'll be able to get the axe made this weekend.

1 comment:

  1. Man, that stuff looks like it's a little weird to work with (the first picture looks a little gross, hehehe). Too bad that it's brittle... I thought that it would be tougher too.

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