It should work for any non-porous model. Otherwise, you would need to be sure to seal it with either a designed sealer, or lacquer, or something of that sort.

What could potentially cause issues with a hand, might be undercuts. As long as the fingers were fairly close together and somewhat straight, it should be possible. Otherwise, you'ld probably want to go with a 2 (or more) piece mold.

The larger the item, though, the more you're going to have to look at reinforcing the molds to help them keep the shape, which I'll be getting into as this goes on.

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Thanks for the info. How long have you worked with this product?

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This is the 3rd year.

Total now of 8 molds made, soon to be 12 or more. Couple failures in there as well. 4 current working molds. One of which is 3 years old, has produced over 40 skulls, and is showing it's age a bit. Couple others packed away in case I ever go back to that idea.

I also use a bit of it on my shrunken heads.

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Have you noticed any problems with the mold stretching?

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The list of problems I've had:

The Latex becoming hard and creased when not used for extended times, easily remedied by soaking them in some hot water for 20 min or so.

Rips forming in latex. This seems to be a wear issue from number of uses, and possibly from me not getting all the bubbles out when making it in the first place. I have managed to initiate repairs on these, however, and still use the mold in question.

Occasionally, some plaster bits will stick in the mold and the subject will be a bit pitted as a result. There's a number of mold releases to prevent this, I personally just consider it free aging to whatever, and clean off the bits before starting a new one. I have noticed the molds that start doing this seem to become increasingly more likely to do it again. But, again, I don't mind and haven't really tried to prevent it.

Loss of elasticity in cold weather. And I mean COLD. Doing it outside in december is not going to work (my garage is not heated).

That's pretty much it. So long as you care for them right, they seem to last a good long time.

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Thank you for posting this how-to.

Have you thought about helping your son make a bit of extra money for the summer on the little skulls with a group buy?

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If people really want the little ones, I'm sure he'ld be thrilled. But, I'm more interested in having him make more big ones, which we were going to sell (some) locally. We're only making 2 molds of the little suckers.

I'll be getting more pics up of the bigger mold of the lindberg skull soon. Had to put it together, let it dry, fill in some things, then the camera went all crappy, so I took pics with my wife's camera which didn't show the latex good enough, so I waited till I fixed my camera, now just starting on the mold for it. So, once we get a couple steps down, I'll get more up. (I'm not covering the whole 'get the latex on' steps, just what's different this time)

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Alright, i have the larger mold down.

First, we have the subject, the Lindberg Skull. I personally wanted a toothless skull model, but the steps are the same.




First step is preparing the model. The Linberg skull has hollow eyes and nose cavities, and the areas right behing the eye sockets where the lower jaw connects. A couple small holes here or there on the underside, and in some of the tooth cavities.

First, we fill all these with clay. I'm using Crayola Model Magic, but have used play doh and silly putty before, along with more proper clays as well.

(will be 2 pictures here as well, but they're on another camera right now.

Now, when applying the latex, most faqs have you just lay this thing flat and paint on from the top. This leaves a large portion of the underside never modeled, and thus never replicated. I personally wanted more detail, and we are first applying latex to the underside. Turn the skull upside down, and you can see just how much of an undercut we are making. Steps are the same as above, except we are brushing on the latex instead of dunking due to size. Let dry, go again, pop bubbles in beteween.

(this is 3 coats of latex on the bottom)



Now, simply flip over and do the same for the top half of the skull. Making sure to get in the eye and nose sockets as well. You can see we made a little handle area at the base of the upper jaw. I actually punch a hole in this area and hang the things when I am making plaster skulls.



Now, as this is a larger skull, we need to reinforce the mold to help it hold it's shape under the weight of the plaster we will be adding. We can add this reinforcement anywhere it does not need to stretch, so everywhere along the face, top, and down the sides and back untill they hit the widest portions. Do not add any past where it begins narrowing again, or you'll never get these molds off.

We'll be adding cheese cloth as reinforcements. Measure and cut the strips you'll need. Brush on a thin layer of latex.



Now add on the cheese cloth.



Then cover that again with a nice thick layer of latex.

Repeat for any areas you want to reinforce.

Here we have the top coated, and the first eye socketgetting it's cheesecloth.

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I tried to get the nasal cavity too, but couldn't get the cheese cloth to stick in to my liking, so settled for another coat of latex in there.



Let dry completely before attempting to remove.

When removing with all these undercuts, I've found the best means is to begin at the back and start rolling.



Just inch it forward leaving the face for last.



Pull the face out careful not to tear the eye/nose sockets.

The whole mold tends to be awefull sticky, so I like to leave it sitting inside out for a night or two, making sure to unroll any bits we rolled up so they don't stick to each other. Some suggest using baby powder to prevent this stickiness. No real experience with that, but a little air time always seems to work.



Be back soon with instructions on how to make nice hollow plaster skulls from this mold, as well as how to color the skulls you make.

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Awesome, keep the info coming...

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