Composi-mold Try

So I found this stuff at the MicroMark site called Composi-mold. Since I saw it in their catalog, I've discovered they have their own Website. 

It comes in a tub of what looks like honey colored jello.  But once you've microwaved it for 30+ seconds it becomes a thick liquid and you can pour it over an object creating a mold.  

The beauty of this stuff is you can heat it to soften, make and use the mold. When you're done, cut the mold up with scissors, but it back in the tub - microwave it again and it melts back to it's original shape ready to be used again for the next mold. 
 



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I've always been interested in molding and casting. Especially little 1:72 pilots for my models. Very few kits I've bought in that scale  come with a pilot. So I set out to create an "air force" of resin pilots. I also bought some of MicroMarks casting resin, so lets have a go --

Here I took  a cap as the mold box, and stuck the pilot to the bottom of the cup by putting a little blue tack to his back.  There are bubbles in the liquid, but they are easiy teased away from the figure with a toothpick before the mold material stiffens up.  The hotter the material is the thinner it becomes, but there are warnings not to let the stuff boil. I didn't do it to see what happens. ;)

Once cooled and stiffened you can remove the mold from the cup. It is advised that a mold release is used before the  material is poured in. Pictured is the second go round. The first time I didn't use any mold release, the second time I put a little bit of Vaseline around the cup. I saw no difference in the difficulty in removing the mold from the cup. 

You can see the guy in the dead man float; the blue tack is removed creating a little pour stub for the resin. 

Here the pilot out of the mold and all is well.  You can see the bubbles, but none of them are near where the pilot was.

In full disclosure I did do 2 casting pours. The first one was a total failure because I was eyeballing the 2 parts of the casting liquids, figuring I didn't want to waste the stuff and how could I measure so little accurately. The result was the that resin never solidified. after this first pour I had to cut the  mold to get the gooey mess out. So to avoid wasting the resin - I wasted the resin. Lesson learned.
Then I taped the mold tightly and made a second pour. This time the stuff that came out of the pour stub hardened, but I think I still took the cast out too soon as the legs were still soft and ended up breaking off. 
At this point I had to make a second mold (which is pictured) but haven't had a chance to make another casting pour. Stand by to see how it works out.  
Thanks for looking.