Making a silicone mold of a hand (alginate first, then the real mold)
Difficultymedium
Time2 hours
Cost$25 in alginate and plaster
You do not pour silicone on skin for a first lifecast. Use alginate (the dental impression stuff): mix fast, submerge the hand in a container, hold still 3 to 5 minutes, pull the hand out slowly. Pour plaster or Hydrocal into the alginate immediately (alginate shrinks within hours). That plaster hand is your master. Make a durable silicone mold from it and cast as many as you want in resin, concrete or cold-cast metal.
Alginate is single-use and cheap. Skin-safe platinum silicone (Body Double class) exists for direct molds of faces and torsos, but it is four times the price.
#lifecast#alginate#hand#plaster#silicone
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Upvoted for the safety notes alone.
The "what went wrong" section is the most useful part of this. More people should do that.
Would this work on the older model? Mine is about ten years older than the one shown.
Can confirm, the cheap part is the one that fails. Replaced mine twice before reading this.