Hi, this is Wayne again with a topic “DiResta: Axe Mold Making”.
Okay, today, I’m going to do a voiceover, don’t panic! This is not how it’s going to be from now on until forever. Just today, I’m making a mold of this hatchet. This is a hatchet that I made many years ago, maybe two years ago, and I am potentially going to manufacture it, so the manufacturer that I need to send samples out to a few different factories and to do that, I need a size and scale model. Basically, just a duplicate, it will ultimately be made in the proper materials with steel hardened head and an aluminum handle with a leather wrapped handle. So I am just molding the original one from the video and I’m going to send that out as a representation of the size and the shape.
And since it’s steel and it’s hard to fasten it to the inside of this silicone mold cavity that I’m making I’m going to suspend it left and right with a set of screws. Three on one side and three on the other, it’ll suspend the object in between and the fill spot is going to basically be that hammer head on the backside of the the axe head. So you see it with a magic marker touches the cardboard there or rather plywood and in this case I’m using precoded plywood and nothing really will stick to it. There. You see the three sets of screws from one side of the hatchet, I’m going to Center it and then, when I glue on the other side, I’ll grab it from the other side with the tips of the screws on that side, and there you see what I’m Doing and so now I need to wax the leather, because it’s susceptible to have the silicone stick in all the small grooves, so the wax will fill in small crevices and also act like a release agent.
The silicone will only grab wherever it feels like open fibers. Like on the edge of the leather and whether threads are there, you see, I just hot glue, the the hammer head to that piece of plywood at the bottom of the mold and that’s going to be the fill spot. And now I secured on the other side.
Using three screws again to suspend the object in the middle, and here you can see me closing in on it slowly and right there you see, have three on one side: three on the other, and now they hatch it’s secured, suspended inside now use an off-brand silicone, Which ended up becoming a little bit of a problem, but I was able to work around it. The bottom of this bucket has the silicone separated, and I thought I had mixed it in thoroughly and when I poured it, I noticed it was very lumpy and those lumps ultimately ended up settling at the bottom of the mold, which you’ll see in a minute caused A little bit of a problem, but I was able to get some castings and now here’s our mold. We had a couple of small leaks, which I was able to curtail good thing here is I had two big broad sides and I was able to use that same plywood to close, my mold and you’ll see how, in a minute now, I’m breaking it apart. Since the top glued it just breaks apart with a hammer and the prefinished plywood is nice because nothing really sticks to it.
You see how easily I was able to pull it off and now I realize the silicone didn’t mix up thoroughly and you see how it’s all lumpy and chunky it all settled at the bottom and some of it didn’t harden so I cut away what did in Harden and I’m able to cut into the mold in about 99 % of it against the figure was good, the figure being the axe that I’m making a mold of, and I’m able to pull it out. And I just trimmed that wood to the shape of the mold and by having two flat broadsides, I’m able to clamp it again and keep the cut shut. I only cut open the silicone mold just enough to pull the object out. I don’t cut it completely. In half and then also when I cut it, you’ll notice, I give it a jagged cut, that’s so it puzzles back together and here I’m using smooth I’m using smooth cast 325, which I was just experimenting with.
It dries somewhat translucent I was just. I was going to experiment with coloring it, but I decided to just paint it ultimately, but I didn’t really like the way this work. They dried was very soft.
It stayed soft for a long time, and so I go from the 325 to 320 and you’ll see the difference. This is the 325. I pulled the mold out and it’s my first pole and then 325 stays soft for a long time, and I have a pretty good cast thing. It’S obviously accurate.
Now this is 320, it dries to like an ivory color and it’s and it dries much harder faster. So you’ll see when I pull the the cast out, it’s much more rigid right away, same amount of drying time and I pull it out in it’s obviously much more rigid and so now I’m pouring a bunch. I want to try and get one good one. So I pour several and the most difficult part of the mold is right, where the fill spot is the most difficult part to fix up, and now he was just having a little fun make in front of the Emil movies.
That was a boy on the farm. Never thought I’d make rubber hatchets more sawdust. Please give me one day: welder and Jocko we’re in the shop keeping the company, and now I think I put too much hager in this mold because it also started to tear, as I was, making more and more castings. The mold started to tear, I was able to keep going and I still have the mold.
I could make a couple more, but I’m not going to get I’m not going to get ten good castings out of the small they’re just going to become more and more difficult to fix up, there’s little bits and pieces of the mold started to tear out. Typically, I would use as smooth on mould max mold max 30, but they didn’t have any sign that I bind that off branded molding material, which worked but not great. I was disappointed at the bottom of the bucket had a very thick unmixed batch and that’s what you see at the bottom of the mold. So now the original is silver or aluminum polished aluminum.
So here I just get the closest representation. It looks much better on camera than it does in real life. That has something to do with the way the silver picks up on camera, so the the real ax is right in the middle and the rest are obviously the models, and I painted a little bit of gray on the head to just differentiate the silver and there You have it. I have five castings to send to factories. Thanks for watching you .