Casting tip.... make sure your mold box is strong enough

[BrentS]

As some of you know, I've been working on a new diorama project.  I was going to make casts of a piece of jedi temple.  Long story short.  That damn blue tape isn't strong enough to hold a mold box together.  Damn!!

[Daigo-Bah]

Oh, snap!   I'm sorry to hear about that!

[Straxus]

...OUCH...

About that point my chair probably would have flown through the nearest window... if that had happened to me...

The blue tape might have worked, but if you had wrapped it arround entire box a few times. Most my molds I go wild taping every possible edge and over wrapping...though I have never made a mold that big before...

[Darth_Ennis]

Ouch!! Thats gotta suck. I feel your pain though, I recently tried my hand at casting, with pretty much the same results. Only not in that quantity.

[Ruprecht]

Damn, I'm sure the wife's enthusiastic support of your hobby just cooled a degree or two.  At least it can be pulled off easily enough once it cures, right?

Knowing that hindsight is 20/20, and not trying to sound like an A-hole, for something that big you might want to use a wooden mold box secured with screws.

The guys at Goregoregore.com have a good mold box tutorial with pictures.  It's a little overkill for molding smaller pieces, but for something large, it's perfect.  Goregoregore.com's tutorials section is large, but check out the "Molds" section.  These guys do a lot of professional sculpting for Sideshow and other companies, and really know their stuff.

[Jesse James]

If I may give some personal advice on casting boxes...  I use legos.

Not sure if you've got a hefty brick collection handy, but lemme say, they make great casting boxes.   And you avoid that problem there.  However, some other good items you can use...  cups, 2 liter bottles, 1 liter bottles, smaller bottles, etc.

But Legos rock if you've got a LOT of them to do any size you want to.

[IncomT65]

Saw your post at Yakface as well, BrentS. This really sucks and what a mess! Then again, that which does not kill us, makes us stronger, right? Good luck with getting the project running again!

[BrentS]

Thanks for all the empathy guys.  I've already started the "recovery" process.  The only thing I really lost was some money I suppose.   

Ruprecht - thanks for the link.  There is some cool stuff on that site!

Jesse - I've actually used Legos as mold boxes before.  They do work great.  However, for this project I thought that I would need to many of them to get it finished. 

Looking back at it now, it was a pretty stupid mistake.  However, I've corrected that with an excess of tape and glue