Now it's time to cast us some barrels. To start I need to remove the "master" from the mold. The plaster bandage
will pry apart easily since the vaseline stops the plaster from bonding to itself. What we are left with is a one piece silicone mold. To make it easier to remove from the master and from the casts I use an X-Acto knife and make a slit down the side. I then carefully pull the silicone off the barrel.
Before I can fill the mold with resin I need to prep it. To start I dust the inside of the mold with some baby powder and blow away the excess with an air can. I then put the silicone back into the mother mold and carefully re-align the seam. There is no need to use a mold release as the resin removes easily from the silicone.
After propping up the mold I prepare the resin. For the barrels I am using Smooth-On's "Smoothcast 300" resin. It is mixed 1:1 by volume and is really easy to use.
I mixed up both parts and slowly pour the resin into the mold. In order to assure that there were no air bubbles trapped I lightly tapped the mold before the resin set up. This resin takes about 5 minutes to set and about 30 - 40 mins to fully cure.
After about 30 minutes I removed the resin from the mold and have a perfect replica of the original.
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