PLUNGERGRAMS plunger mold

[Mastercaster]

Here is the start of plunger mold number three. A recipe designed by the good folks at Reynolds Advanced Materials of Tempe, Arizona. I will start with this beautifully painted master plunger by Raoul Coulombe, our French master maker and art impressionist.

[Mastercaster]

This looks like a cake pan but it is not. This is a part I had made at Tech Shop in Chandler.

www.techshop.ws/ts_chandler.html

I took my plunger master and had someone measure the interior surface of my plunger cup. I needed the interior of my mold to be slightly smaller causing the wall thickness of my plungers to have thicker walls. This will give me more room to put whatever in the wall. You are looking at a 3D printed part that the guy made for me. There are fine lines where the layers are built up and I needed the interior to be shinier than a babies butt to be optically clear. I mixed up some resin and swirled it around inside to build up a layer that covers up the lines and makes it really shiny inside. This part needs more work though. I did not quite think it through but I can change this to make what I need. I am doing this project opposite of how I would make a car body so I am starting by making the male part of the mold first.

gangplankhq.com/ Gangplank is another place to go in the Chandler area to create projects. I have not been here though, I just know it exists.







I'M on the edge of my seat with excitement! I have to go pee!

[Mastercaster]

Now I have the inside part of the mold made.



In order to keep the project centered I drilled a hole in this board 1 1/4 inches in diameter. The new silicone inner core fits loosely in the plunger master so it needs to be all held in place.



This chrome pipe fits perfectly in the hole in the board.



So far so good, my plan is working. I just need to shorten the chrome pipe.



I shortened the pipe and put silicone sealant on the parts to help keep it stable for the next step.

[Mastercaster]

I dug through my boxes of letters I took from the old hospital that ASU has as a community center and made this sign for my plunger. I will attempt to cast it in a rubbery type of eurothane and cast it in the wall of the plunger. If this works I hope to be a famous artist like Andy Warhol. One day long after I'm dead my plungers will be worth billions of dollars. LOL



I decided to make four small ones while as was at it. These will be placed randomly going in different directions and different colors.

[Mastercaster]

After all this work I might as well add my own real name. This might be an important legal thing to do. I did buy Plungergrams.com to fend off theft.

[Mastercaster]

Here is a brand new set of letters for the mold. These have no backing. They will be made out of a flexible urethane rubber.

[Mastercaster]

Here is the finished mold. I am happy that this molds fits in the large pot that I make bodies in.

[Mastercaster]

So now I need to make a mold of the sign I created. It would be difficult and time consuming to try to clay up this part in my usual standard way. So I made this miniature bed of nails spaced 1/4 inch on grid. It's purpose is to hold the sign down as evenly as possible and keep as little amount of silicone as possible from getting underneath the sign. I mixed and poured a small amount of silicone over the sign and placed the bed of nails over it. Yes, making the bed of nails was very time consuming but thinking about moving small amounts of clay and the probability of breaking the letters away from their hanging spots was not what I felt like doing. That would take patience that I don't have right now so I did it a different way.

[Mastercaster]

Now I made this ring. This mold will make a ring that will go inside of each plunger I make......well, that's the plan anyway.

[Mastercaster]

I had hoped for it to be more even but it ain't bad. removing the silicone from the back of the letters was tedious work and I only broke a couple of letters loose while the removal was taking place so that went better than expected. This is one of the reasons I use the Mold Star 30 and not the 15 because it is firmer than the 15. 15 is green and 30 is blue.



Here is one in the hardcast resin.

[Mastercaster]

Here is a test sample of some SMOOTH - ON Clear Flex 50. I mixed two pennies worth of one side to one pennies worth of the other side. I added enough white dye first to make it white and then a small drop of red and blue. I gave it a slight quick stir to get this effect and poured it into another cup. It has a 25 minute pot life and a 16 hour cure time. I want to make my big plungergrams sign look like this since it is made in the good ol USA. Then the small ones will be individual colors of red, white and blue.

[Mastercaster]

Here is the first try with the big sign. The surface is still sticky. I did some reading and found that post curing the mold when using this material will be helpful. I am hoping to get 150 degrees out of my home made mold warming box that I made some time ago. I did call tech support today. They told me the thinner the part the longer it will take to cure because there is not enough mass to generate a good amount of heat. I will preheat the mold before pouring material in it to help cure it.

[Mastercaster]

I took a couple of ice cream containers and created this absolutely gorgeous funnel part for the mold box for the plunger cup.



It took a lot of silicone to fill it up. I will probably regret making the mold so large. We will see how this experiment works out.

[Mastercaster]

So far , so good. The mold is a bit too big but it turned out good. It will fit in my big horizontal pressure pot. I was hoping the silicone would come loose from the inside of master easy but that is just not happening. I should have used my mold silicone instead.