Smooth On Dragon Skin Issue... PLEASE HELP!

[Jlow73]

I like your sculpt!

When I had a issue with some silicone not curing well, it was actually the bolts holding the mold together, the mold was fine. But if I had touched the bold and then handled the mold, I could have issues. Problems can come from unexpected things.

For what you are trying to make, it seems like Ecoflex would be a great choice and you wouldn't need Slacker which seems to be where you are getting problems. I have limited experience, but both Dragon Skin and Ecoflex are fantastic and have given me great results. I am about to start a new project that will have a thin layer of Dragon Skin 10 on the outside, then backed with Ecoflex 00-20 or 00-30.

The Stan Winston online school has a recent 3 video series called Silicone Mask Making where the people from Immortal Mask go through their process of molding and casting silicone masks. Every tip they give is useful and I wish the videos had been available before I wasted tons of money trying to make molds. I think it is well worth joining and watching the videos if you plan to make more molds in the future. Even if you don't use their exact process, just knowing how they deal with silicone and such is useful.

Also, I'd LOVE to see what you are working on!!!!!

 

[udog]

Thank you! I have watched a couple of Stan Winston's freebies and I was considering joining....perhaps I will go ahead and join because I di plan on making more and more and MORE! LOL!
Thanks for the info about the bolts, too. I'm racking my brain trying to figure out what it could be...maybe something I cleaned it out with? I don't have bolts in mine. I used Turpentine and eventually acetone to clean the first silicone mishap....but, the silicone reacted exactly the same as the first silicone mishap. Smooth-On should be contacting me back today...we'll see. I'll let you guys know what they say. In the meantime time. I'm going to try my last bit of DragonSkin by itself. I may run and grab some Ecoflex as well....just because now I kinda want to play with it, hehehe!
Thanks agai

Turpentine is no good for plat silicone in my experience. Use IPA alcohol, Toluene, naphta or heptane for cleaning. IPA alcohol cleans liquid silicone very well.
If your mixing ratio is 50gr (A+B)+100gr Slacker I´d say there´s too much slacker in the mix.
50A+50B+100 Slacker should work, but it´s around the limit:

 

[Jlow73]

So, yeah, waaaaay to much Slacker! Smooth-On Called me back yesterday and said the same thing! Because I was using the DragonSkin Pro especially, I was using too much Slacker. It needed to be 50g A + 50g B + 50g Slacker. And guess what folks....it worked!!! The edges didn't come out as smooth as I wanted, but they should be workable with Skin Tite...all in all, not too terribly horrible for my first attempt ever! Thank you all for your insight, comments, help and encouragement; I hope this is the beginning of a long lasting relationship, here in this forum!

 

[ArtisticThingem]

I've just been lurking in this thread as I had nothing useful to add, but I figured I'd pop in to say that I'm glad you got it worked out! Everything i've heard about Smooth-On's customer service is good, so it's perhaps no surprise that they were able to sort out what went wrong. I look forward to seeing what you make in the future!

 

[Jlow73]

I've just been lurking in this thread as I had nothing useful to add, but I figured I'd pop in to say that I'm glad you got it worked out! Everything i've heard about Smooth-On's customer service is good, so it's perhaps no surprise that they were able to sort out what went wrong. I look forward to seeing what you make in the future!

I Love it...lurk away, my friend, lol!! And, thank you for the vote of encouragement! Now, speaking from first-hand experience, I can say that Smooth-On's customer service is, indeed, very GOOD! The woman who called me back was not only extremely helpful, but her sarcasm matched my own and we had quite an entertaining conversation . I look forward to seeing what all of you are doing, so make sure to message me with any pics and stuff!! This whole community is exciting for me! I need to know how I can check in with all of your projects, just to see what everyone has going on. I'll be inserting the hair into the silicone prosthetic this week.....

 

[udog]

Good you got it. I was not sure at firs what you proportion was but in a second glance I saw it was too much. It´s good to read twice all the tech stuff about these materials.

The edges didn't come out as smooth as I wanted,

That´s a tricky part. You cant first work it out in the sculpt stage, I´m sure you´ll find videos of how to get feather thin edges using IPA alcohol and/or talc to smooth down the clay. Also there are ways of preparing the molds that will aid to get thinner edges (look for prosthetic molds and take a look at how they´re done).
Another route to get good blending edges is to investigate about encapsulating with bald cap material (baldiez or similar). Edges can be easily blended with IPA alcohol that way.

 

[mvaefx]

Did you make a silicone skin with no additives - straight dragonskin within your negative and positive moulds?
Did you cast the deadened (Slacker + Dragonskin) silicone without the skin?
Did you correctly measure the mix ratios with straight silicone and the deadened silicone?
Did you use the mould prior to casting silicone and did you use any latex?
Are you using sulphur free oil based clays?
Any additives used in the mould making process?
Are you using appropriate mould release?
Sorry if these are redundant questions - i didn't read the whole thread.

 

[Jlow73]

Hi! Thank you for your questions. I did figure it all out, but it's super nice to have a checklist of questions to reference when I do it again. I'm getting ready to start putting hair in it now, just finishing up painting it. . Hope you are having luck with any projects you are working on!