I'm using bought metal books for those out on the table and strewn about the room, but all I need for the shelves are spines. Now there are essentially two different sizes of book shelf in the room, the mid-wall case and the corner case (which is slightly narrower) and after some quick playing with 3mm pvcfoam, I need 15 books to fill a shelf in mid-wall case and 12 books for a shelf in the corner case... and there are 5 shelves to a case... that should be around 1750 books. No way was I making those by hand.
I made some blocks of books out of foam pvc, 8 different 5 book blocks and 2 different 7 book blocks (henceforth refered to as bb)... that meant 140 x 5bb and 50 x 7bb to fill the walls... much more manageable, so out came the Siligum and the Alumilite Super Plastic:
I did a few molds to optimise the resin when mixed, but was bricking the actual resin bit. This is chemistry. This is chemistry with warning labels. Scary chemistry. Only it turns out it isn't... Some deliberation over the need for well ventilated and room temperature while being a very cold March, I ditched the garden, turned up the heating and opened all the windows... it's not exactly room temperatue, but warmer than the garden, this has had the downside of slowing down the curing time a smidge (3 minutes normally), but this means I have slightly longer to pour. I've had to limit my mixing to a quarter of a fluid ounce, as any more caused problems with the tin foil cake cups I planned on using for the mixing pot... large amounts caused the foil cups to buckle, making pouring a pig. I will get some plastic cups later, but it means for now I do half the molds at a time, one lot is curing while I mix the next lot which seems to be working so far. I've also got some spare for the Timelord wall sconce when needed.
Now, I have a new found respect for mold makers, it turns out the hardest part of the entire process is getting a decent mold in the first place... I must confess I've had to ditch a couple of my earlier molds, simply because of flaws, I'm getting better at it though, but it was an expensive (if fun) learning curve... what I have now still have some flaws, but all I need are good spines, the rest of the books will not be seen...
4 comments:
Really good work and the ability to make molds puts some of us in the shade.
what I've found (and had confirmed) is that fresh silicon (in this case Siligum) will bond with set silicon. so, you can patch a flawed mold, fill the hole and put the master back in, the trick is getting the right amount for the hole... I have binned a few molds I must admit.
Coming on nicely . You really are putting a lot of effort into this Just for Salute . It's not as if a Library is of any use to a Doctor Who gamer afterwards , now is it...;o)
I don't know what you mean... ;)
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