Latex stinks! It’s a
great product, but there is a certain putrid smell, which I suppose after a
while you begin to not only become accustomed to, but actually like. I would rather be addicted to sniffing latex
than be back injecting cocaine into my eyeballs again, not that I ever did do
that in the first place. Latex can be
re-used, sort of. Many of you experts
out there think ah yes, making a latex rubber mould is easy peasy, you dip the
object into latex a number of times and hey presto before long you have your
mould.
Wrong. The moment
latex is exposed to air it begins to coagulate.
This does not mean it turns into toothpaste! This process is indeed a lengthy affair. Each void on the model must be filled with
latex before the model can be placed down, fixed in position, and then have
latex dripped on to it, like Chinese water torture, but different. I hope I’m not getting too technical for you.
Once again you find that you are still on this learning
curve. Thinking that a latex rubber
mould is thick enough to be used, will prove to you that it is not. After about two weeks a mould will normally
allow you to reproduce one model before it rips. This is where the wisdom of Ian Drury comes
into play again, for as your latex mould rips, you ask for a higher power to
“Hit me with your rhythm stick, hit me, hit me, hit me!!” You can add a thickening agent, a
thixotropic gel, it’s so complicated I can’t even spell it, but I promise you
it’s not worth it. Take your time and
when you think your mould is ready to be used, keep adding latex for at least
another week.
Lesson one. A complex
Latex mould will normally take three to four weeks to make and even then you
will not have sufficient detail reproduced to give a finished product, but you
will get three to four half decent models that you can take to the next stage.
If you are only using latex in your living room or bedroom,
then five minutes is enough, so they tell me.
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