Saturday, March 28, 2009

No Pics, But Progress

As the title suggests, I have no pictures to show today, but a lot of progress to report.

First, I finally finished pouring the rubber onto the cape. I just got back from another week out of town on business, and I ran another gallon and a half of silicone onto the thing this afternoon. It's all done. Just need to wait for it to cure, than I can pull out the cape and send it back to its eagerly awaiting owner.

I'm experimenting with some new urethene. The stuff that I used on the yellow belt in my last post was nice, though I don't have a source for a variety of pigments. I only have yellow. So if I want to tint it a little different, or create a totally different color, I'm out of luck. So I tooled around with a batch of stuff that I got from Sil-Pak, and it looks nice. However, I only ordered a sample of red pigment for testing purposes. This means that I have poured up a RED belt. My main purpose here is to experiment with the opacity. So far, it looks really good. It will be cured in about 12 hours, and I will take pictures when I demold.

The last thing I'm experimenting with is thinning out said urethene. I'm going to need to make the stuff really brushable for when I do a layup of the cape, so I mixed up a tiny batch and thinned it out with a random thinning agent I had lying around. Truth is, I cannot remember what I used. Senior moment, right here!!! Either way, it thinned it out very nicely. Now I just need to see if it will cure. My guess is that the stuff could easily retard the curing process, so it might be a dud batch. If it was a work day, I would simply contact the place that sold it to me and ask if they have a thinning agent for it. If it doesn't cure, that's what I will do on monday.

Other than that, not a whole lot going on. Looking forward to tomorrow when all this stuff has set up and I can play around with it.

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