Mold making

Stone mold - Bronze age spear head 
Making molds is a technology that has been around for a while, but not in my life.

Also not in my life, is a definitive answer as to how I should spell mold or mould. I'll choose mold for no other reason than it will save me a keystroke.

I tried making a mold last week for the first time (to try to make a hot glue copy of a lure) and failed miserably. So now, I'm going to get me some mold making skills.

Molds will be useful in a stack of ways I can't even think of, and at least one that I can. A mold will allow me to spend a lot longer working on the detail of something I need a number of. That is to say, if I need ten of something, I'll tend to be slack with the quality. But If I can make one to a high standard, then reproduce it in a mold, I'll have ten good quality things to go about my thingy business with.

My ultimate goal here is to be able to prototype anything I can imagine with some amount of professionalism. To a degree, the handmade fishing lures go some way toward this end. I can now make an object that I think has a finish that looks pretty good, but now I need to take that to the next stage, and develop some ability to make a faithful reproduction of a given item.

I'll be attempting to reproduce a lure I made, by way of a plaster cast, and perhaps some hot glue or clay or something. My choice for my model is a lure that has absolutely no prospects because I'm not sure if the molding process will damage the original, and I wouldn't want to risk anything useful until I know what I'm doing.

I'm also not sure about everything else to do with making molds.

I don't really have any pressing need for a mold at the moment, and making a copy of a failed lure won't be of any use, but if it works, I'll have some worthwhile tech that I'm sure will come in handy down the track.

I look forward to the day when, if I want to make something, I can make it with the skills I've acquired doing the first half of my 120 things.

Wish me luck, I going to have a crack at learning mold making,

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