Instant Mold

My first pack of Instant Mold arrived today and I was more than a little bit giddy to play with this stuff. I have a few bits of stowage that I need a lot of to add some flavor to my very plain IS-1s. The package you get contains six strips of Instant Mold.

I took out one piece to give it a test run and laid out the bits that I wanted to test out duplicating. In this case, three tarps/bedrolls and the stowage that I cut off the rear end of a damaged ISU-122/152 hull (unique sculpt from the platoon box).

Simply place however much Instant Mold you need into hot water for five minutes. I went the quick route and put a few cups of water into the coffee pot without coffee. When it is done, take it out of the water and dab it with a cloth to remove any moisture on it. At this point simply knead it to get it consistent throughout. At this temperature, it is sort of like putty and is extremely easy to manipulate. Once I got the shape I needed, I set it on a flat surface and pressed each of the bits I wanted to duplicate into it. It is worth noting that it also turns clear.

Place the mold in some cold water for a minute to rapid cool it then remove the parts and dry it off. At room to cool temperatures you can no longer manipulate it like putty but it still bends and can easily be cut with a hobby knife if you like. I bent it a little bit and used a knife to pop the parts right out. This is the freshly made empty mold.

It is hard to tell from the picture but the details are every bit as crisp as the parts I put into them. Now I don't have any kneadatite (green stuff) and am not keen on spending $15 a just a little bit of it so I checked out Wal-Mart for some alternatives. The one on the left is steel putty found in the automotive department and the one on the right is plumbers putty found in the bathroom hardware aisle. I think the steel stuff was about $7 and turns a very dark grey when kneaded. The plumbers stuff was $3 and turns light off white.

First I tested out the plumbers putty. Cut off a small slice and mixed it up and pressed it into the mold. As excess material fanned out, I rolled it back onto the area over the cavity and pressed it in. The plumbers putty takes around 15 minutes to get hard enough to touch and twice that time to really set so I went and had a couple of smokes while I waited.

After it finally set I simply gently bended the mold and popped the parts out. I then let them hang out for another hour before cutting the flash off so I wouldn't damage them while manhandling them.

Next was the steel putty. This stuff was a bit of a pain in the ass to deal with. It is EXTREMELY sticky and there were times when the material I had pressed into the mold kept trying to come up with my finger as I pressed it. The steel putty has a very quick set time of five minutes. By the time I got back from my cigarette I could barely make a mark in it with my fingernail.

After letting them both set, I cut off all the excess material and lined them up next to the original parts for comparison.

I must say I am very impressed with this product. I now have more stowage than I will ever need and I got it for dirt cheap. The quality is pretty damn good compared to the originals. The best part about Instant Mold is that you can keep using the mold as much as you want and you can also RE-USE it. Just stick it back in hot water and it turns to putty again. This means you can combine all the sticks you got into a giant mold for bigger stuff (cough tank hull to make a destroyed marker out of cough) or you can recombine bits you may have cut apart into its original form. Another great thing about this product is that as far as I can tell, NOTHING sticks to it. Not even the ultra sticky steel putty left any residue on it that I can see.

Picked Instant Mold up at www.scifigenre.com for $10 and it will save me hundreds.