New week, new project, and for this project, my goal was to create two casts (replications) of my finger using a casting and molding method. To start off I used alginate and mixed the powder with water and stirred until it got hard and was able to insert my finger. After waiting I added my index finger into the alginate for a few minutes then pulled it out carefully. When I put my index finger in the mold I curved it as it was going deeper in because I wanted it to serve as a wall hook and hold some future hangings up in my room. Once I took my finger out I poured in the casting material to fill the cast. Inside this material I added a screw for future wall attachment. The screw was held by a 3d printed “stick”. Then, after about 20 minutes the plaster dried and I tried to carefully take it out but eventually the alginate mold broke making me not able to reuse it and I had to repeat this entire process again to recreate another finger (I tried my hardest to get the same poses for my fingers).

It was now time to post process! On the fingers I did notice some slight elevation on some spots so I just either ripped them directly off, or used some sanding to get it off which made the fingers look more smooth.

Once I had finished with this it was time to start spray-painting. I had observed some previous finger projects and realized I wanted my finger to look semi-realistic. I didn’t want it too matte because to me that made the fingers look more plaster like and I didn’t want it too glossy because it felt less like I was looking at a finger. So, I tried to go in between with a satin gloss, and I also used the color grey because I felt it would look the best.

Once the initial layers dried, I did about two more layers on the fingers (on different days). Until I had two nice and beautiful final casts.

Although this project was pretty straight-forward there was a lot of waiting involved, especially when dealing with waiting for the mold/casts to dry and for waiting for the spray-paint to dry.

Then when I was done I made sure I had my materials and workspace cleaned as shown below:

 

Cost analysis:

Alginate: A cup is approximately 240 ml (8 ounces), and 500 grams is roughly 17.6 cups, the cost per cup would be $13.95 / 17.6 ≈ $0.79 per cup.

Plaster of paris: A cup is approximately 240 ml (8 ounces), and 25 lbs is roughly 113 cups, the cost per cup would be $22.98 / 113 ≈ $0.20 per cup. Total Cost for 0.5 Cups: 0.5 cups × $0.20 per cup = $0.10.

Screw: $5.97 for 292 screws = approximately $0.02045 per screw. Cost of Two Screws: 2 screws × $0.02045 per screw = $0.0409.

3d printed stick (Pla): The cost per gram is $13.59 / 1000 grams = $0.01359 per gram. About 2 grams of filament used. The cost would be 2 grams × $0.01359/gram = $0.02718.

Rust_Oleum Satin Stone Gray Spray-paint: $5.98 at Home Depot

The total cost is about $7.73.