For this week’s molding project, I used the basic method for creating a positive: an alginate negative and a plaster positive. Overall, the molded finger is detailed, but not perfect, with notable flaws on the left side of the print and just above the knuckle.

I started off by slowly adding alginate into about 700mL of warm water and stirring constantly. This worked fairly well. The alginate was consistent, but somewhat watery. When it came time to create the negative, I learned two things: the first was that I forgot to pull up a chair, and the second was that watery alginate takes about 10 minutes to set. Although I overcame these challenges, the extended setting time allowed my hand to become wrinkled. This is reflected in the final, where some of the fingerprint appears to be uneven or even missing. That isn’t the mold losing resolution, that is the nearly prefect mold of a soaked ring finger.

To mold the knuckle, I simply molded my entire hand. After getting the negative for my palm and fingers, I tried Fillipe’s early partition technique using construction paper. While this did separate the ring finger from the others and make removal a little simpler, the construction paper became soaked and stuck to the plaster, necessitating the removal of extra material. However, it also created fairly flat sides to dremel down later.

To make the base, I simply dremeled down the flat edges of the excess material until they were roughly the same width as my finger. Since the finger is slightly hunched, I also left some extra material from the palm to counteract the finger’s tendency to fall forwards.

The biggest flaw in the finger occurred upon removal from the alginate. The finger broke off above the knuckle; however, I was able to superglue the finger back on. While this would normally create an unsightly seam, I found that the plaster on the base was not completely dry when I went to dremel it. The liquidy plaster formed a kind of plaster paste as it was sanded off that I was able to use as a touchup material for the cracks, covering up the flaw.

 

Overall, this mold was moderately successful. It had a few noticeable flaws, but was mostly detailed and consistent.

 

I still don’t know what to do with it, though.