For this assignment, I made two wall hooks by molding and casting my fingers.

The initial attempt in-class was unsuccessful. The plaster mix was not correct, and it sat for far too long in the alginate before I de-molded it, so it absorbed a lot of that expelled water. All of this led to a broken, crumbly plaster finger. I failed to take pictures, but picture something like the image below, but smaller scale and mor finger-shaped

In my second attempt, I used a larger silicone cup, planning to mold two fingers at once. Since it’s sometime easier to mix in large batches, a group of us coordinated to mix our alginate and plaster together.

I was able to mold two fingers in the alginate, and after letting it set for about 5 minutes and removing my fingers from the alginate, I poured the plaster and set the screws in place. There was some bridging between the fingers, but I thought it seemed like a thin enough piece that it’d be easy to separate the pieces after demolding.

I waited about 2 hours before demolding. The bridge between the fingers broke immediately, which made things easier. The detail on the molded plaster fingers is great, the only thing that didn’t make it was my fingernails. I didn’t break apart the mold, but I assume the little bits of plaster that made the nails are stuck in there, and broke off during demolding.

The first thing I did to post process was to smooth those broken nails with sandpaper. I also sanded along the base of the fingers to get a more even bottom.

I decided I wanted to stick with a matte white for my parts. So after screwing the parts into a piece of wood for easier handling (and bonus, built in masking of most of the screw), I sprayed with a white primer, and then a matte seal. 

Overall, I’m happy with how they’ve turned out!

Cost Type	Cost	Price	Source	Quantity	Total
Materials	Alginate	$17.45/lb	Amazon	~ 30 gm	$1.23
	Plaster of Paris	$0.14/oz	Amazon	~ 8oz	$1.12
	Spray Paint	$6.19 /12oz	Amazon	~ 2oz	$1.03
Labor	Prototyping Engineer	$38/hr	Ziprecruiter.com	1.5hr	$57
Total					$60.38