DIY Silicone Mold

Okay, so making rupee soap and Han-in-carbonite soap is fun and all, but Penga-Sis and I were ready to take the next step - custom soap molds!

Armed with a basin of soap, a tube of silicone caulk, and some Pokemon action figures, we were ready to go. We used this tutorial.

(source)

We filled the soap basin with warm water, and hacked off the end of the caulk tube with a large, rusty saw. Gotta throw in a little danger to keep things lively.  We pulled the caulk out of the tube and submerged it in the basin, massaging it into a usable dough.

It smells SO bad.  Like dumping a bottle of vinegar all over yourself. Fun times.

Whenever you're ready, cover your action figures with a thick layer of caulk, making sure to leave some part of the figure exposed so you can pull it out later.

Threw in a baby blaster for good measure.

And that's it! Let it dry for a while, and leave it in a ventilated area, unless you want a garage that permanently smells of vinegar.  Says the one speaking from experience.

Once dry (we waited overnight), pull the figures out and give them a good wash to de-vinegarize. Let the finished molds "cure" or dry out a bit more (we waited until Penga-Sis came back the next weekend, but probably just another day is fine).

Cool huh? And cheap! Caulk is certainly cheaper than the mold putties they sell at craftstores.  But the real question - does it make soap?!

First spray the molds down with isopropyl alcohol (rubbing alchy) to prevent any bubbles from forming in the soap.  Then pour away with your scented soap!

Ash's mold wasn't so good though, soap started dripping out of his feet! Make sure you cover everything well when you make your mold..

Another problem with our molds was that they didn't come out cleanly. See all the overflow?

All (except for psyduck) required trimming with a knife.

I'm pleased with how well the details were captured though!

The blaster soaps are too small to do anything with, so I might put them in a bigger (clear) soap later.

Psyduck came out really well though!

You can see the little pucker on the side though where I didn't cover him well enough with the caulk.

Ash and Misty, however, weren't looking as great.  They are just too thin to be practical soaps. And they require a lot of excess soap trimming.

We'll definitely be trying mold-making again, but so far our lessons learned - cover your object as MUCH as feasible.  The more it is covered, the less overflow problems you should have.  Obviously, bulkier "soap" shaped objects will make better soap.  Not twiggy action figures (unless you mount them inside a clear bar soap or something). And keep your workspace ventilated.  I'm serious about the vinegar smell, yo!

And uh, I doubt these are food safe molds, so only use them for soap or resin!

Solar Eclipse

Did any of you West Coasters/East Asians watch the solar eclipse on Sunday? There were several areas around the Bay where one could go watch through nice amateur/professional telescopes (with sun filters, of course), but around the magic six o'clock time, Sak and I got too lazy to leave the house :(

Instead, we rigged together an impromptu pinhole sun viewing box.

It's a shoebox..with a viewing hole in the side, and a piece of pin-poked foil in the front.

You can't really see the pin-prick in the middle, but that's the point! The smaller the better.

We taped up any other light holes with more foil, and held it up to the sun!

What is this? The moon! Nay! It is the sun, covered by the moon!

A little closer..

Cool, eh? But not cool enough for Sak.  He decided he needed something bigger.

Yeah...

Unfortunately, I couldn't stick my camera in to take a picture, but the bigger box did make the sun's image a little larger! Nothing too fancy though. In high school astronomy, I had a borrowed telescope from my grandparents and a borrowed solar filter from my teacher that I used to photograph sun spots with.  I wish I had them for the eclipse! :P

Anyway, SF Bay only got about an 85% covered sun, so we didn't get to see the awesome ring of fire like the Pacific Northwest and Japan did.

The ring as seen from Japan! (source)

Astronomy is definitely my favorite subset of physics.  Space is just so cool!

Maker Faire 2012

On Saturday, Sak, Penga-Sis and I headed over to Maker Faire!  This year definitely didn't dissapoint, although Penga-Sis was upset that we didn't check the schedule beforehand...She wanted her Mythbuster shirt signed by Adam Savage, but he was only speaking on Sunday! Next year, next year!

As always though, there was just SO much going on, there's no way I could show everything we saw! But here's a small spattering of fun stuff!

Some custom made garden gnomes..army themed!

The Artoo club was well-represented again this year!

One of my original favorite scientists, Beaker!

This was pretty cool, a whole percussion section on your ceiling! Each instrument was hooked up to a servo, and it played island music on kettle drums and such!

An extremely well-made Dalek! Complete with voice box! He was quite polite for a Dalek, too.

Giant Connect 4 game.

How cool (and DIYable) is this? A chandelier made from clothes hangers!

Penga-Sis tried her hand at making a letterpress recipe card.

Giant egg-shaped dome.

Mega-bead curtain!

A fire breathing beastie.

Mushrooms! We bought a starter kit to grow some oyster mushrooms. Should be interesting! (These are the same fellows that have the mushroom store in the Ferry Building, btw.)

A robot petting zoo, haha! Cutest idea ever.  Inside you could press (pet?) the robots and they'd do different things.  One blew bubbles, so adorable.

Snail art.  Unique, definitely unique! Stack different colors of construction paper, corral some snails on top and watch as they eat through the layers and create art! They even poop colored bits of paper for..texture! Haha!

Some fun spin art.

Tesla coils! These are always such show-stoppers, I love it.  Nothing like dangerous amounts of electricity to energize a crowd. Pun intended.

This one was pretty cool.  A simple binary computer capable of basic math.  Only it's perfectly mechanical!

But the thing I had my eye on the most during this year's faire had to have been the 3d printers.  Oh, how fun would one of those be!

They use spools of plastic thread...

Heated up and extruded via a computer controlled applicator.

It builds the 3d object layer by layer, and the things you can make from it really are limitless!

Custom toys! *drool*

Each year the machines seem to get more and more accessible to regular ol' hobbyists; the one pictured above runs about $1.7k.  Definitely not cheap, but it's no $16k laser etcher either.  Someday!

We had a great time, eating fair-food garlic fries and paella, and lamenting the price of $6 lemonade (ridiculous!).  That's the one huge downside to conventions like this.  Everything is overpriced! I understand that people have to fund their hobbies, but things that do not cost the maker in terms of time/pricy materials don't need excessive convention mark-up just because he/she can, in my opinion.  Especially since there were a few really cute things I would have picked up otherwise. Maybe I'm just cheap. :P

Anyway, it's great to see so many people out there, tinkering and crafting, if for no other purpose than the fact that it is fun.  It was very inspiring, and I've come away with more than one project idea that I'd like to try someday.

Just us in the Makerbot photobooth... :)