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Making candle moulds from silicone

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The15thMember:
That is so fun!  It looks like a bunch of clams attached to a rock that are all singing together in a choir!  :cheesy:  If you were to sell candles or molds made from this online, I'd buy them.  I'd buy the wood molds too!  :happy:       

Lesgold:
Hi Jim,

I don?t know if you can see it from the photo but the seed pods were very deep and went almost to the centre of the cone. They were tapered which would aid in release from the mould. I did shape the play dough to replicate the open clam shape that Reagan spoke about. I wanted to make sure that the candle had a good, solid body of wax.  I won?t attempt to release the silicone until after the markets. When I do, I will get a feel for how many cuts that I need to make in the mould. Thanks for the tip. If I can get away with two cuts, I?d be happy. There is still a strong chance that the whole thing will fail but it is still fun trying something new.

Lesgold:
As expected,  release of the banksia nut was slow with quite a few pinch points where the silicone grabbed on difficult areas of the shape. As you suggested Jim, two cuts were needed to ensure the master could be removed. Quite a bit of the play dough stuck to the mould so it was soaked in a soapy water mix for a couple of hours before being hosed out. As you can see from the photo, there is quite a bit of detail and complex shapes within the silicone.

After drying, the first candle was poured. As beeswax shrinks away from the mould slightly, removal of the first candle was quite a painless process.

The finished candle turned out quite well. A wick test will now be required to see how the candle burns.

BeeMaster2:
Looks great, good job.
Jim Altmiller

Lesgold:
A couple of candles were made using different wick sizes. There was some wax that ran off the candle during the burn due to the complex shape. Burn time was well over 4 hours with a good flame throughout.

I had about a cup of liquid silicone left in the container so I made two beehive skep moulds using a wax blank that I poured from a purchased mould. Here is the result

As you can see from the candle that was made, no detail was lost in the new candle. The new mould cost less than 25% of the original moulds purchase price.

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