I just stumbled across this thread, and haven?t put much thought into this before. I use Bondo in some of my taxidermy work. There is a sweet spot where bondo is flexible and impressionable. I mean you have to get it right, but....
If you took a plastic foundation and sprayed it with cooking spray or something, (possibly covered it in plastic wrap?) and smeared bondo all over it kinda thick, 3/8-1/2?, and then kept testing the leftovers in the mixing bowl or putty knife to see when it?s ready to peel. You could peel it off the plastic foundation just like silicone, then lay it down flat and may be even just lay a small piece of plywood on top to press it flat. ( there is a 3 minute window where you can flop a sheet of bondo around like a fruit roll up.) You would need two of these to make paddles trimmed to the right size to press wax.
As for the roller. A 4 inch paint roller.
Strip the nap off down to the plastic, on second thought, who cares, leave the nap on. I would go for epoxy-sculpt (2 part epoxy molding putty) so it would be durable, but modeling clay over the roller and roll the impression from a plastic frame. Once hard you should be able to roll it onto the wax. Things to consider would be the diameter of the roller after the medium is applied. If you roll across the plastic foundation too far and the diameter isn?t sized 100% correctly the pattern won?t line up after one full roll. Just stop at one roll across the plastic to imprint the roller. If it doesn?t meet up just right, leave it to the bees to sort out. If you roll too far in the clay imprint stage you could double imprint the mold with a 50% overlap. Just roll to 90%, roll back and look at the transition, roll forward a little more, roll back and check, roll forward.....until 100% coverage on the paint roller. Hang it up and let it cure.
Once cured, roll it across flat wax foundation.
Probably won?t work. Let me know how it does.
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