Custom Home Made Grip

Schme1440

New member
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Ironman
Any one have experience with making silicone moulds?

My plan is

Use expanding foam to make a positive mould, shapped by hand
Use positive to make a Silicone negative mould
Use silicone mould to pour and create a poly (hard plastic) positive form

Does anyone know if the expanding foam will hold up to the negative mould process? Should I use some other material (easy to shape by hand, using file's and knife, to make the original negative?
 

KevinH

The American
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Ironman
American Shoot
I have made grips using RTV silcone moulds.
I used a standard grip and plasticine to make my model, but I would expect that expanding foam would be fine.
I ended up making two piece moulds, one for the inside of the grip and one for the outside. This allowed me to reuse the inside mould with a number of outside variations.

The final grips ( I made 3 ) worked well, but it is a fairly expensive and complicated way of customizing a grip.

I should be able to dig out details of the materials / suppliers I used if you're interested.
 

Schme1440

New member
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Ironman
KevinH - Thanks for the offer.

My problem is my mould is to be smaller then my current grip so I cant use the standard one as a template. I currently have a milliput one but its rough and hand made. not that easy to work with and I would like a proper plastic one. You can find the materials pretty cheap online, looks enough to do a couple different moulds.

Had a thought to cover the foam mould in latex. That should help keep the negative smooth.
 

KevinH

The American
Fonz Awardee
Ironman
American Shoot
I'm not sure how latex and RTV Silcone react to one another, but it would probably be ok with an apropriate release agent.

I got my materials from TOMPS : Mould Making Supplies : Casting Supplies : Plasterers Supplies
I used their "Value RTV Silicone" for the mould, and cast the grip in Polyurethane Fast Cast Resin. The release agent I used was Cilchem aerosol release.

I forgot about the release agent on my first attempt - it didn't go well :duh:





The cream grip is my model, it started as a straight copy of a hoyt grip and it also shows the basic colour of the resin if you don't add pigment. you can see the grey plastercine used to build up the left hand side.

The red grip is the finished item (it was in use for about a year before I changed bow ). the somewhat dirty blue blobs are the two parts of the mould.

the photos bellow just show how things fit together. When in use, I used gaffer tape to told the mould together.



 

Schme1440

New member
Fonz Awardee
Ironman
Cool Watched some tutorials on youtube, seems simple enough, just need to make sure my container for the mould is small enough for the amount of Silicone I would buy and also get a non vacuum silicone.

I thought the Latex could be used as the release agent but now after the vids and your description I will swap it out for release agent.
 
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