How to make Reusable Alginate Molds

Alginate Casting

I am offen asked by my Life Casting students, when alginate casting, can you reuse alginate molds?

The truth is that, when involved in any life Casting project, including Baby Hands and Feet Casting, it is virtually impossible to reuse alginate molds, as the algiante will stick to the plaster and crumble during the demoulding process.

How to reuse Alginate

There are specific brands of reversible alginate on the market, which is very expensive (over $300 for a 5kg bag) but this is not food safe or safe for life-casting purposes. It is only for use when casting inert objects.

So back to the question, how to reuse algiante and how to make reusable algiante molds? Although it is not possible to make resusable alginate molds for the purpose of life-casting, it is possible to make resuable molds, from materials other than alginate, such as silicone.

How to make reusable Molds

Knowing how to make reusable molds is vital for all serious life casters and those running successful Baby Casting Businesses.  The reason for this is simple, quite often a customer will want several copies made of their baby's hands and feet, so that they have a set for themselves and a set each for both of the Grandparents or Godparents.

Although the process of alginate casting, is fairly, quick, simple and inexpensive, nobody want's a tiny little baby, to be subjected to more time than is necessary, having their hands and feet cast.  So, forcing the baby to endure unnecessary time having their hands and feet cast, to obtain multiple molds, to create multiple copies, is neither time-effective, cost-effective or fair.

How to make a mold for Silicone Casting

If you wish to make resuable molds and create multiple copies of your orginal plaster life casts, you will need to create a silicone mold from your orignal plaster casts.  Here is a very quick overview of how you can do this:

1. Create a plaster cast first, in the usual way using alginate.
2. Leave the plaster cast to cure and dry fully.
3. Seal the plaster with an appropriate release agent to prevent the plaster from sticking to the algiante
4. Find a suitable container to create a silcone dump mold and apply a release agent.
5. Secure the plaster cast to your dump mould container with glue.
6. Measure the cavity of the container to work out the volume of silicone that will be necessary to create the mold.
7. Mix up your silicone and pour into the dump mould
8. Leave to cure
9. De-mould
10. Re-cast in plaster, Resin or Cold Cast Metal.

On this note, I will also say, that I am often asked, can you pour or cast resin into alginate.  In most cases, the answer is no, as resin does not like water or moisture, therefore most resins will react to the moisture in algiante.  So, in addition to the benefit of learning how to make reusable molds,so that you can create copies of your life casts, it is also a benefit to learn how to make reusable molds from silicone, so that you can upgrade your casts to Resin and Cold Cast Metals.

 If you would like to learn more about how to make reusable molds, how to create duplicates and copies of your baby hand and feet casts and how to upgrade your Casts to Resin and Cold Cast Metal, please check out the links below: