I’ve made three versions of the Colonel puppet: two full-bodied versions and one without legs that can fit in the landrover model.
To make the heads, I have used ‘Smooth-On Ecoflex 00-35’. I first made the sculpt using ‘Super Sculpey’. From this I was able to make a silicone mould. I first experimented with a cheap tin-cure silicone which I bought from Ebay, but this did not achieve the results I wanted, so I tried ‘Smooth-On Mold Star 20T’ which was expensive but was more suitable to capture the detail of the original sculpt. It also sets in just 6 minutes, whereas the tin-cured silicone takes 24 hours to cure. I then melted ‘Chavant NSP Plasteline’ in a saucepan and poured the contents into the mould, making sure to brush plenty into the ears of the mould, and left it to cool and set (this process is explained in detail by Hani Dombe on the brilliant website https://www.tomandhani.com/single-post/2016/04/02/Making-Silicone-puppets-Part-1-%E2%80%93-The-head). I repeated the process several times until I had 12 identical heads. The ‘Plasteline’ was soft enough to enable me to alter the mouths, so that each has a different expression. I was then able to make a new mould for each head. For these I used the remainder of the ‘Mold Star’ and then plaster of paris. I found that the plaster of paris gave an inferior result to the silicone and gave the eyelids a much softer appearance. It was also necessary to destroy the sculpt in order to free it from the plaster moulds as plaster is rigid. The ears were a particular challenge throughout the process and the finished silicone heads needed some patching after they were released from the moulds. At the final stage, I put some wire and a small piece of rigid ‘Plastazote’ into each head mould and poured in the ‘Ecoflex silicone’, making sure that the moulds were first covered in ‘Vaseline’ so that they could be opened again (an alternative for this, though expensive, is ‘Mann Ease Release spray’). Whilst the heads were still curing, I brushed more ‘Ecoflex’ over it with acrylic paints added to lend some colour to the hair and lips. It was important to do this when the silicone was still curing so that the layers would stick. Finally, I applied baby powder to remove the tackiness and shine from the silicone and pushed ‘K and S square tubing’ through the neck, which I araldited to the ‘Plastazote’ inside. ‘Araldite’ will not stick to silicone, so the ‘Plastazote’ gave the ‘K and S’ something to fuse to. The small house is for the background of the garden set.
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December 2023
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