Seeing Double with Body Double® Skin Safe Silicone Rubber

Seeing Double with Body Double® Skin Safe Silicone Rubber

Body Double^® is measured 1A : 1B by volume (no scale necessary) and mixes easily without entrapping air. It butters onto the skin and holds vertical or inverted surfaces (i.e. under the chin).

There are two speeds available: FAST SET (for small areas like the face) with a working time of 90 seconds and a cure time of 6 minutes & STANDARD SET (for large areas like a full torso) with a working time of 6 minutes and a cure time of about 20 minutes. Special effects houses that make full body molds on a regular basis use the fast and standard speeds together for greater control during the molding process.

Better Than Alginate? Alginates (such as Smooth-On's Alja-Safe^®) are low cost and convenient (just add water to alginate powder). They cure quickly and are easily removed from the body without a separating agent, capturing exceptional detail from the model. The issue with alginates is that they are temporary... good for making a single-use mold and one casting only. You end up destroying the mold to remove the casting. Your casting options are also limited to wax, plaster, or ultra-fast resins.

A Body Double^® rubber mold is stretchy-strong and lets you cast wax, plaster, plastics, silicone or urethane rubber and other materials. Unlike alginates, you can use a Body Double^® mold over and over again to make many castings. The only clear disadvantage that Body Double^® rubber has compared to alginate is the price. Body Double^® is a lot more expensive. It comes down to what your goals are for your project. For many, making a temporary mold and getting one casting is all that is required. However, for movie special effects fabricators making effects for films like HARRY POTTER, PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN and SPIDER MAN, being able to use a mold over and over again actually makes Body Double^® less expensive to use when you consider the time and labor savings realized by making a mold one time and being able to use it again and again.

FAQ's (Frequently Asked Questions) for Body Double^® Skin-Safe Silicone - like all molding materials, there is a learning curve associated with using Body Double^®. We offer several FAQ's for reference here: http://smoothon.smodev.com/faq_list.php?cID=3

a letter from the edge...
"We were in a bad place on this project and everyone was highly stressed", says Roberta Sonier, head ofthe mold shop for Surreal Design Effects, a skin effects company based in the U.S. that was doing life casting and creature effects for the most recent HARRY POTTER film. "We were way behind schedule and on the edge of a team-wide melt down over this."

"The rubber that we used for years for body casting was always a hassle but now was really giving us fits at the worst possible time. You have to weigh out A & B (using a scale) before mixing, and if you're not dead-on accurate, the material does not set up. The scale we had was World War I surplus and rusted. Also, this stuff is thicker than tar and needs vacuuming to get the air out... we didn't have a vacuum in this shop and were getting huge bubbles in our molds making alot of them useless landfill."

"A friend working one lot over had some Body Double^® left over from his last film and turned us on to it. We were blown away at how easy it was to mix and apply, how fast it was, how well it picked up detail and how strong the molds were when we cast. We placed emergency orders with three of your distributors in Europe... cleaned them all out of their inventory. I don't know if you know how amazing this stuff is, but it literally saved our necks and reputation for future projects."

Body Double Fan for Life,
Roberta Sonier
Surreal Design Effects, Inc.

1 - Having all mold making materials & supplies assembled prior to beginning the process will save time and avoid potential problems. Disposable cups, mixing sticks and brushes are used for measuring, mixing and applying the silicone rubber.	2 - Although Body Double® will not stick to human skin, it will encapsulate hair. Body Double® Release Cream is applied to prevent sticking to hair.	3 - Accessory materials such as Silicone Thinner and Thi-Vex® II thickener may be added into Body Double® to modify the consistency of the silicone rubber.
4 - Body Double® is measured properly, mixed thoroughly and applied directly onto the skin.	5 - The skin surface is covered with the first layer of Body Double®. The recommended thickness for the mold 3/8'' (1 cm) - some areas may be a little thicker.	6 - Body Double® will adhere to itself, so multiple layers of silicone are applied on top of each other.
7 - Some surface areas represent ''undercuts''. For these areas, batches of Body Double® are mixed with Thi-Vex® II silicone thickener which makes the rubber more buttery in consistency. This helps to build up the undercut areas.	8 - As an option, thickened Body Double® is put into a cake-icing bag and squeezed out to form a thick bead around the perimeter of the mold. This will help to register the plaster support shell.	9 - The registration bead will adhere permanently to the rubber surface.
10 - After the Body Double® silicone rubber is applied and fully cured, a plaster bandage support shell is made directly onto the silicone surface while the rubber is still on the model.	11 - The plaster bandages are dipped into water; excess water is squeezed out and the bandages are then layed-up onto the silicone surface.	12 - Multiple layers of plaster bandage are applied in a matter of minutes.
13 - To minimize strain on the model, the tilt-bed is orientated horizontally for the final touches of the support shell.	14 - If the support shell is not sturdy enough the mold could distort when casting.	15 - Wodden dowels are incorporated into the support shell to provide a base for the mold to 'stand' on during the casting stage.
16 - Multiple connection points are required for the wooden dowels to be secured to the support shell.	17 - After the plaster bandages have fully cured, the tilt-bed is uprighted to begin the demolding process.	18 - With minimal effort, the support shell is carefully removed from the silicone rubber.
19 - The Body Double® silicone rubber mold is then carefully removed from the model. The entire process has taken 1 hour 40 minutes up to this point.	20 - After demold, the silicone rubber mold is placed back into the support shell...	21 - Excess 'flashing' of silicone rubber is trimmed away from the mold.
22 - The Body Double® silicone rubber mold is now ready to be cast into.	23 - A wide variety of casting media may be used in a Body Double® mold. For the first casting we decided to create a piece using the Metal Cold-Casting Technique, which will yield a bronze-like finish on the surface.	24 - To prevent any casting media from bonding to the perimeter of the plaster support shell, a thin coating of Sonite Wax® is applied to the plaster surface.
25 - Smooth-Cast® 325 urethane resin is measured out 1A:1B by volume (no scale necessary).	26 - Several drops of SO-Strong® Black urethane tint is added into the Smooth-Cast® 325 Part B to aid in visual definition of the castings surface.	27 - The SO-Strong® urethane tint is then thoroughly blended into Part B until color is uniform.
28 - To achieve a bronze look, real Bronze powder will be blended into Smooth-Cast® 325. The ratio used is 1A:1B:1 Bronze powder by volume (no scale necessary).	29 - The Bronze powder is then poured into the pigmented Part B and thoroughly blended until uniform. (Be sure to scrape the sides & bottom of the container).	30 - When the mixture of Part A, Part B, black tint and Bronze powder is thoroughly mixed, it is then cast into the mold and spread around using disposable chip brushes.
31 - The entire surface is coated. A second layer is then applied directly onto the first layer to build up the casting's thickness.	32 - A secondary material is utilized to add dimensional stability to the casting. This material is an expanding urethane foam called Foam-iT!® 15, a two-part material that is measured 1A:1B by volume (no scale necessary).	33 - Several drops of black SO-Strong® tint is also added into Foam-iT!® 15 to make it cure black in color. Part A
34 - After the casting media has fully cured, the casting is then demolded from the Body Double® silicone rubber mold.	35 - Post finishing work may include buffing and staining the surface of the casting. Smooth-Cast® urethane resins may be sanded, primed, drilled, tapped, hammered, grinded, stained and painted.	36 - The finished casting. Notice the high-resolution surface, which was perfectly captured by the Body Double® mold and then represented by the Smooth-Cast® resin.