Sugarland Bob
Member
I have just started to try something new and am experiencing troubles. I have acquired a couple of snake skins and am casting them in BG's resin kit from Arizona Silhouette. No problem with how it works. They come out real nice and can be cut on my lathe as well as the store-bought blanks.
My problem lies with what happens to the skin after it gets in the mold and the resin is poured on top of it. The first skin is brownish-red from a corn snake and the second one is black and white from a rat snake. After the mold hardens, I notice that the skins fade quite noticeably. In other words, the brownish-red corn snake skin kind of turns an entire brownish color and the black and white rat snake turns all gray. It's so bad that you can no longer see the beautiful diamond pattern that was originally there on both snakes.
I live southwest of Houston and I have to do all the casting in my garage because the smell is really bad and I have children in the house. Lately, it's around 98 degrees during the day with about 95% humidity. I follow the instructions very closely for places with high temps and humidity. The molds harden well and I don't have any problems with bubbles or cracking. We won't be getting below 75-degree weather until around mid-October and I didn't want to wait til then to cast more blanks.
I know when you mix the hardener with the resin there's some type of chemical reaction going on. I can't feel any heat around the mold while it's solidifying, so I'm pretty sure heat is not a problem (but I haven't ruled that out entirely). So I assume something chemical is ruining the coloring of the skins. A couple of days ago I put shellac on one tube before I put it in the resin and on the other I sprayed clear acrylic. I checked them this morning and the same results occurred.
Has anyone else experienced this sort of problem and knows a solution? I know I'm doing something wrong, I just don't know what.
My problem lies with what happens to the skin after it gets in the mold and the resin is poured on top of it. The first skin is brownish-red from a corn snake and the second one is black and white from a rat snake. After the mold hardens, I notice that the skins fade quite noticeably. In other words, the brownish-red corn snake skin kind of turns an entire brownish color and the black and white rat snake turns all gray. It's so bad that you can no longer see the beautiful diamond pattern that was originally there on both snakes.
I live southwest of Houston and I have to do all the casting in my garage because the smell is really bad and I have children in the house. Lately, it's around 98 degrees during the day with about 95% humidity. I follow the instructions very closely for places with high temps and humidity. The molds harden well and I don't have any problems with bubbles or cracking. We won't be getting below 75-degree weather until around mid-October and I didn't want to wait til then to cast more blanks.
I know when you mix the hardener with the resin there's some type of chemical reaction going on. I can't feel any heat around the mold while it's solidifying, so I'm pretty sure heat is not a problem (but I haven't ruled that out entirely). So I assume something chemical is ruining the coloring of the skins. A couple of days ago I put shellac on one tube before I put it in the resin and on the other I sprayed clear acrylic. I checked them this morning and the same results occurred.
Has anyone else experienced this sort of problem and knows a solution? I know I'm doing something wrong, I just don't know what.