Disclaimer all picture where taken with my crap phone, sorry
So about a month ago i decided to start making keycaps. Going into it pretty much blind on the experience side i watched a video or two about casting action figures and small models and took a trip to the Art Store.
my make shift work area i cramped into my room right before beginning
The first few series i stuck to casting blanks instead of the sculpts i was working on and was working with a DIY silicone mix, single piece molds and cups for my mold boxes. This lead to some problems real quick, including not getting the mixture right for the silicone to set full and issues with casting the actual stem for the cap. Here are a few of the survivors of those attempts.
Realizing mixing my own silicone would be a long trial and error process to find the right recipe, I opted to order some professional pour-able silicone online. With a few days to wait and my impatience showing its full glory i decided to work out some kinks of the previous process with polymer clay as a mold material for actual casting. Using the polymer brought the realization that a two piece mold was going to be the best way to control color position and also helped choose the positions for the spruces. Many "z grade"s were made during this process haha
Heres the first polymer clay mold right before the first casting
A timeline of the polymer molds, staring with the one from the previous pic cut in half and going clockwise
Good amount of the polymer casts together, timeline progress is left to right
The silicone arrived, i was excited as **** and feeling pretty confident so i ended up using all of the order in about a day and ended up with two keys encased, 5 top molds for artisans, 4 for blanks and bottom molds for only 3 of them. The stems on the 3 bottoms i had made weren't the best for getting the resin down in it so i was pretty much stuck to playing with different colors in the resin and trying mostly unsuccessfully to jam the stem full. Not the best planning but i did have something to work with while waiting on my second order of silicone.
During the first silicone pour sesh
Many Rastamons colors were tried
another rastamon shot that has some topres in the shot
Using the last scraps of silicone form this order i recasted stem a few times for the rastamon, this is the first successful one to come out
Second order took some time to get to me due to the holidays, so while making different colorways for the Rastamon was fun a Christmas gift lead me to a art store i hadn't tried and discovered a small package of pour-able silicone to continue my keycrafting efforts
I found that this new silicone was way closer to water in viscostiy than my other stuff when pouring and with a few jabs of my small brush the stems would fill right up. I got 4 full molds and 2 more bottoms made. Very happy with how these new molds were casting I cranked out about 70 more "alphas"
container of z grades
good chunk of blanks in different colorways and stages of development
12 different "KB fats" the back row was the most recent, with very clean lines and the double shotting
10 alphas of the smoker logo, these were a little ruff and i will be redoing the lining
Had to make a skull of my own, then a few more
"
*pictures removed*
Thats about where i am right now, Currently waiting on my third order of silicone from the internet with this new stuff having a higher viscosity similar to what i found at the store in tiny amounts. I also recieved my buckling spring cap and switch plus my alps switches (no caps) so once i have the new order of silicone i be able to cast all the artisans in MX, Topre, Buckling Spring and eventually Alps
glory shot of my current stem selection
Heres my keycap desk currently, have 8 molds curing right now all of which im pretty proud of, will be updating with pics as soon as i pop out the first castings
