Best Silicone & Polyethylene Molds For Charcuterie Boards, Table Tops And Resin Art - Maker Molds

if you're a resin artist or a woodworker who works with resin you're going to want to watch a short video hi i'm sean from crafted elements and this is our line of maker molds we have two distinct lines here craft elements which we've been selling since 2019 we have our silicone mold which are industrial strength production grade very large very thick and very durable molds for making chicory boards small table tops and other resin art we also have our newer line of formed and injection molded uh polyethylene molds which are made of hdp and ldpe and these are really cool because they are one piece molds that are formed over an iron form uh they are never going to leak and they are slightly flexible which actually gives them an advantage to be able to demold your product or your finished piece quickly so which mold would you choose well let's talk about the advantages first of all both these are one piece molds so you're never gonna have any leaking you don't have to worry about duct tape silic extra silicone beads anything like that um over the hdp molds in the market where you can have leaking you've got all these contraptions to deal with maybe screws to put in uh these are definitely a huge time saver particularly if you're doing multiple pours a week if you're a low capacity artist or are you doing this as a hobby you might not want to invest in these they're certainly not cheap but the wooden duct tape method could always work for you but clearly if you have been making resin art or chicory boards or table or small table tops for any period of time you could probably see the advantage of these right away now there are also welded hdpe molds in the market which we sold for a short period of time and i think these are really cool because you don't have to worry about any weld seams coming out in your resin or your pore these are perfectly uh molded one piece they have a 1 8 to a one-quarter inch radius in the corners and all around if you look at some of the welded molds in the market you'll see they're kind of welded by hand and they can be a little rough which clearly comes out in your resin i still think they're good molds but these are just as good if not better so what you're really here for today is to see what's going to save you time these are going to save you time money increase your production capacity and just make your life generally better i've pre-cut a piece of wormy maple for this mold and silver maple for this mold you'll notice this is thinner just because that's a stock i had they will both accept you know one and a half two inch thick pieces of wood all day long now the one key i want to mention here between these two lines of mold if you are a resin artist and you're not going to be using you know wood you're not going to be wanting to plane or trim or basically if you want to just pour your resin do your artwork take it out and sell that piece or use that piece the silicone molds are definitely superior they have a nicer finish they're perfectly smooth on the inside very small radius on the edges and corners whereas with these which are the formed uh an injection molded sorry injection molded or formed plastic molds they are imperfect and i mean that by imperfect in comparison to the silicone molds obviously they're still flat bottoms flat sides but they're slightly like an orange peel type texture on here you can't see in the video but your resin is going to be a little bit of an orange peel effect so you're definitely going to want to plane the bottom and top of the of your piece and and you know trim off the the radius corners before you actually go on to preparing your piece so if you're a resin artist and you want the quickest uh you know product with little finishing totally get the silicone molds if you're going to be using this with wood anyway um wooden resin you can kind of go with either either one either one that fits your budget and the size you need so one thing i want to caution is with these silicone molds you can certainly use them without a mold release but i definitely recommend using them with an old release we've sold hundreds of these molds but i've certainly had reports of people pouring their their piece and then having maybe a partially set part of the epoxy um bond to the inside of the silicone mold and then when they take their piece out they'll end up with a small divot or tear on the inside of the mold mold's still usable it's not going to leak but you certainly don't want that especially with the cost of these things so it's totally recommended to kind of invest in in some silicone or epoxy mold release spray you can get this stuff from amazon for 10 to 15 dollars you can and it goes a long way you could probably do 40 security boards with this one can alone and it's pretty simple now you should wear a mask while you're doing this obviously i can't for the purpose of this video but you're really just going to do a quick coat on the inside of your silicone mold you can actually use this stuff for the polyethylene molds as well it'll actually make demolding even easier because you'll you'll see when we go to the next uh sequence of this video where i'm de-molding these the silicone molds as a breeze it takes seconds whereas these takes a little bit of work you need to work the sides work the bottom to get your piece out so again you can use that silicone spray with either molds but we definitely want to use them with the silicone molds so i've pre-cut some pieces of maple as i said and you can see they're just going to fit right in there i've pre-mixed some resin because this is not a video about resin this is a video about time-saving molds um and then you're you're ready to pour now before you're going to pour you're probably looking at these and saying well how are you going to hold this wood down there's no built-in clamping system that's certainly uh you know kind of a disadvantage of these molds but i don't think it's a big one because there's many many ways you can easily take care of this what we do here in the shop is we'll use scrap pieces of hdp we'll put them on the wood and then we use kettlebells or small hand weights and that does a sufficient job those pieces of wood aren't going to move they're not going to rise uh with the buoyancy of the resin underneath the wood the other option is is if you wanted to move this the side of your tabletop like so you can use a clamp and just kind of go like this and clamp it down like so so the fact that there's no built-in clamping system i don't really think is a big deal there's definitely there are definitely ways around it especially if you're a maker you're probably pretty creative as it is this is the safest and easiest way i've been doing it and typically most of our customers do it as well now without further ado let's get a close-up of the pour and then we'll go to the d-mold okay here we go with our pour this is a slow cure epoxy it'll take two to three days to fully cure and obviously we'd use this stuff because in particular this is a very thick piece so we'd need a slow cure otherwise the epoxy would bubble up so pouring epoxy is probably nothing that you're unfamiliar with but as you can see using these molds is definitely a huge time saver you have to worry about sealing them you don't have to worry about duct tape or hardware or clamping rather clamping of the internal mold i mean so we'll let the epoxy set over the next couple of days and we'll come back and you can see just how much time you're gonna save de-molding these okay our epoxy is fully set so it's time for de-molding and this is we're gonna see these molds are really gonna save you some time so we're gonna remove our weights and our clamps our hdp spacers we'll start with the silicone one first it's the easiest one because these bend really really easily and you're going to hear like a sound as the silicone and wood detach from the rather the resin would detach from the silicone mold and there you go pretty much left clean ready to use again [Music] and i'm going to do this other one that i made off video rectangular mold a rectangular board and same thing we're just going to peel the mold back hear that sound and here's another one as you can see that was really really easy these silicone molds make that demolding process ridiculously easy polyethylene ones aren't hard either one thing i want to mention is some of the molds on the market the welded and the multi-piece hdp molds they're thick and normally in woodworking and you know we're talking about quality materials thicker is better bigger is better yada yada and normally that's true but when it comes to these molds the thin wall is what actually makes them functional this thin wall allows the sides to be completely straight and not tapered like some of the molds in the market because they are flexible so you can literally use your fingers to go around and uh and detach the resin from the edge of the mold um if you're having a little bit of trouble doing that you can use this method which is just going around and tapping it with a rubber mallet but normally you can just turn this over and hit it and there you go it's out clean polyethylene mold ready to use again and all three of these pieces are we can continue to trim plain and finish and get ready for sale the key takeaways from this video are that these one-piece sealed molds are going to save you both time and money and pay for themselves in literally just a handful of pores if you're using these for epoxy resin only art without wood i definitely recommend the silicone molds over the polyethylene ones you're going to get the cleanest piece right out of the gate that requires little to no finishing if you're creating wood and resin pieces like charcuterie boards and small table tops and things like that either mold will work but just know that the form polyethylene molds are going to require a little bit more planing trimming and finishing a mold release spray as i had mentioned earlier in the video is required or at least recommended for the silicone molds it's going to increase the longevity of the mold and prevent possible tear out but to be honest in the last couple of years when i've been using these molds i rarely use a spray never had a problem but certainly possible so that's why we recommend the spray you can use this spray as well for these polyethylene molds it's definitely not required with the polyethylene molds but it's going to make the demolding process that much easier we have many common shapes and sizes used by makers just like you available to get a complete list and to order your own molds simply visit craftedelements.com and click on the molds link at the top i hope you enjoyed this video and can see how beneficial these molds can be make sure you follow us on facebook or instagram craftedelementsco to stay up to date on all of our new product releases happy making you

Channel: Crafted Elements

Views: 17,065

Rating: 4.8681316 out of 5

Keywords: epoxy resin, mold, resin mold, silicone mold, hdpe mold, charcuterie board mold, serving board mold, river table, makers, woodworking, woodworker, resin art, artist, how to, diy, crafted elements, live edge wood, cheese board, large, big, reusable mold

Id: ssK1HTiJIhI

Length: 10min 19sec (619 seconds)

Published: Sun Nov 29 2020