Custom Cast Gorillas – King Kong

A customer in Georgia who makes custom urban luxury cars for a living is designing a car with the theme of King Kong. He got in touch with us to see if we could make some King Kong faces to attach to the car. He wanted the faces to be 4″ tall with 1.5″ pop out. The faces needed to have a bolt sticking out the back and a hole going to the nostrils where smoke will be sent through a hose and shoot out of the nostrils. He will be painting the Kong faces with metallic paint to look like cast metal decorations near the front fenders of the car.

Here are the reference images that were used

The first step was to take water based clay and create the model.

Next, a scrap piece of clay (Blick stoneware clay) was then put in a cup and we poured our silicone rubber over it as a test to see if the clay was compatible with the silicone. It was just fine, the rubber set up firm but flexible. If it remains sticky or gooey, you know the clay is not compatible with the silicone.  Next, a container was sprayed with a mold release (ease release 200) and the clay model was placed into the container and silicone was poured over it to create a flexible rubber mold. We used smooth-on’s oomoo 35 which is available on Amazon. You simply mix A with B in a 1:1 ratio and pour and let it sit overnight.

If you’re interested in trying it out, Click this button for a direct link to the Amazon page…

Next, the mold was cleaned with water and dried. Next, we created a cone shape out of clay to create the hole to the nose.  A bolt was then suspended as well. We had to make sure the bolt was perfectly 90 degree.

Then we mixed up smoothcast 300 1:1 ratio. You have a few minutes to mix it and then it takes about 15 min. to set up as white plastic.

If you’re interested in trying it out, Click this button for a direct link to the Amazon page…

The clay was then cleaned out and the back was grinded down and cleaned up with a dremel bit.

Next, the plastic casts were spray painted with a gray primer.

We made a bunch of these for fun. Now we have a game where they keep appearing in different places around the shop.

Here’s a video showing some live footage of the process.

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