Making Imitation Ivory Buttons

Here is another tutorial that I wrote back in 2006.

I needed ½” diameter carved “ivory” buttons as decorative elements on a Rus Viking helmet (shown above), and this is one way to make very nice ones.

I started with Sculpey polymer clay and built a little blob on the end of a short 1” diameter wooden dowel. The dowel gave me something to hold onto while I sculpted, and also started me off with a round base. I knew I was going to shrink the 1” diameter down to half that size, so I didn’t have to make the sculpt very detailed. I sculpted a little Viking face with big eyes, a simple helm and a big moustache.

Next I hot glued the dowel down onto a board, and hot glued a small paper cup around it with the end cut out. Then I mixed up silicone rubber and poured it into the cup to make a mold of the face.

After the rubber had cured, I cast the face button in a shrinking material called Hydroshrink™. It is available through The Compleat Sculptor . Hydroshrink is a urethane compound that you mix with water, and shrinks uniformly to about half size as the water evaporates. I placed the Hydroshrink casting in a warm place, and waited several days for it to shrink to my desired size of ½” diameter. It took three days.

I then molded it again in the silicone rubber. After curing I cast out several parts in a fast cast urethane TC-808 available from BJB Enterprises . These castings I sanded flat on the back to the exact size and shape that I was after. Then I glued on a stem to make it into a button without having the thread show from the front. At this point the button face is .5” diameter by about .3” deep, and the stem is .3” diameter and about .3” in length (it will be shortened as a button).

I molded these pieces yet again to get my final production molds. I then cast as many as I needed (in my case 24) in the TC-808 (which is a white urethane resin) and a very small amount of yellow brown dye to get my ivory color. Alternately I could have added ivory alkyd pigment or paint.



My challenge for these buttons was that the stem could only be .1” long where they set into the leather helmet. To accomplish this I drilled a 1/16” hole through the stem as close to the back of the button as I could. I then sanded down the stem from .3” to .1” on a power sander.

At this point the only thing left to do was to antique the buttons so that they looked aged. For this I used Jel’d brand wood stain by Wood Kote in the Fruitwood color.

Olifant: Trunk Fabrication

Pachydermos' trunk was a commercial vacuum cleaner hose that I covered in lambskin wrapped with waxed thread. I like it a lot, but I was thinking how cool it would be if I could build the trunk from scratch. I've decided that neoprene would be an ideal material to make a corrugated hose from (needed for the trunk to bend smoothly), and that is a material I can buy and cast into a plaster mold.

I thought and thought about how to make a steamy corrugated hose, and didn't really come up with much that would still allow it to bend easily, so I decided to put more emphasis on it graduating from a larger diameter to a smaller. After some experimenting I came up with the model above built from laser cut acrylic sheet mounted on a bolt.

To smooth out the surface and to fill in the cracks I've coated it with urethane resin, letting it build up in the recesses.

Over that I've brushed a layer of casting latex, which will make it easier to free from the rigid plaster mold, because it will have a little give.

And here I've started laying plasticine against the bottom half of the model to form one of the two mold halves. Next step will be to pour plaster over the top half.

Olifant: Tusk, Take 2

While going through my collection of yard sale finds, I came across the flashlight shown below. I bought it because I loved its Buck Rogers futuristic look.

Since I've been working on the new Olifant tusk canister, it ocurred to me that the missile end could make a good finial for such a canister. And as I wasn't feeling all tingly inside about the versison I had been working on I decided to begin again with the flashlight as my starting point.


After molding the flashlight in RTV silicone and casting it in urethane resin, I cut out a series of acrylic discs and stacked them around the "missile".


The flashlight has nine vertical grooves spaced evenly around its circumference except for one place, which is wider than the other eight. I decided to add a piece of hardware there above the discs, bigger than the other eight screws which will be added to each finished casting. Then I coated the acrylic discs with urethane resin to seal them and smooth them out so that the canister will rotocast more easily (that's the white stuff in the picture above).


As it was difficult to see what I really had with the white and black and gray all contrasting, I sprayed a coat of white sandable primer, which makes it much easier to view.

Olifant: Tusk Construction

In addition to giving Pachydermos' offspring a new set of tusk canisters, I have decided to also give him a new trunk hose. To celebrate that differentiation I have named him Olifant, a variation of the word Elephant.

I have molded the assemblage of brass parts (on the left) and cast it in a gray urethane resin (on the right).

Here I have sanded irregularities, filled cracks with Bondo™, and engraved the cap to match the hex acorn nut that will sit on top and hold the canister against the mask. I've also drilled and mounted twelve brads, which are meant to simulate rivets holding the top to the case.

Defender: Mask with Respirators

I have finally gotten the Defender mask antiqued black, and have the eyepieces in place. I also have the pair of respirators mostly done.


Every day it gets a little closer to being complete. I look forward to putting the mask and helmet together for a photo.

Defender: How I Make an Eyepiece

I thought it might be interesting for some of you to see what goes into creating one of my resin parts. For the Defender mask I decided to make one of the eyepieces similar to a camera lens, with a stepped conical inside. I built the prototype in layers of 1/16" (1.5 mm) thick clear acrylic sheeet. The drawing below shows part of the file I created in CorelDraw.



As you can see, the outside dimension of each piece stays the same, while the inside hole decreases in size as we move down the page. Some of the outsides are zig-zag while others are smooth. The red lines are the cut lines, while the blue lines are just for planning. The tiny red circles are for alignment pins.



Here are the pieces after being cut out with the laser. The parts on the left were extras I didn't use; the ones on the right were put together with three pins, and sprayed white to seal the cracks.



I then molded the prototype with blue silicone rubber and let it cure overnight. The next day I cast it in a charcoal urethane resin. I drilled holes around the perimeter (that had already been marked with the laser) and inserted twelve rivets to make it a bit steamier. I then remolded it and cast it in black.



Here is the finished part with pewter Rub N Buff™ added to the surface to keep with my black and silver color scheme. I'm not sure yet if I will use this one or recast it in a cold cast aluminum.



The small ½" (12.5 mm) diameter hole at the bottom of the lens sits fairly close to the wearer's eye, allowing him or her to see out, while keeping others from looking in.