Make sure your mold wall is nice and even and smooth. Also make sure there are no gaps between it and the sculptures surface. Once the mold wall is complete you may wish to take a round wooden dowel of say 3/4 -1" in diameter and press it in at various points of the side you will be molding first. These depressions should only be half an inch deep at the most, they will act as keys to help line up the mold halves when the molds complete. You will also want to place small raised triangular square pieces of clay at random points near the top of the mold wall they will act as Pry points on the completed mold.

Now on to the next step which is mixing the Ultacal 30 plaster which the mold will be made of. You will want to mix it in fairly small batches as not to waste material since you will only have 30 minutes maximum to work with the material. I use the island method to mix my plaster. Put some water into a container and sift plaster in until you have a small island of Plaster that rises above the water. You can mix the platter by hand with paint mixing stick or similar tool but I recommend using a squirrel mixer that you attach to a drill. It will give a much better mix, just make sure not to over mix as you can mix air into the plaster causing air bubbles.

Once your plaster is mixed you will want to use a disposable chip brush and brush on your first coat of plaster. This is known as a splash coat. You will continue to brush plaster on a as it thickens. Make sure to keep stirring the plaster in your container so that is does not start to set up early. Once your first batch of plaster is on you will want to do a layer of burlap, take a piece of burlap and cut it into strips and wet them down. Then mix more plaster up and take the burlap strip by strip and soak it in the plaster, genteelly wring the excess plaster out of the burplap before applying it to the mold. You will want to do a few layer of this covering all of the plaster. Once done continue to brush the plaster on over the burplap. You will want you mold to be at least 3 inches thick when finished. This may take several small batches of plaster to achieve depending on the size of the batches you make. I suggest small batches until you are used to working with the material. Right before the back half of the mold is fully set up you may want to take an old sponge and smooth the surface of the mold.

Once the back half of the mold is complete and set up you will carefully remove the clay mold wall. Once all the clay is removed and the plaster that was against it exposed you will want to brush a layer of Vaseline over the plaster, this will keep the front half of the mold from sticking to the back half of the mold. You will again mix up more plaster and repeat all of the previous steps of the Splash coat and buildup. Then the burlap layer and additional plaster over that. Again when finished

Dock demon mold with tie down strap in place.

you want the mold at least 3 inches thick. Right before the front half of the mold set up you will want to again use and old sponge and smooth the surface. once the mold is totally set up you will want to use a plaster rasp and go over the divining line of the mold with it, shaving away plaster till the line between the two halves is completely visible. Now you will want to use an old screw driver or a wooden wedge and place it in the pry points and genteelly start to hammer the mold open work slow and go all the way around the mold. Once you have the mold mostly apart this way begin to pry it apart by hand, usually the back half will come off easier. Once the back half is off you way want to soak the front half in some water to help loosen it. Just keep prying at it be warned it will take some serious effort and muscle strain. Once both mold halves are off the armature you will want to clean out all of the clay stuck in the mold. If the sculpt was done in water based clay you can use water to dissolve the small hard to get at bits if oil clay was used you can use acetone. It may take quite some time to clean all of the clay out depending on the amount of detail that was in the sculpture. Once this step is complete set the mold aside for a few days to dry , I suggest 3 or more if at all possible.

Now for the casting part the part where you finally get to see all your hard work in a finished form I bet you can't wait. So what I like to use to keep the mold halves together is a racketing tiedown strap, you can rachet it until the mold is totally locked together.