cold cast destiny hunter knife

[seangilbert]

First time trying cold casting, I think it turned out pretty swell. buffed the aluminum with some steel wool, and used a watered down paint to drip/brush the pattern on the knife.
I have since removed the paint i did on the right image, it was a little to dark and didn't look very good up close so i will try something new.
any suggestions on how to get the stained metal pattern on the knife would be much appreciated.

 

[vshore100]

Excellent work! It would take a while to do, but you could always lay tape down on your knife, draw the pattern that you want, then lightly cut it out with an exacto knife. You could also use a liquid mask to paint the areas that you didn't want painted, spray it, then peel the mask off to reveal the pattern. Best of luck, and once again, awesome work on this! Seeing this makes me want to pour a couple of cold casts of mine.

 

[Bob Rosland]

You could try some chemical aluminum darkeners. Not entirely sure how well they would work on something cold cast instead of just solid aluminum, but it might be worth a shot.

 

[seangilbert]

yea that's what I was thinking. I used some rubber cement to mask off the areas I didn't want painted. FYI on cold casting, if your mold has seams on a flat face you will see the plastic underneath after trimming.

 

[seangilbert]

I used some lighter paint for the splatter pattern, and added some more weathering then used some gloss acrylic clear coat.

 

[seangilbert]

You could try some chemical aluminum darkeners. Not entirely sure how well they would work on something cold cast instead of just solid aluminum, but it might be worth a shot.

maybe next time, I also thought about mixing some iron powder into some resin and then painting the pattern on the silicone mold. and going in after and with some aluminum on the remainder of the mold.

 

[Bob Rosland]

Here's a thread where someone sorta did that. It would be amazing if you could pull off the different colors with iron and aluminum. Hell, I'd be all over a cast like that.

 

[WolfS117]

That looks great!

 

[seangilbert]

Okay so I went back and did some science on these knives.



The Iron powder is a lot heavier than aluminum so it doesn't coat the inside of the mold as well as aluminum. which is why you can barely see the black resin on the all aluminum knife.
The black resin with iron powder ended up looking a lot like graphite, not as shiny as the aluminum but still a nice finish.



The iron powder also made some cool delta looking patterns on the edges of the black.



The aluminum darkener turned out to be one of my favorites so far. I bought "Birtchwood Casey Aluminum Black" metal finish off amazon for a few bucks.
Because the aluminum is just on the surface I had to scrub it with the solution covered cotton ball, otherwise it doesn't noticeably react with the metal at all. The package said to leave it on for a minute and wash off with cold water.



I ended up getting a really nice finish by masking off a pattern with rubber cement and rubbing it till it was the darkness I liked. You can get a lot of depth using this method a lot of blues and slight golds.