February felicitations

Heyo - another month, another piece of progress! Besides the day-job cleanup that's nearing the finish line, I've spent the time crunchworking on the suit-rig and gotten past a few milestones. Let's start with the rig stuff, yeah?

(also: shout-out to the perfect shelves I managed to mount in the fume hood!)

Suit-rig stuff!

First of all, I figured out how to handle the casting barrier. A couple of tries with a different brand/type of epoxy resin confirmed that it's something to do with the resin type that kills all the chemical barrier options. With the other resin type one of them worked like a charm, no issues whatsoever (cup pic). I'll probably dig deeper into this someday if I end up doing significant resin casting, whether for molds or just stylish stuff.

The general condition of the already cast mold-half had me a bit hesitant though. Wouldn't take much of a fuckup with the chemical barrier for it to lock in place and/or take serious damage upon opening. That's when I had heureka moment #1. Had a roll of stupid-thin plastic sheeting in the storeroom. Think 'those annoying single-use bags that catch the wind and become airborne', barely any material in it at all. It's pretty fragile, but any weight whatsoever would press it into any available (and reasonable) crevice in the mold (montage pic).

If you combine the plastic sheeting with the epoxy putty I tried a while back, you've got a pretty surefire way to get a durable and nicely sealed cast along the entire edge. Keys included. Wouldn't you know, it worked like a charm. Another bit of the thin sheeting across the rest of the mold, some clay to weld the edges of it, and voila. 

Took me quite a while of plotting, planning and actual doing to get it done, but I now have the full casting chamber shell done and opened! (cover pic, obv!) Came out great! The distancing-cubes seem to have worked exactly as intended, and the fit and edges seem to be just right. Looks a bit scrunchy, but that doesn't matter. Mannequin mold is the actual surface carrier, this just needs to wrap around it.

There's still a lot more to do before we're set for casting, and I know I've said it a whole slew of times so far... But I'm feeling optimistic about this. Hopefully all the lessons have hit critical mass.

Todo-list right now;

• Clean up the chamber pieces. Clay removal, edge cutting, etc.
• Mount the back-piece on the stand. Ensure it can hold 50-70kg of weight.
• Drill & prep screws for the two front 'doors' of the chamber
• Rig attachment points for the mannequin inside, ensure it all goes together as it should
• Drill & mount the basic plumbing system. Easy version, just gravity-feed and a drain
• Add a thin liner around the edges, test so it's all water-proof
• Rehearse and experiment with the mannequin insertion until it seems to be foolproof
• Figure out the shelving system needed to keep e.g. 3x20L jugs of latex at roof height for pouring
• Finish the mannequin (replacing the torso with a more durable print, finishing surface layers)
• try it out?

As you can see, it's still going to be quite the journey. With the simplified design there's a lot fewer parts that can go wrong though. Most of the complexity in this one is getting the chamber mounted so it holds the weight + getting it waterproofed. Holding 50-70kg isn't that hard though, and the clean edge means a very thin and simple liner will do the trick.

We'll see how far I make it over the upcoming month. Interesting times ahead!

Other stuff

As for other stuff, the job cleanup is almost at the finish line. First paycheck from the new setup landing in early march, after which I'm in a stable enough situation again. Long story, will spill someday when it's further behind me. 

This all coincides with the "back late Q1"-posting for the store and such. I've slowly but surely started looking into it. If we take it by parts...

• Suitworks, suits. You've read the above text, and can probably conclude that it'll take at least until summer to even get a prototype suit cast. Future worry.
• Suitworks, hood sales. I'll have to fire up the infrastructure, service the machinery a bit. Overall quite doable. Leaning towards keeping zero-or-one stock, producing on demand. I'm still not quite happy with some of the details on the hoods though, and I'd really like to step up my game a bit with them. More controlled thickness, various design improvements, switching to negative-cast molds, etc. 
• Media, regular posts etc. Two factors limit this tbh - I need to get back into shape for any actual rubbery elfness on my part, and I need the projects to get past the 'obscure chemical mold casting details' stage and towards 'photogenic rubber designs' again.  
• Events, markets, outings. Definitely a 'when the suit rig is finished' thing. Met the RubberSisters-crew a while back and did some plotting and planning, so there's a few avenues open here. Without functioning production/stuff it's not really an option though, so yeah.
• Company technicalities. I'm pretty keen to improve the backend system setup a bit, integrate payment processing systems straight into the bookkeeping and so on. Might require me to take everything directly in SEK for compatibility though, which has historically confused a slew of people. Might also switch store systems to something slightly cheaper/more streamlined, but that's probably a 'later' thing.

All-in-all I'm leaning towards getting the 'basic hoods' store up and running, and then laying low while crunching fixes/improvements on the core products and myself until the end of summer. When we get there, regular public media posting resumes. Backend systems, markets/events and so on, go on the 'later' pile.

This is of course subject to change depending on what happens. We'll see how the spring pans out. A prime example - GF is 'between jobs' and may pitch in a bit on the rubber manufacturing, in which case we might see some fancy paintjobs getting pushed.

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You have now officially beheld the contents of my brain. As usual - did I gloss over something interesting? Feedback always welcome, comment/DMs yo!

As always, thank you all for the continued support, especially throughout the somewhat tough times lately. We've got the goalposts in sight now, and it'll hopefully end up being worth all the effort!