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Casting ice cream/plaster mould

Q; Hi Tirantis,

I’m always advising students to "go and buy it at Tirantis", but now I need some advice myself if that’s OK!

If I need to cast an ice cream , i.e. the soft vanilla, Mr Whippee type swirl on top of the cone, would you recommend alginate?

Does alginate generate heat as it cures?

Many thanks for your help.

(Tirantis is a renowned supplier of materials and equipment for sculptors. www.tiranti.co.uk)

Paul Lindley

A; Hello Paul,

Tricky! I spose if it's a genuine Mr whippy kind they are always going to be pretty soft, and alginate (although it does not generate heat)will have a similar weight/consistency and might cause the ice cream to deform.

If you could get the ice cream much colder to firm it up then alginate would be a reasonable material to use.

Strangely if you could get the ice cream really cold you could try making the mould slowly in wax!! Then re-cast from the wax mould, and melt it from the casting. (just a thought) Have you considered piping your own ice cream in another material, like a really thick plaster.

Kind regards

Doug

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I think I'll freeze the ice cream and use alginate, but I also really like your idea of piping my own with plaster. Perhaps a could actually use a cake icing syringe if I get the consistency right (and clean it out afterwards!)

Thanks again,

Paul

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You can pick disposable piping bags, all you need is to test out a few nozzles (they would need cleaning - but it should be easy) If you wanted to, you could retard the plaster with tri-sodium citrate to give you a really long working time (1hour) and have a go at doing a few from one batch pf plaster.

Cheers

Doug

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I thought you might be interested in some earlier plaster experiments - http://process.arts.ac.uk/content/18-plaster-cake

Regards

Paul

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Hello Paul,

I couldn't resist and went and had a play, using prestia classic plaster, mixed far too thick and piped from a plastic bag with the corner cut off, had to work quickly.

See attached images.

Had a look a process arts beta, what a great little site, shame I cant add things really.

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old-admin's picture

Hi Doug and Paul

Great post... we're working on ways to expand process.arts to include industry and alumni so hopefully we can have more of these valuable exchanges in the near future. In the meantime, users outside UAL can add comments to any post and they will appear once they have been moderated.

All the best Chris

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