Ahh, I have 80 glow in the dark squishy spider egg blobs! Woo. I did the hot-pour PVC differently this time.
When I did the first batches, I made a full pot of the stuff and left it on while I poured... but through a sequence of events it did get kinda chunky... and it started to "cook" and get a bit brown... and the resulting blobs were a bit more firm.
So when I went to make blobs Saturday I did two things differently. First, I only filled the pot up part-way, enough to make 11 blobs (the number of molds slots I have) with not much left over.
And the other is I decided to actually heat the stuff up to the full temperature. I normally use it at 250' -- it's cooked, but still a little bit thick. This is a good temp. for corpsing, but it doesn't pour into molds very well.
The instructions say to pour at 350 or so, so I did! Well, I hotted it up to about 325 to pour. This made the stuff very thin and easy to pour, and the resultin blobs seemed to be even softer than usual.
I "borrowed" a nice metal measuring cup from the kitchen to use. I stuck this in the squish when it reached about 300' so the cup would be hot... so I didn't get lumps.
The downside to all of this was two-fold. One, I needed to chill the molds after a pour, so the stupid squish would cool enough to remove. The center blobs in the mold cooled very slowly, too.
And the second problem was the water itself. It would not all shake out, and the remnants would boil and steam when I poured the next set of blobs.
So a bunch of the blobs have weird steamed texture on one side. But heck, it will be dark, and the guests aren't going to be really looking at these. They are more of a... tactile... treat. And the glow is actually there to help us _find_ them when they are dropped on the trail. Heh.
It takes about an hour round-trip to heat and cast a set of blobs, which isn't so bad since it takes at least that long for them to cool in their bath of ice-water.
While I was doing this I modified two adorable stuffed dogs to make them less adorable. I took the top four ribs (and vertebras) of two of my Bucky skeletons, cut them short, heated them with a heat gun, and formed them into a smaller ribcage.
These went into the dogs.
Then, on the other burner, I heated a bunch of squish that I then cast into sausage casings. The casings deep-fried to a crunchy texture so I crumbled it off... and had PVC intestines! Woo! These I then put into the dogs and squished 'em into place.
Adding some stage blood and tada! Dead dogs.
They are fairly creepy. I'll take picturs once I'm sure I'm done dressing them.
On site Sunday I built a big blue box that will be the ice-water fountain. It's not terribly clever or pretty, but it should do. I'm hoping the silicon I used to seal the pipes together will stay waterproof.
Just in case it doesn't work, I'm going out Tuesday (if at all possible) and check for leaks and to heavily re-caulk if needed. Oh, and to paint my box.
The press night is Thursday.
First run is Saturday.
There is some small chance we'll be ready and have the manpower to do this.