Group hand cast & plaster cleanup

Many of you have asked us to make a video on a group hand cast as well as a tutorial on clean up of a plaster/Hydrocal cast. In this blog post we cover the process of molding several hands together flat on a table. The first video explains the use of Genesis V alginate and plaster bandages to create the cast.

This is a "lay-up" type cast wherein the alginate is mixed fairly thick and applied over the hands to create a mold that is about 1/2 thick. A cast like this captures 3/4 of the subjects hands leaving the back flat for mounting. The alginate mold is then reinforced with a shell of Plaster Bandages.We used Genesis V for this cast. Accucast 590 would also work. Both formulas allow for ~5 minutes of working time which is ideal for this type of lifecast.

To cast the hands from the finished mold we used Hydrocal.

The second video covers the process of cleaning up the Hydrocal cast and patching air bubbles.The bubble filling technique is gold so be sure to watch the entire video!

You can find our lifecasting supplies here. Hydrocal and Hydrostone can be found here. Additional lifecasting tutorials can be found here in our Lifecasting Tutorial section of our video library.