Once you have cut a master laquer, you have metal stampers created and have records pressed from them. Discuss manufacturing here. (Record Matrix Electroforming- Plating, Vinyl Record Pressing.)
Stollwerke manufactured chocolate records and little tin phonographs to play them in the first decade of the last century. They apparently sold very well.
I did it the exact same way! Except I tried to cut a blank chocolate disc because I do not have a mother to mold it from. My record would't track--I think the guy in the video used a harder chocolate. It is very easy to use the same method to make a chocolate mother but you can't really go any where from there (it looks cool though).
I still have not tried this but its high on my list.
I think this would be easy once you got the mix right, it seems that he is doing a good job of keeping the records really flat.
Maybe adding some of that wax for cooking stuff with choco?
I also really like the tin grammaphone idea that comes with the record.
I wonder if you could make a mother from a regular record with that silicon stuff that dentists use to make molds of things. It would be good enough to pick up the grooves but also flexible to remove the chocolate record easily.
Haven't tried the dental plaster yet but the properties look pretty good and its quite inexpensive. A 12" disc of the stuff would take about 15 minutes to dry and cost under 40 cents.
Yeah, i was all on this board a year ago trying out the "How to Pirate a Vinyl" with silicone materials, etc. and it never worked for me. One of my friends just recently decided to try it out and it worked perfectly, i mean, i was astonished. I now realize it didn't work for me cos I was making a mother from a plastic plate a friend of mine lathe cut. I think when I cast the mold of a plastic plate it is too flimsy to withstand the curing process and ends up curving and bending, which is something the more durable commercial vinyl records don't do. The only other thing I could think of is the difference in depth of the cuts but I'm not entirely sure about that.
Its seriously the only thing holding me back from starting a record company from my bedroom.
Okay, so a friend of mine has been doing this to his 7" and it works perfect. Some surface noise but the material he is using now is cut with filler so im thinking that may be the reason.
Turns out when you try to play a duped record at 45 rpm it will probably skip whereas the 33 1/3 one work without a doubt. Using the silicone mold you could make hundreds of copies without deterioration in sound. some pics
He got dye and mixed it up partially with the urethane, resulting in a psychedelic tie dye look!
WOW. So you made a silicon mold of a 45 and then just poured urethane on? See I need to get some silicon. I tried it with wax and the urethane fused with the wax. I used one of those flexi-disc Time Life magazine records. They are slightly smaller than a 45 but they are 33 1/3. Did you cut the record that you made the mold from or was it pressed?
Is this a 2 step process?
How do you go from the "negative" mold you get off the original record back to a "positive" record with grooves instead of ridges? Do the process twice?
He made it from a real 7" record, said he had to file down the edges a little to make them less sharp and more cylindrical. The silicone rubber stuff was diff from the Smooth-On but basically the same material. Its kind of pricey - roughly a dollar an ounce - but totally worth it. Heat resistant and you can cast anything but more silicone into it and it will come right out. Without even needing a release!
The flexi idea is a good one, but I tried a similar thing last year of doing this process with plastic plates and it failed. The plate was too thin to withstand bending as the silicone cured so i ended up with bumpy and curvy records. Gluing them completely flat might fix this tho!
Yeah, that article is the same technique. Dont know about silicone bathtub chalking, i think u need a lot of silicone for it to work. At least to hold the shape. Do post if it works tho!!
I could never figure out what is it that makes some material have more surface noise than other material. That's the main problem im dealing with.
Ok wow. I was so inspired to do this yesterday that I ran out into my tool shed and found an old tube of caulk (white) that had hardened near the tip. I cut it open and spooned out a bunch onto a 45 (donna summer?). I spread it around (keeping it thin to make sure that it would dry; maybe about a 1/4 of an inch or so) with a wooden dowel. I let it cure until this morning. It peeled off really easily. Although there were a lot of bubbles because I smeared it around so much. When I do it the second time I will put a glob in the middle and vibrate the table somehow to make the silicon level out over the record by itself without having to spread it around. This should minimize bubbles. Also due to my "spreading of the silicon" the other surface of the silicon "Father or Stamper (if you wil)" was very bumpy. As a result it did not lay flat after I peeled it off. Despite the bubbles and the fact that it did not lay flat I went ahead and spray painted it just to get a sample of what the groove would look like. After three coats of spray paint I decided that I had built up enough to peel off the spray paint (I used regular black gloss). It too peeled off very easily although there were holes where the bubbles were. I still tried putting it on the record player and what do you know. It skipped the entire time due to the bubble holes but what I did hear sounded fantastic.
FYI it did leave some sort of very thin film on the original record. When I played the original record after I had made the silicon father the needle pulled up the film. I would suggest NOT using you favorite records to do this. You will probably need to clean out the grooves with a tooth brush or something afterwards.
I will post when I make another one using a better technique.
I will also try to get some pictures up.