Via a bankruptcy case I have acquired many jewelry molds by a famous
artist. Most of these molds are “production” molds i.e. rubber. I
am forced to sell the molds and the licensing to produce the jewelry
to a manufacturer to recover my investment. I am being told that not
having the “masters” severely detracts from the value of this mold
collection since masters are extremely time consuming and costly to
re-produce. I can understand that it must be difficult to make a
master from scratch, but how difficult or costly is it to "re-master"
from an existing mold. Your comments will be appreciated.
Regards, Robert
but how difficult or costly is it to "re-master" from an existing
mold. Your comments will be appreciated.
It’s almost impossible to get the same quality as the original. The
original master was larger in size, to compensate for shrinkage of the
rubber. You’ve now got a mold that gives you a wax model that almost,
but not quite as good as the original, and is slightly smaller. While
you can make a mold of the resulting casting, and can even, in some
cases, electroform some more metal onto that casting to build up some
of the lost thickness, it’s still almost never quite as good as the
original. For some types of work, these second generation “masters”
may still be good enough to produce saleable jewelry. For others,
the result will not be good enough. Depends on the design, and your
quality standards.
On the other hand, if the molds were made from a good vulcanized
rubber, properly made, used, and stored, they may have decades of life
left in them. If the desired production levels can be met with the
existing molds, then perhaps remaking masters to go with the molds
might not be such an urgent issue.
Peter Rowe
Hello Robert, The molds have good value seperately from the models
(masters). The models are only handy to make more rubber molds. Stand
fast.
Tom Arnold