Tps, a big thank you for this thread!
I am not a handy man, most of my DIY jobs end with me calling in a professional :) It wouldn’t have even crossed my mind to make my own silicone sleeves before reading your instructions, and I was still a bit unsure whether I could pull it off.
My smooth-on kit arrived last week and I made a trip to the hardware store to buy the various bits of pvc/clay etc.
I have had lots of fun since then. Your instructions were easy to follow and the smooth-on silicone worked great. I have made heaps of sleeves/rings/bands and even a “jack-off” thing!
I started out by making the pvc mold as you described, but as I experimented further with one off molds, I just started anchoring the pvc bits into a base of clay and using blue-tack/putty and electrical tape to seal it. In the end I was just using anything I could find. The “jack-off” thing was made using a fruit juice bottle inside a ketchup bottle! The clay/blue-tack molds only lasted for one use, and the edges of the silicone did not come out as nice as the proper mold, but it was sure easy to experiment with.
I did get lots of small bubbles and a few big bubbles in the first sleeve I made. Subsequent to that, I got very few bubbles. After that first sleeve, I did think about a vacuum device, but it seemed too hard. I saw after the first sleeve how much time I had, so I stirred the two parts together very gently for around 10 mins. I then let it sit for another 10 mins, occasionally holding an electric toothbrush next to it to vibrate out bubbles. I then poured it slowly, stopping a couple of times for each mold to let any bubbles rise. This seemed to do the trick. Another thing that came to mind is that my smooth-on kit arrived via air courier. I used it the day it arrived. I wonder if being at altitude or changing altitude introduced bubbles into one of the parts? (Both seals were broken when I got it).
Also, I found blue-tack to be very useful. It separated nicely from the silicone and was handy to plug up parts of the mold that leaked.
I am not sure what I am going to do with all these sleeves and other things, but already I have found that one of the sleeves seems to work better for me as a constriction sleeve when using monkeybar’s vacads.
I made a larger sleeve (inner diameter=26mm, length=150mm .. Outer diameter 38mm, length=180mm) as an experiment, thinking that I would cut it in half for a closed and open sleeve. Before cutting it, I put it on my flaccid. Unfortunately my flaccid does not fill it up (yet!). The process of rolling it up had squeezed the air out of the top half of the sleeve and I found that this created a light vaccum that kept the sleeve firmly on. A lot of silicone went into it and the weight of it made my flaccid hang down with a nice light stretch. I made a second one with a bolt hole through the mold so that in future I could attach more weight. Not very stealthy (unless you want it to appear is if you have a 7” flaccid!) but an interesting low stress ADS option.
I have attached pics of all the things I made, and the various things that went into my molds.
Once again tps, thank you for this thread and sharing your experience. I have had a great time playing around with the silicone and the results will be very useful for my PE!