The seam is cut and everything is cold. This part gets the shell off the master, cleans it out and closes it back up into a finished blank ready for paint.
Step 6 — Prise the shell apart
Work the cut edges apart gently and spread the shell open. By now the glue should be firm but still slightly flexible, and it will peel away from the master without much difficulty.
The eye sockets are always the last to let go. They have the deepest undercut, so if the shell hangs up there, squeeze the surrounding area between finger and thumb to flex the socket open rather than pulling harder on the cranium. Pulling is what tears a shell across the brow.
Take the master out and put it aside. It is undamaged and ready for the next copy.
Step 7 — Peel out the foil
Reach inside the shell and pull out the aluminium foil. Most of it comes away in one or two large pieces. Where it clings — usually in the sockets and the nasal opening — trim it back with the hobby knife rather than picking at it, since picking will pull glue away with it.
Do not obsess over getting every last fragment. A little foil left inside a shell that will never be seen from the inside is harmless. Foil showing on the outside is a different matter and is dealt with in step 9.
Step 8 — Glue the seam shut
Run a light bead of hot glue along one edge of the release cut and press the two edges together, holding them until the glue grabs. Work in short sections rather than trying to close the whole seam at once, because glue sets faster than you can align a long joint.
Once the outside is closed, reach inside and run a second set of beads across the joint in a criss-cross pattern. This is the step that stops the seam opening again the first time the skull is knocked, and it is invisible from outside, so it can be as crude as you like. Be generous.
Step 9 — Patch the outside
Look over the whole outer surface for holes and for any place foil is still visible. Both are fixed the same way: a small drip from the glue gun, smoothed with the nozzle tip into the surrounding texture.
Hold the shell up to a lamp again. Light through the wall means a thin spot; patch from the inside, where the repair will not disturb the outer texture.
By this point you should be about at the end of that record, so you will need to start it over.
Optional — Brace the small ones
Small skulls are more fragile than large ones because their walls are the same thickness over a tighter curve. A convenient brace turns out to be a glue stick itself: on smaller skulls the internal width often works out close to the length of a stick, so one glued across the inside from side to side stiffens the whole shell considerably.
It is not necessary, and it costs one stick. On a skull that will be stacked, handled or bolted to anything — the candy dish, for instance — it is worth doing on every one.
Making them in batches
Now is the moment to decide whether you want more. Casting is much faster the second time, and having a stockpile of blanks before painting starts is what makes part 3 efficient — a point that part 3 opens with. Six blank skulls is an evening's work once the method is familiar, and six is enough for a candy pedestal, a graveyard scatter and a couple of spectres.
The shell is now finished. Continue to part 3 — painting · Back to part 2 · Back to part 1