The best way to do it would be to get a piece of wire in a figure 8 or fish shape if that's unachievable and set it halfway into the back of the liquid resin right before it cures. When it's ready to demold you'll have a loop that's permanently part of the button.
You don't need a 2 piece mold for this if it's silicone. You can pour the resin into an open back one piece mold and it'll fill up the recesses. Make sure you pound on the table if you don't have a pressure pot to get all the bubbles out. Then you insert the wire loop. (I said figure 8 or fish shaped because the extra wire inside the resin will make it impossible to pull it out. The flat part mentioned by greatwazoo would accomplish the same goal, but there's a chance the resin would be too solid at that point and pushing something that's not ergonomic into it would create a dent or pit, possibly shift the material and form bubbles.) Once the button is completely cured (half an hour tops) you can grab the mold on either side and pop the button out like an ice cube. The downside to this is that you may destroy the mold every now and then, but it's a very small mold and it would be worthwhile for the added strength of the loop.
Your best bet is to include the loop of metal in the resin while before it is solid so it becomes part of the button. For extra strength you can add a flat strip through the loop and submerge the flat in the resin with the upper half of the loop.
When you make a set of these I'd like to order them from you as I've begun the prelim for my Mk III version of the great green coat.
i can see the advantage of this approach, but it still comes back to engineering the specifics of it. i'll have to give this some thought.
any talk of ordering/sales/etc. is premature at this point as i'm still in the prototyping phase (complete with a beta-tester!). at this point, i'm still casting the master forms (3 different 1-1/8" buttons and 4 7/8" buttons) as well as still looking for the right shade of green paint(s) for the buttons.
i'm just hoping to have a set ready for my blue Eight coat in time for Dragon*Con (i've accepted that i won't have time to do the green TVM version as well...)
Well best of luck with your buttons, and be sure to take plenty of pics of your blue Eight coat, as it sounds cool. Not often we see the comic Dwm versions come to life, and I recall buying the first issue where it was regularly in colour, later recolourisations for reprints not counted.ip
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When you make a set of these I'd like to order them from you as I've begun the prelim for my Mk III version of the great green coat.
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any talk of ordering/sales/etc. is premature at this point as i'm still in the prototyping phase (complete with a beta-tester!). at this point, i'm still casting the master forms (3 different 1-1/8" buttons and 4 7/8" buttons) as well as still looking for the right shade of green paint(s) for the buttons.
i'm just hoping to have a set ready for my blue Eight coat in time for Dragon*Con (i've accepted that i won't have time to do the green TVM version as well...)
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