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Footprint casting - Latex?


Night Walker

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I'm seeking advice from those with practical field experience: 

 

Q. If I came across a reasonably clear footprint would it practical or even possible to cast it using liquid latex?

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Night Walker:    Casting is more art than science.    The real problem is getting the casting material in the footprint without disturbing or destroying fine details.   If the casting material is too viscous, then it can damage the impression.   One has to look a law enforcement who has the most experience and practice to cast.    Plaster of paris was used for years and does a good job with fine details but it is weak and somethings comes apart when it is taken out of hard ground.    I like Hydrocal which is a similar material of different composition that results in a stronger cast.   

 

   Probably the best caster I have been around is Cliff Barrackman.      I attended a seminar at a Bigfoot Conference where he showed his casting techniques.     Meldrum attended the seminar and his input was that you need to completely photograph the footprint before you try to cast.     Sometime casting will destroy it.   Have a ruler visible in the picture.   The boot thing is not professional.   I use a cloth taylors tape.     Circle it, taking pictures from all the way around.    That helps him know what the environment around the cast was and lets him evaluate what the BF might have been doing when it left the print.        I will highlight some of the stuff Cliff showed but probably have forgotten some stuff.   If the footprint is in dry dust casting material will really mess it up.     Several light coats of hairspray will stabilize the dust.  Just mist it on,     It dries very fast and sort of glues the surface dust together.  If you have the spray use it on any print.   It will help and cannot hurt.  Then he would shake dry casting material into the footprint.  A shaker with holes in the top that had grated cheese with a bunch of holes in the lid is really good for that.    Then you mix the casting material.   You want it the consistency of light pancake batter.   Not real thick but not super runny.   Then he took his  rubber gloved hand and sort of dribbled the casting material from his hand into the inner surface of the print.     If you just pour it,  it will distort or destroy a lot of fine details.   Once the inner surface is covered with the casting material,  gently pour it into the footprint filling it to overflowing.      The next part is what most people screw up.    The casting material, especially plaster of paris will harden in just a few minutes.  But it will not be hard enough to remove for several hours.    The longer you wait the greater the chance that you get it out intact.   Once out take it home and let it harden overnight or up to 24 hours before you attempt to clean it up and remove loose stuff like pebbles and pine needles.   Those can be gently brushed or washed off.    You really have to be careful with this process.     Here is a link that details a lot of this.    http://www.tracksceneinvestigation.com/TSI PDFs/CASTING.pdf

 

Now to your question about liquid latex.   What I have seen it is more viscous than Hydrocal.     That makes getting it into the footprint more difficult.   I think the setup / cure time is considerably longer than Hydrocal or plaster of paris.    One of the problems of casting material is just carrying the weight around.    Since most of us carry water it makes sense to me to carry water that can be drunk all the time and if you find a print use it to mix your casting material.    The latex is heavy and you cannot drink it.  I carry the Hydrocal in a gallon zip lock in an amount appropriate for most castings and just add water to the bag to mix the product.   Have rubber gloves with you because plaster of paris and Hydrocal are strong base materials and you don't want that on bare hands.     Anyway I wish Cliff would put out a casting video since like I said he is pretty good.   A good use of latex materials is making copies of your plaster cast.    Make a mold of the cast with latex then you can make all the copies of you cast that you want to. Meldrum sells them at conferences.  

Edited by SWWASAS
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4 hours ago, SWWASAS said:

Now to your question about liquid latex.   What I have seen it is more viscous than Hydrocal.     That makes getting it into the footprint more difficult.   I think the setup / cure time is considerably longer than Hydrocal or plaster of paris.    One of the problems of casting material is just carrying the weight around.    Since most of us carry water it makes sense to me to carry water that can be drunk all the time and if you find a print use it to mix your casting material.    The latex is heavy and you cannot drink it.  I carry the Hydrocal in a gallon zip lock in an amount appropriate for most castings and just add water to the bag to mix the product.   Have rubber gloves with you because plaster of paris and Hydrocal are strong base materials and you don't want that on bare hands.     Anyway I wish Cliff would put out a casting video since like I said he is pretty good.   A good use of latex materials is making copies of your plaster cast.    Make a mold of the cast with latex then you can make all the copies of you cast that you want to. Meldrum sells them at conferences.  

 

Thanks for that. So, if I was to make a latex print of a footprint cast then all the detail would be on the "inside" of the latex after it hardens - fill it with plaster, wait for it to harden, then I have a replica print...

 

But what about a latex footprint cast where the detail is on the "outside" of the latex? Have you ever seen any of those? How would it be achieved?

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What you have when you have a plaster footprint cast that is a male mold.      Wax it with a wax mold release and put it in a box upside down that is also waxed.   A shoe box works well unless it is a huge print.   Pour the latex or silicon based liquid rubber over it and let it harden.    Silicon stuff is formulated to make molds.    When hardened you can pop the plaster footprint cast out of the latex or silicon rubber mold and that gives you a female mold of the cast.    If you keep waxing the female mold and filling it with plaster of paris, you can make as many plaster reproductions of the original footprint that you want.   Look up using silicon rubber as a mold on Youtube.      There are several videos about that.    Make sure you always use a wax mold release or you will not get them apart.   That is really important so you do not destroy your original footprint cast.   Practice on your own footprint.     Step in some wet sand,  go through the casting process with your own footprint, make the cast, clean it,   then reproduce it so you get all the techniques down.  That way when you encounter one in the field you know exactly what to do.  Not rocket science.   Like I said it is what artists do all the time to make or reproduce sculptures.   If you have kids cast their footprint.   They will enjoy having a copy of their footprint when they grow up. 

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Thanks again, SWWASAS,,,

 

I'm curious about male molds made of latex - if they can't really be created directly from a footprint impression in the field then how would they be created?

 

Is this correct? - There would have to be a female impression of a foot in, say, plaster. Coat that plaster female mold with a wax mold release and then apply the liquid latex layer my layer as it dries. Remove when enough layers have been applied and - presto - a male latex mold of the sole of a foot... 

 

So, if a female latex foot mold is useful for making further representations of that foot in plaster or whatever, what use, in terms of Bigfoot research, would there be to have a male latex mold of that foot?

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Seems like you are very interested in a male foot mold made of latex.     More interested,   by your line of questioning,   than saving a footprint find in plaster which saves a footprint find perfectly for study.  Plaster casts are well accepted by science in all manner of footprint and fossil preservation.        I can only think of a couple of uses of a male latex mold.    Another word for a male latex foot mold is a latex prosthetic foot.   Since I doubt that you want to help a footless bigfoot,    it seems you want to create a latex prosthetic foot for some other purpose.    A prosthetic foot is most commonly used for hoaxing.      Either way, you are on your own at this point because I am suspicious of your intentions.       And as an aside,  if you show up in a month or two on the forum with footprint or track way pictures,   I doubt anyone would believe them at this point.    The forum rules are very harsh on hoaxers and that is a quick trip to being permanently banned.     

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My interest in latex foot moulds - how to create them and what they could be used for  - is hoax-related. But I am interested in rectifying some false reports (ie solving hoaxes) rather than perpetuating them. Is it ok to continue discussing that here? I agree that if I suddenly turn up with pics of mysterious prints that it would be obviously transparent as to how they were created...

 

I am going out this weekend to learn more about footprint casting in the field and may also experiment further with creating latex prints. In Australia between 1998 and 2000/2001, Bigfoot-type footprints (ie very similar to prints from Patterson's Bluff Creek) were being found and cast which were very different from footprints found/cast over the last few decades. Interestingly, they were only found by people from one particular group (or by people who were closely associated with them). I have evidence that at least 2 latex foot molds were in use by this group...

 

I'm not creating a complete foot out of latex just the sole - just like was used back in the late 90s. The bigfoot-like footprints that were found here during 1998-2000/1 were never found again despite a dramatic increase in the number of research groups in the field in the last decade or so...

 

Discounting giving a prosthetic foot to a footless Yowie, are you sure there is no other use for a latex foot mold other than hoaxing?

Edited by Night Walker
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I attended a Yowie camp-out over the weekend that brought some diverse groups together. My report is here - http://home.yowieocalypse.com/ACRO_Jimna_2018/

 

A friend from Gympie came down to do a casting demonstration - he cast an impression of my own foot. Didn't know that you could cast tracks submerged in water, too...

 

I didn't get around to doing my own experiments with creating a latex foot mold but I can do that later in the comfort of my own home. The weekend may have opened up some channels of communication with other Yowie-groups but I am still very much an outsider looking in. Everyone acknowledges that hoaxing is a problem - both from the general public and from within the research-community itself but no-one owns up to it, no-one knows anyone doing it...

 

Can anyone explain why there is such a taboo about even discussing the machinations of fakery? How can things improve if we ignore it?

Edited by Night Walker
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Night Walker - I suspect that the taboo about discussing ways to clearly and unequivocally identify fakes merely allows fakers insight to make new and improved fakes that can avoid that scrutiny.  If you looked through the forums enough, you would find "investigators" who offer a film or footprint that is really a hoax.  Then, after awhile they come back with a new improved film or footprint that incorporated "fixes" for the clear flaws in their first or second product.  It's not a desire to ignore hoaxing, but a desire to avoid facilitating future improved hoaxing. 

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That seems reasonable, Trog, but has it worked?

 

Hoaxing is endemic in this field. It's always been going on even back in the pre-Wallace days of hairy wild-men. Not discussing the machinations of fabrication gives the fakers the advantage -- most in the community are unaware at how easy it actually is. The example you cite is, at least, transparently obvious but many fabrications are not -- they can be more subtle and they can even be from people you might not expect...

 

Bringing this topic out into the open, I suspect, would cause much friction from within the research community for the reason you stated and others but discussion and education are good things, right? The better educated and open we are about hoaxing the better for all, right? Higher standard of research and investigation and a more favourable perception from public and academic circles for finally taking steps to address the obvious...

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Has it worked?  This forum is very well educated on who is/is not a hoaxer and which events are/are not hoaxes, although some (I'm looking at you, Skookum cast) are still hotly contested.  I doubt that you'd find another Bigfoot site - as opposed to skeptic sites - where claims are held to such hard, but fair standards.  And actually, there are very good discussions on here about how easy it is to fabricate/fake one point of evidence, while it's much more difficult to fake an encounter that includes multiple points.  

 

However, if you want to bring the topic out into the open, it might have gone over better had you put your bottom line up front in your first post, rather than give it as an explanation when someone questioned your intentions with his daughter your big male bigfoot mold.  (Of a foot, people.)  As I have quite often found, the intent which is obvious to me when I type is completely blurry and hidden when someone reads my typed words, as they cannot see my facial expressions and cues. 

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My experiments to make a latex print are secondary to understanding why a researcher would have one in the first place - I didn't want to simply assume it was for fakery. Maybe they had a practical purpose which I simply could not conceive - but apparently not...

 

I'm in no position to elicit change from within the research community because I am still very much an outsider. If you are happy with things as they currently are then I wish you well with sticking to it. Thank you both for taking the time to respond...

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You state that you do not understand why a researcher would have a latex foot.   I don't know why either.    Other than Wallace and his later ilk who delighted in hoaxing,   I do not know of any researcher that has latex or admits to having latex feet or other fake stompers.   The Wallace stompers only became known after his death.      As you say why would a researcher have one?   Do you have knowledge of this or are you assuming because a  researcher had found footprints that someone has a stomper to make them?     Meldrum experiments with feet because primate locomotion is his PHD specialty.   I believe he has constructed male prosthetic's for several purposes.   He will admit that at times it is difficult to differentiate a good hoax from a real footprint.    Some less than scrupulous documentary producer submitted a hoaxed print to him and while it took him a while,  he finally recognized it for what it is on camera.   There are subtle clues that show the differences between a living foot and a prosthetic footprint.   I am hardly an expert and really do not need to be when I have access to Meldrum.    My first assumption is always that a print is hoaxed.   The location,  accessibility,  surrounding ground,  weather conditions before and after,  are all factors in my follow on assessment as to authenticity.       That someone like you has admitted interest in producing a latex prosthetic foot is as disturbing to me as if you were also interested in making moving puppet heads,   costumery, or CGI video production.   .   That stuff just makes being a researcher more difficult and unintentionally has made you a pariah with field researchers on this forum.       Perhaps some skeptics forum would have been more friendly to your efforts?   .   

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One very good reason to have fake stompers is to study the results. You want to try to reproduce the real thing to see if its possible.

 

Same reason for making fake suits,  to see if it can be made.

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