I made some moulds.

I made some moulds. I had to change my plan from putting the pour hole in the top to the side because if I did the top there would be trapped air and the cast simply wouldn't work. If I put the pour spout in the side then hopefully I can just patch the hole up with slab clay by hand. i did draw some diagrams of this but they're in my book and i hate scanners so if you want to see them look in there.

the surface finish on the deck blank is pretty terrible and that transferred onto the plaster, however it was then really easy to shave all the crud off with a blade to get it perfectly smooth and flat like you see in the photo above.

I did leave the moulds a day or two to dry (they also went in the oven, on the radiator, and in the sun to get them dryer faster) before pouring. This spate of sunny weather we've had recently has been really useful for me as it means i can dry things in the sun all day. when i leave the moulds in my garage they stay wet for days on end but in the sun a day or even less is usually enough to get them to a point where i can open the mould up and then they dry even faster.

I think thats everything important to say said. I made some mould box walls out of melamine board which are really easy to clamp together so I don't have to make clay walls or use bloody lino every time, but I only made 4 so to cut down on waiting time I bit the bullet and used the bloody lino which is why one mould is round and the other is a nice and rectangular and practical.