I occasionally do some silicon rubber molding for my work, so I tried making a mold of one of the Triangle Big Muff knobs just to see if it would work. I used Easy Mold RTV Silicon Molding rubber and Castin Craft polyester resin for the knobs. Both are available at various websites (google it), including Amazon. I get my supplies from dickblick.com.

It took three tries at making a usable mold, but I finally got a fairly good one. I did not have any black resin dye, so I used clear resin and painted the knobs black. The mold is really accurate, but it is hard to keep bubbles out of the resin, so the replicas are not perfect. Making the post holes for the D shaft shapes is a bitch too. I molded a D shaft and then made a positive to put in the knob holes to cast the D shape, but the slight shrinkage when curing makes them too tight to fit. I have another idea to make that work I’m trying next.

Anyway, here are some pix if anyone wants to try it. Next up I will try replicating the Russian knobs and maybe a battery door.

The knob at bottom right is an orignal. All others are replicas as you can see by the imperfections. The black paint washes out some of the details too.

Here is my try at casting the Russian knobs. Still working on perfecting the pot post holes. The polyresin shrinks some when curing so the holes were too small to fit. I have made an oversize round hole in the mold now. Just need to find some material to fill the hole with to re-mold the post shapes – something that won’t bond to the metal so it will still release from the post after molding.

The Russian battery doors are next.

Hi … I just joined this blog … cool that someone has finally started re-making the Russian Muff knobs. I would really like to buy some if you have started selling these. I have two green Muffs and one Small Stone. Thanks again!

OK … thanks … great effort. They look great …