Urethane plastics and discharge inks are unrelated materials, except where I work

I've fallen into my trap of experimentation instead of working and now that I have gone down the rabbit hole I see a new world of possibilities. My previous post indicated how I have regressed to working smaller due to the expense of materials and how epoxy is a great casting material, but it takes forever to set up. I wanted to test a new mold making process, but decided to try some Smooth-On Urethane plastic because it sets way quicker than epoxy, like 30 minutes to an hour. Previously I had not been successful with Urethane finishes because it did not seem to finish as smooth as epoxy did, but I was wrong about this. It appears I was spending too much time mixing my pigments into the urethane and when I sped this process up, the urethan poured smooth and with less bubbles than I previously had gotten.

My second test with the urethane was to use aluminum pigment and sand it down to get a metallic finish. With a bit of quick sanding, 100 grit sandpaper, it worked too and finished with a metallic top surface just like epoxy and polyester resin. Next I am going to try it with some steel / iron pigments to try and get a rusty metal finish and in all probability this should work. The cost of urethane is significantly less than epoxy and the quicker set times are a lifesaver because it frees me up to make more designs when I can see the results of each mold quicker.

In the middle of playing with the urethane, I pulled out some Wilflex Plascharge base and mixed some discharge plastisol. I had been meaning to try this for months and finally got around to it with the idea of making discharge transfers. The discharge transfers did not work, but I mixed both glow in the dark ink and fluorescent red inks with the plascharge base and got great results. The finish was light and the glow effect was pretty good. Even the fluorescent red popped on a black t-shirt without a white under print. I don't like the smell, but the results are fantastic for printing on darks. Finally our Pluto Never Forget t-shirt can be done without 2 screens. I haven't done the wash test, but I don't see why this should fail.