Recently I discovered that I had lost all of my documentation from the time that I tried to DIY climbing holds from my little apartment in Montreal. I’m going to try to recall everything I learnt, re-try my final recipe, and re-document it here for anyone who might want to try themselves.

The mistakes

I started this project trying to be as cheap as I could be. I found the prices of professional mold making materials to be expensive in all except bulk quantities, and I wasn’t sure how far I was going to take this project yet. Bathroom silicone and cheese cloth is what the internet proposes for the frugally minded. I remember being a very climbing-focused 24 year old boy, and thinking to myslef at the time:

What the heck is cheese cloth, and where would I even find that ?

Writing this now at 31 I can say that I’ve caught up a little. I know about cheese cloth, Labneh, and i’m generally much better in the kitchen.

Then comes the question; what should I model ? What would be my first climbing hold ? Again, I was too cheap to spring for the florists foam, and wasn’t even confident in my abilities as a sculptor even if I had the means. So I looked around my apartment for something I would want to grasp as a very climbing-focused year old boy; a red Bell Pepper, perfect! The climber’s fingers would wrap around the curve of the pepper where it met the stem. If this seems desperate and crazy, I can only say that it was Covid times and my mental health may not have been top notch.

In order to make a mold from hardware store silicone I mixed a bit of warm soapy water with bathroom silicone, then applied it to the half red Bell Pepper, cut in half lying on a piece of plywood. In between the messy, goopy layers of silicone mixture I would lay cheese cloth to give structure.

Pouring plastic into this mold was difficult because once flipped, the mold would roll around. To rectify this I decided to try a commercial mold material called Mold Max 10[^1] made by a company called Smooth-On. I squared off the cheese cloth pepper mold with this new material so that it could easily be supported while the plastic cured. Luckily it worked; I wasn’t sure if the bathroom silicone and the Mold Max would bond, but they did just fine, as you can see from the pink-and-white finished pepper mold.

cheese cloth pepper mold cheese cloth pepper

A real mold box

My next step in

Croissants