Do molds actually deteriorate?

Not always, but it might happen during the making of the initial mould as the master sculpt is normally made of something less durable than resin. Sometimes the master needs to be cut out of the mould for it to be functional for further castings. Some artists also want only a limited run of the doll for so they destroy the master after on purpose - it's also common in printmaking that the printing plates get scratched out so no further prints can be made to maintain the pre-set number of the edition and therefore the value.

 

I imagine this is probably exceedingly rare in the doll community. Artists usually want an archive of their own work! Painters won't usually trash a canvas they painted to stop any more prints or photos being taken of it, after all.

Most likely lost masters are lost due to age, environmental factors, sometimes an artist may even sell it if they're out of room, are in need of money, or in the saddest case, nearing the end of their life.

 

Yeah, it's a lot more accessible to resin casters to use a silicone mold as opposed to a metal one--but it means that the silicone will break down with each casting as the chemicals diffuse into the cavity during the casting process. :/ Just something you gotta deal with.

 

Well yes molds deteriorate but original sculpts usually exist in artists or company's possession of course there are cases where the original sculpt may be lost or damaged as it happens with every work of art in real life not everything is preserved perfectly but at the end of the day it depends of the case. But in any case even if original sculpt exists if the artist or company have closed and the sculpts not passed to another casting service or whatever it is highly doubtful that they are going to be casted again to make new dolls.

 

Not BJD, but you can see it on toys produced over the course of many years. Earlier releases of GI Joes back in the 80s had sharper details than figures made from those same molds into the late 90s, the early 00s, etc. I've seen it at work with things like faceplates for wall switches, too. The holes for the buttons eventually go out of spec, and you start getting problems with fitment.

 

Let's break this down a bit.

Does silicone molds deteriorate with age?
Yes, but the rate of deterioration depends on the type of silicone used. Silicones curing by polycondensation does deteriorate a lot faster than silicones that cure by polyaddition. The former often can't be used for more than few months, but the later can typically be stored for years and stil be perfectly usable.

Does molds deteriorate with use?
Yes. Silicone molds (like any other tool) will wear out with use. How fast this happens and how many good casts that can be made from a single mold varies depending on size, complexity, materials used and requirements for precision in casting.

It there any sort of maintenace tha can be done to prevent this?
No, not really. There are things that will make a mold deteriorate faster (deformation, contact with certain chemicals etc.) and those can be avoided, of course, but there is nothing one can actively do to revitalize a damaged mold.

So, what do you do when a mold is worn out?
You remake it.
To make a mold you need a master. Sometimes this master is the actual original sculpt, sometimes it is the first cast pulled from an earlier mold, saved for this purpose, sometimes is is a freshly printed and finished 3d model stored digitally. There are many different solutions.

So, what about the reduction in size that people talk about?
Under normal circumstances, this doesn't happen. Most casting materials used by BJD makers today have so little shrinkage that it's barely measurable.
If a mold is remade from the same master as the last mold, then the new casts will be the same size as the casts from the last mold.
It is only if a new mold is made from a new cast over and over that there eventually will be a noticeable difference. Or if inferior casting materials are being used.

What about loss of detail?
For polyurethane casting in silicone molds it is usually more a question of loss of precision, rather than loss of detail if you compare a freshly made mold to one that is nearing the end of it's life. Parting lines will be more prominent and slight deformations may cause joints to not fit together quite right.
Loss of detail over time is more likely due to loss of details in a reused master. Sometimes the master is damaged and need to be refinished. The quickest and easiest way is to simply re-prime on top of the old primer. Do this enough times and eventually the details will be lost, at least until you clean it all off and start over.

What about other materials?
Other materials require other casting processes and different mold materials.
The metal molds mentioned are typically what is used for injection molding. It is a process where a molten thermoplasic (such as ABS) is forced into a mold under very high preassure. This requires a very strong, heat resistant and inflexible mold and steel is commonly used. This is a vey fast process and the mold can be used for a huge number of pieces before wearing out, but it is also very expensive to make initially, so even if the cost of each piece produced can be minimized, the process is usually best suited for large productions.
The best known example of molds loosing detailed over time is probably plaster molds used for porceline. These molds tend to yield a very crisp reprodusction of the first cast and then slowly become more and more diffuse as the mold is used ofe and over. These molds also need to be remade after a certain number of casts. This is also where a largest reduction in size is usually seen.
There are just two examples, dolls are made and have been made using an astonishing number of materials and techniques and they all have their quirks.

So, why do we put up with this?
Initially because of the relatively low level of entry for doll makers. You can start casting BJD's out of a very small studio with just some basic equipment and a bit of know how. It's not cheap, but it's not so expensive that you need a big company behind you to take the risk.
This is what makes it so that we have hundreds on independent doll makers and is in large part what we have to thank for the huge diversity in this type of doll compared to most other doll types.
To the small studio, this is also a question of logistics. A set of molds takes up a lot more storage space than a master sculpt does. It makes perfect sense to not have all the dolls in your cataloge in active production all the time. Limited runs and limited order periods makes it possible to manage one batch of molds at a time and as they are worn out, they can be cycled out for a different doll, or remade if the doll is popular enough to warrant it.
This is also a case of the nature of the beast. Silicone molds are simply the easiest way to cast polyurethane and this is an absolutely stellar material for a doll type targeted at customizing and modding.

If I missed anything, please feel free to add to the list.

 

I can't answer for any specific company. Only they know what is possible and what options they have available to them.

Illegal recasting can not be discussed on DoA, so you may want to edit that part out of your post.

As for an artist making a new mold from an existing doll that has been out in the world an played with, rather than from a fresh cast kept for the purpose... Well they probably could, but it does come with a numer of potential pitfalls and would probably need a few workarounds. It would very likely end up being more expensive than their regular re-releases and may not turn out perfectly the same. If a doll maker really wanted to recreate a "lost doll" they had previously made they probably could do an ok job of it, but I could see why and artist or company would prefer to move on instead.

 

It is a little bit bitter sweet, for sure.

 

You see this with antique dolls, too. Dealers of old china and bisque (shiny versus matte porcelain) dolls use “first out of the mold“ as a selling point – it means the features will be crisper than those on a doll produced later in the mold’s lifetime.

I wonder whether you could track something similar if you compared BJDs from the beginning of companies’ product runs to ones made later – would there be more detail/generally sharper lines?

 

The dolls definitely get smaller over time so I assume also some detail is lost. For instance Dollmore had to edit the listed measurements for their Judith bodies at some point because the size changed, either because of which "master" the molds were cast from or from changing the resin that then behaved differently. Fairyland has reportedly also become smaller, I assume this has something to do with them retiring headmolds every now and then as well. It's less noticeable than with clay/porcelain/bisque, though, because those contract more with firing than resin does when solidifying.

 

That might also depend on photography/light/faceup and tons of other factors - I wouldn't worry whether your dolls' sculpts are or are not the same because of how things look on photos. After all, there might be small differences even in dolls coming from the same batch and unless the company updated the sculpt they're casting, like Angel of Dream did at some point, it's still exactly the same. I'm pretty sure all bjds are a tiny bit different even if they came from the same mold at the same time, it's just how casting by hand goes.

 

This is true.
Silicone is soft and molds typically need to be fixed in some manner to stay closed while casting. There are different ways to do this, but fix it a little bit too tight and you will deform the mold ever so slightly. Normally too little to matter or to be noticeable, but if you really looked for it I'm sure you could find examples.