Well I finally opened the hand mould to see how the cast turned out. Another disaster I'm afraid.

 

The first impression was that it seemed o.k.

 

There's a share of excess silicone around the centre join but that can be trimmed off easily enough

 

The first mistake can be seen above where the first layer of silicone didn't stick to the latex layer and peeled away.

 

I obviously should have secured the mould halves together as the depth of the cast is deeper than it should be, i.e. the excess silicone didn't get squeezed out when the halves where placed together.

 

There are also a lot of blemishes from little holes in the plaster that I should have filled beforehand

 

The palm side isn't too bad - though again there are places where the latex layer didn't stick properly to the silicone layer

 

This angle shows how thick the cast is

 

Compared to the original it's not bad from this angle. The biggest problem though is the fact that the armature doesn't work. The fingers can be bent o.k., but due to the volume of silicone, they bounce back into the straight position. I've since worked out that the armature should be almost as thick as the hand itself - with only a minimal amount of silicone covering it. Plus there needs to be a 90 degree angled space between the joints to allow for movement. The question is how to fill these spaces, or with what, so that they don't accidentally fill with silicone. maybe some sponge? Anyway I won't be able to animate this one so I guess it's back to the drawing board - again.