Can you make a mold of an entire kit before you build it, and then have two kits? One that you made and one that you bought?

Is that possible?

Thanks!

-Chip

I guess anything is possible.
But I would head the RTV mold route and that stuff can get pretty expensive. You may be better off just buying the kit twice.

Possible? Certainly.
Economical? Questionalbe.
Practical? Not very as you would certainly loose detail.
Legal? Probably not.

Everywhere the seams on a kit part are not straight lines it means there is an offset in the tooling. Making two halves of a mold and getting all of those offset parting lines to match up would be a nightmare. Tooling for plastic model kits is 100% machined stainless steel. If think it would be awful hard to duplicate in RTV. (Part of my job is designing sand mold patterns for a gray iron foundry...)

I think it's leagal as long as you don't try to sell the copies.

if you own a book, you can photocopy pages for your personal use, but not distribute them without permission.

Steve