G.I. Joe and Action Man came with hard plastic boots, and I don’t like them. For some collectors that is a terrible thought to have: All REAL G.I. Joes have hard plastic boots and not the soft rubber kind or the more realistic boots that cost almost as much as the full sized one. Sure the hard plastic one are easy to put on, once you learn the process, and last a long time and don’t melt the other plastic parts in the toy box. But they rattle, and they have no tread, and they look oversized, and they rattle (which really annoys me, if you could not tell). So how do you make soft rubber boots? And what does that have to do with fishing baits or soft vinyl toys?

It starts with doll heads. When I wanted to make the Adam Savage figure, I tried to learn as much as I could about how they made G.I. Joe heads. They were made of soft vinyl, but searching for information about casting soft vinyl yields nothing. That is because you don’t cast vinyl, use cast something called Plastisol. For the heads, they put a small amount into a sealed mold and heat it while it rotates in all directions. And when you search for plastisol, you get a lot of links and videos about making willy soft rubber fishing baits at home. In short, you can buy the liquid and heat it up to around 340-375 degrees Fahrenheit and the material will solidify after it has cooled back down. Some of the material will even melt and reflow at the higher temperatures. You can then inject it into a mold where it will become wigglers and crawdads looking things that should look yummy to the fish. But that sounds more like the belts and harnesses for the action figures than the heads, hands, and footwear. We need something hollow, not solid!

But then, about two weeks ago, The Crafsman posted a video about Japanese Soft Vinyl toys, or Sofubi. Sofubi are soft vinyl toys and collectible characters from Japan. While the video was light on specifics (which is unusually for the Steady Craftin channel) there was some video of parts being made in an oil bath (or toluene, or both – too vague). But what it showed connected the information from the clips of making G.I. Joe heads, making fish baits (especially tubes), and my misspent youth working in fast food. The plastisol liquid was poured into the thin molds (made from electroforming copper plating over a wax piece) until it was full and then dipped into one oil fryer for about 15-20 seconds. Then the mold was pulled out and the excess liquid was dumped back into the bucket of uncured plastisol. The mold had a thin coating of solidified vinyl on the inside, and that was set into a different fryer (presumably at a different temperature) to finish cooking for several minutes (5-15 was mentioned in different videos). This finished curing the vinyl and then the mold is pulled out of the oil bath and the part removed from the mold while it is still warm. That may not be enough hard information to automate the process but it is enough for a maker to start experimenting with making their own soft boots.

Well, that and couple of small oil fryers.

Keep making this world a better place!