Make a Melting Spoon

If you ever wonder how to make your own gallium spoon, this Instructable will cover it.

Why would anyone want to make a gallium spoon?

Usually people make gallium spoons for demonstrating purposes or to prank someone.

You can make a copy of somebodies spoon and prank them by demonstrating how it melts when you stir the tea.

What's will you need:

• Spoon that you want to copy
• Silicone Rubber of your choice.

• Vacuum chamber (optional)
• Polycarbonate or Acrylic Sheet (optional)
• Acrylic scoring knife (optional)
• Some Screws
• Modeling clay
• Gallium
• Digital scale for measuring silicone (optional)

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I took a spoon and embedded half of it in the modeling clay.

Then I made a box around it with some acrylic glass.

As you can probably guess, we will make a 2 part mold.

To make sure both parts of the mold align together, I marked some registration keys.

I measured silicone by weight and mixed it with catalyst.

I put the silicone in the vacuum chamber to get rid of air bubbles.

Don't worry if you don't have a vacuum chamber. It's nice to have one, but it's Ok if you don't.

More about it in the next step.

I poured the silicone into the box.

If you did not use a vacuum chamber, make sure to pour the silicone from as high as possible.

For example: Pour the silicone from the table into the box that's sitting on the floor.

By long-pouring the silicone, you can limit the air trapped in it.

It's a good practice even if you use a vacuum chamber.

When the silicone had cured, I removed the clay without removing the spoon.

Try to clean the spoon, so it's shiny again.

Then I made another box around the spoon.

I poured the silicone and left it to cure.

After removing the spoon, I cut a spout so I could pour in the gallium.

I used acrylic sheets to make a clamp.

The clamp will hold both pieces together (not too tight, not too loose), so there are no leaks.

You can use pieces of wood and rubber bands or only rubber bands, but I prefer to use acrylic as you can see inside of the mold.

I melted some gallium and used a syringe to inject it into the mold.

When the gallium was hard, I removed the spoon from the mold.

As you can see, the mold has captured all the imperfections of the spoon. The original spoon had some light scratches and so does the gallium spoon.

It's important to clean the original spoon before making the mold . Silicone can capture even your fingerprints.

If you try to stir hot water or teas, the spoon will melt.

Just don't drink that water!