Introducing my first hand-crafted dildo: The TARDIS Tickler!
A copy of my favorite dildo with a miniature TARDIS suspended inside.
This toy is dedicated to gender outlaw Kate Bornstein, who is one of the most amazing people I know — and a huge Doctor Who fan.
I recently finished a casting and moldmaking class at Artisan’s Asylum, and this was my final project: A copy of my favorite dildo in clear silicone with a miniature TARDIS suspended inside.
A close-up of the TARDIS inside the toy: a hand-painted pewter model of a British police box.
Top-down view of the "TARDIS Tickler"
Kisses for the Doctor and his entourage!
This toy was made as a one-part mold of my favorite dildo out of Smooth-On SORTA-Clear 18 silicone (which is what it says on the tin). The TARDIS inside isn’t a licensed product, it’s a pewter replica of the appropriate police box which I painted. After making the mold of my original toy, I suspended the TARDIS from a piece of fishing line and then poured the clear silicone (mixed with some glitter) into the mold.
Unfortunately, I made the mold inside of an opaque container, so it was hard to see where the TARDIS was positioned. It ended up a little too close to the edge for comfort.1 I’d like to make a second version of this toy using a clear container and a clear mold, which will give me better control over the TARDIS’s position. I look forward to posting the how-to!
Full-size versions of the images are available from the original album.
Edit (4/10/12, 8:08am EST): Fixed link to Kate Bornstein’s blog, added footnote.
Edit (6/10/12, 11:26pm EST): The TARDIS looks like a British police box on the outside, not a phone booth! The text is now fixed. Thanks to Rhi for pointing out my mistake!
- Sadly, I haven’t playtested this. The corners of the TARDIS are creating tiny tears in the silicone, which would probably get worse with use. ↩
LOVE this!! Very well done! I think you have a bit of The Doctor in ya… heh heh.
*grins* Thank you so much! ^_^
Maybe a TARDIS made of a more pliable material than pewter wouldn’t rip quite so much.
Good call! I had another friend suggest that to me as well. I might be able to make a copy of the pewter TARDIS in silicone, too. I’ll look at that for v2.
Perhaps you could encase the tardis in a smooth egg of clear resin, then set that in the silicon?
Ooh, interesting idea! It would definitely help with the pointy bits problem, although I’m still wondering if having it all-silicone would deal with some of the stretching issues.
You basically have to pull incredibly hard to get it out of the mold, which causes the toy to stretch and deform a lot. I’ll have to consult with the folks at the place around here that sells the silicone — they may be able to tell me which approach is likely to work the best.
Using a silicone TARDIS would be one of the few definitive solutions, since silicone just doesn’t stick to almost anything except more silicone. When the toy is pulled on to remove it from the mold, it will pull the silicone in the toy away from the surface of the object. Using a silicone object, especially of the same hardness as the toy should work perfectly. But it will likely be hard to make a good TARDIS. You could use a plastic or metal one to make a mold, and cast the TARDIS in silicone. To paint it, try using Smooth-On’s psycho-paint, SilPig pigments, with dilution in NOVOCS gloss. Psycho-paint is neither paint nor particularly psychotic. It is a 2 part platinum silicone meant to be pigmented and diluted in silicone solvent for use as a paint on platinum silicone. I’ve used as paint and as an unpigmented gloss coating with good results.
Another, less ideal, solution is to make the mold easier to open with more or larger cuts or a two part mold. Increasing the hardness of the toy rubber may also reduce stretching and pulling of the silicone away from the toy. Most toys come in a shore A hardness of 25 to 35. Harder than the Sorta-Clear 18. I found a really good way to assess what different hardnesses feel like in different thicknesses is to buy an inexpensive durometer and check toys you like. I got mine off ebay for less than $35 including shipping. I found it extremely useful in helping me to decide what hardness of silicone to use for a project. In my experience, different hardness silicones can make the same toy shape feel entirely different.
Finally, there might be a primer that could help the silicone stick Smooth on has one for their crystal clear platinum silicone, Solaris, to help it stick to circuit boards. I have heard of similar primers from other companies, but have never used them so I can’t say anything useful about them. (I can say don’t bother trying to use Solaris for toys, it is way too brittle. I tested it as a coating for toys without success.)
After casting this toy, I made a mold of the TARDIS in silicone and have already cast tiny silicone TARDISes, so that’s totally doable. And getting your own durometer is also a fantastic idea which I’ll have to look into. Thanks for all of these great ideas!
Does it feel bigger on the inside? ^__~
I wish I knew! Maybe with v2 I’ll be able to give a better answer. >:)
This is amazing, as a Doctor Who fan myself I am in love with this.
Where was the Amy Pond Real Doll when I could have used it?
Any plans to do one with large colourful flecks to reflect the old titles maybe? This one is elegant and lovely though.
Ooh, interesting idea! For the moment I’m going to be happy to reproduce it without any cracks, so that it’s actually safe to use (strap-on or otherwise). ;)
Also, flared base, excellent, usable as a strapon.
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I want a Supernatural one! With an Impala instead of a TARDIS! Get on it!
This is great! We need more funky silicone dildos in the world!
I really must learn to make my own ^_^
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I have been very interested in making my own silicon toys. I have toys that I love, but have to use them with condoms because though I like the toy, the material they are made with are not regulated or even necessarily safe for using internally. Many toys can contain chemicals, plastisizers, etc. that could effect hormones, the nervous and endocrine systems. I do have knowledge of moulding and casting, but I cannot seem to get information about finding and handling, curing…medical grade silicone for the casting process. There are companies that make toys from medical grade silicone, but the toys come in forms that seem to be either really bland or completely outrageous. I would love to just make a completely safe copy of my favorite toys.
Anyone out there have any advice or info?
Very nice indeed. Keep us posted on V2 and maybe in time once you have a play-tested model you might be willing to make a etsy shop and begin selling them. I know at least one special lady in my life who enjoy having a bit of the doctor inside.
Second that!!
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While the how to advice would be interesting, results of field trials would be much more so.
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The TARDIS is not a phone booth! It is a police box. Completely different thing.
Eek! You are completely right. In my haste to get the post up, I obviously wasn’t thinking clearly. Thanks for pointing that out so I can fix it!
What kind of materials did you make your mold from? This is so cool!
Thanks! :) Both the mold and the Tickler are made from Smooth-On SORTA-Clear 18…which is in fact sort of clear. I did this as a one-part mold, although if I were to do it again I’d probably do a two-part mold instead. Given my experience with The Hammer, I think I could get better positioning of the TARDIS with a two-part mold.
Thank you for the info!
I’m going to try this – I live in the middle of nowhere and our closest sex-positive shop that offers DIY toy classes is over 400 miles away. If I’m successful (I’ve never done casting of any kind, only sculpture), I’ll post my results. Thanks again for the info :)
Do you have any recommendations for opaque body safe silicones that non-expert casters can use? Any advice or links to online tutorials as to how to do this type of casting properly? I’ve used a Make Your Own Dildo kit (some elastomer, two part mix, also dental alginate for body casting) before to success but the material it is made out of stinks and tastes like how the insides of my shoes smell, also it’s too rigid. Plan is to make a mother mold in plaster then recast it with something more bodysafe/less offensive materialwise. Help would be lovely!
Basically you’re looking for any platinum cure silicone — those are body safe. I tend to use Smooth-On platinum cure silicones, mostly Dragon Skin and SORTA-Clear. Unfortunately I don’t have good links to tutorials right now — but Smooth-On has a lot of instructions and some tutorials, and you might also try Instructables.com .
I am working on a product prototype which, like your Tardis Tickler, has an object embedded inside. The shape the eventual cast dictates it have a 2 part mold but I’m having some trouble working out the details of pouring the cast. How do you carefully position an embedded object in the cast? And if you are doing a 2-stage pour, doesn’t the release agent inhibit adhesion between the layers?
Thanks for your thoughts on this!
Hi! Ahhh, the $10,000 question. Honestly, I don’t have a good solution for getting reliable positioning, and I don’t know how to do a 2-stage pour — all of my attempts have come unglued. The Tardis Tickler was done by suspending the object from some monofilament (fishing line) above the mold, and I just sort of poured in around it. For the latest version of The Hammer, I built a jig to hold the electronics guts in place while I poured around it.
Sorry I can’t be of more help. Good luck with the prototype! I’d love to hear how it turns out.
I was told by tech support at Smooth-On that a 2nd pour of platinum cure silicone will adhere very well to the first pour, so long as the first is still tacky. Introduce a release agent, however, and it will prevent adhesion between the layers.
I’m thinking the solution is to use a 2 part mold that is not silicone and requires no release agent. Pour a little bit of silicone into the mold, let it cure (mostly), dig out a little dimple for the embedded object, place the object, pour the rest.
My problem with this plan is trying to figure out which mold material to use for my 2 part mold. Nothing seems quite right… which is why I asked you what your process is.
I’ll experiment… and maybe come back to let you know what I worked out. Thanks for replying to my question!
Interesting! Okay, sure, that makes sense. I probably need to be more careful with the timing of applying that second pour, then…that could be why my tries never worked out well.
Yeah, I’m also having a hard time finding a good mold-making material that’s not silicone. I’ve done one toy using a plaster mold, but the mold was so fragile afterwards. :/ I wonder if any of the Smooth-On resins would work?
Please do keep me posted!
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P.S. What Shore hardness did you use for this? Did you use a release agent (silicone to silicone can stick like crazy) and did you use vacuum to remove bubbles (or other technique)?
Re: the TARDIS – yes you almost certainly need to use something of similar flex inside, yes casting the TARDIS into an egg shape of the same silicone would help but success depends a little on the silicone (also helps to cast the egg into the dildo relatively soon after casting the egg – after a while (days? weeks?) the egg can get less receptive to making friends with the dildo. Did the glitter cause rough patches? I think you can get opalescent powders for this purpose that won’t cause that issue but not sure as to body safety (also glow in the dark, etc). It really looks amazing as it is!
The Tickler is cast using Smooth-On SORTA-Clear 18, which is Shore 18 hardness. I did use a special universal release agent. I didn’t use a vacuum to remove the bubbles (either on this toy or the Hammer), and I think it turned out pretty well regardless.
As far as I could tell the glitter didn’t affect the surface at all. I’ve made a mold of the police box and cast a couple of tiny TARDIS in Smooth-On Moldstar 30 (which happens to be blue) — so I think I should be able to have a silicone TARDIS inside of a silicone toy.
Sorry, I keep on thinking up new questions:
Does either Dragon Skin or Sorta-clear have a taste or smell? Too cowardly to ask the Smooth-on website people.
Great questions! I couldn’t remember that either of the silicones had a smell or taste when I first cast them, so I did a quick smell/touch/taste test this morning.
Hope this is helpful!
I haven’t ordered the silicone yet, but have been cruising around the web and found someone selling 10A shore hardness dildos that he claims are similar in hardness to live hard cock. I also found out that Tantus toys are 20 and below for Shore hardness. I figure you’ve got to use something a little firmer than a live cock for a strap on generally, but that’s not my intended use. I’m also not sure how the Shore scale goes (is 10 half the hardness of 20?), but I’m tempted to go to a 10 Shore hardness using Dragonskin because I’d rather have something closer to hard cock than the Tantus dildos I have (which since I bought them a few years ago may actually be around 30 Shore, but I don’t know). How do you find the 18 Shore Smooth-on hardness in terms of comparison to live cock? Is it typical silicone dildo hardness?
Sorry for the delayed reply on this! So IMHO the shore 18 is pretty darn hard — closer to a Feeldoe, say, than an actual person. It’s hard to give much more exact comparisons than that, but I will also probably be moving to something closer to 10 for toys I plan to insert.
I actually did the smart thing and just got trial disks from Smooth-on. I think when casting from a mold of a live cock, even 10 is a little hard (solely because of the edge of the glans). Their Dragon Skin FX Pro is a Shore 2(A?) and I think it’s probably the closest. 10 is better than 18 and would be fine except for that ridge (if people want to use it as a strap on I would stay at 10). You could even go softer with 00-20 or 00-30 in terms of skin feel realness, but you’d be talking more limp than hard really (but could be super clever and cast a harder core?). The problem is with finding these in skin or food safe types, which Dragon Skin sadly isn’t. Condoms it is!
And no worries about the delay, I figure you’re busy!
I did find this which might prove useful to people following this thread, food grade silicones in a broad range of hardnesses. Not sure how easy they are to use though.
SOFT 107 shore A durometer mold making silicone – 2 lb Kit
http://www.hobbysilicone.com/silicone.htm#foodgrade
Thanks for all the advice! I’ll let you know how it goes. I think another solution to things poking out of the side might be to do a thinnish outer coat (fill the mold a little, swirl the material around on the sides), as can be done with plaster or clay (though the clay is liquid in plaster molds which suck moisture out of the outer layer so it’s a little different mechanism wise).
And using a vibe on the outside of the mold once poured can help get rid of bubbles, in case it ever is a problem!
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So have you had any success on making another one? And if so would you be willing to sell one? My wife really wants one.
I haven’t actually had time to think about it! ^^; I was able to make a new TARDIS out of silicone, instead of pewter — so when I do get to work on this, we’ll at least have silicone-in-silicone (so there will be less tendency to tear). Actually selling them would be a challenge — I’d need both an original dildo design and some way to avoid getting sued by the BBC. While they can’t trademark a blue police box, they absolutely do own the term TARDIS and I highly doubt they’d be willing to license it (or that I could afford the license fee even if they would). I’d probably have to sell it as “The Totally Renamed Blue British Police Box Tickler”. ;)
On etsy.com a bunch of people sell home made doctor who stuff. It is a really coo site. Or you could just sell them under the table lol. I’m sure just about any mold is fine. But my wife wanted to come through the computer and steal it so you should seriously think about it, cause I bet you would make a hell of a lot of money.
Is the tardis tickler ever going to be finished??? :/
Well….the item itself is finished: I wanted a dildo with a TARDIS in it, and I made one.
The question is: Will I iterate on the design and perhaps make more of them? I would love to, some day, but most of my energy right now is going into my startup (passionateproduce.com). Some of the techniques that I would need to refine for this and for a better version of The Hammer are things I’d like to work on before Burning Man this fall. So it’s *possible* that I could come up with something before then, but I can’t promise anything.
Awesome
Love the idea. We have watched Dr Who since the 1960’s, and the thought of Who’s companion wrestling with a prickasaur:well! Have you plans for a vibrating version possibly with tardis groaning noises?
Thank you! :D
A few folks have asked me about adding vibration either to this toy or to The Hammer. The thing is, adding enough vibration to a toy to really get someone off is a matter of impedance matching: you’ve got to have enough mass in the vibrator to move the mass of toy itself and move some mass of flesh. And, like the TARDIS, the clitoris is bigger on the inside. (That’s why Dr. X. Treme calls it the cli-TARDIS. ;) If you’d like to read more about the physics of vibrators, check out my interview with Dr. X. Treme. So, I personally probably won’t be trying to integrate vibration into this toy.
The TARDIS noise is a whole different story! I would actually love to build a version of this toy that both lights up and makes the appropriate noises (probably via connection to a smartphone). A lot of the things I need to figure out in order to get that working well are things that are already on my to-do list for improving The Hammer. It may be a while, but there should eventually be a TARDIS Tickler v2.
Me and wife are currently perperfecing a dildo and the info here has been excellent. I love the idea of the tardis.
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I spoke to someone at Smooth-On and asked about which products are recommended for intimate toys and they were happy to go over the 2 most popular Platinum Silicones (Dragon Skin and Ecoflex) that are used for toys. They will send you samples as well so you can feel what they are like. I also assumed food safe was required, and they have a couple that are, (Smooth-Sil and SORTA-Clear) but it is not necessary. Tip for those that use condoms with their silicone toys, DO NOT use latex and always use a lube that is safe for silicone toys or they will degrade the silicone and make your toy unusable. Happy molding. They even have how-to videos on their site and will give you great tips on how to make molds and castings.
Thank you so much for sharing this information! I have to say the level of openness and professionalism among Smooth-On staff continues to impress me. (I really need to go update my post, in my copious free time. ^^;)
I’d like to make a replica of my fist for my wife ot enjoy when I am on business and gets the need for it.
What silicone product do you recommend?
I plan on using alginate for the mold material.
Cool idea! Let’s see…I think the other comments on this thread are pretty good in terms of suggestions — probably you’ll want Smooth-On Dragon Skin. It also depends on how firm a toy you want (Dr.Mike has a suggestion for figuring that out in this thread also).
An alginate mold is a great choice for body casting like this. The tricky thing is that the mold is very fragile, and you’ll only be able to use it once. You might want to consider making the alginate mold, then melting and pouring clay into it, then making a more durable mold out of that — similar to the process outlined in these slides. That also means that once you’ve got your clay positive, you’ll be able to fix any imperfections before you cast your final toy. If you pour silicone directly into the alginate, you won’t know what you’ve got until the very end after you’ve destroyed your mold.