1
Clay sculpt
2–3 working days. Your artwork becomes a hand-sculpted clay original. Shape changes happen here, while the piece is still soft and no tooling exists.
Clay to case-pack, step by step
How a custom molded duck actually gets made
Custom molding is a manufacturing project, not an order form. Your duck starts as a lump of clay and ends as an electroformed brass mold running on a rotocasting floor. Here is every step, what it takes, and where the go/no-go gates are.
2
Silicone mold & mock-ups
3 working days. A silicone mold is taken off the clay, a blank mock-up is cast, and a colored mock-up follows so you see the piece painted before anyone commits to metal.
3
Wax master & electroforming
11 working days. A wax copy is pulled, dusted with conductive powder, and hung in an electrolytic tank where brass grows onto it — five days for the master mold, five more for the production molds.
4
Rotocast production
About 45 working days. Once you approve the PVC pre-production sample: rotocasting, spray paint, hand-painted detail, packing, delivery.
The sample & tooling stage
Eight steps to a mold that exists
Nothing here is skippable and nothing here is machined out of a steel block. Soft vinyl ducks come off electroformed brass molds, and brass molds are grown, not cut. That is the part that takes the time.
| Step | What happens | Time |
|---|---|---|
| 1. Design artwork | Your reference art is turned into a production drawing with sizes, colors, and paint breakdown | Before the clock starts |
| 2. Clay sample | The original is sculpted by hand in clay — this is where shape revisions belong | 2–3 days |
| 3. Silicone mold | A silicone mold is taken directly off the approved clay original | 1 day |
| 4. Mock-up sample | A blank casting pulled from the silicone so the form can be checked in the round | 1 day |
| 5. Colored mock-up | The mock-up is painted to your colors — your first look at the finished piece | 1 day |
| 6. Wax sample | A wax copy is cast, the piece that will actually become the mold | 1 day |
| 7. Electroforming | The wax is coated in conductive powder and suspended in an electrolytic tank, where copper and brass plate onto its surface: one master brass mold, then a set of production molds pulled from that master | 5 days + 5 days |
| 8. PVC sample | A real production-material sample off the real production mold. This is the hard approval gate | 1 day |
The technical part
Everything is sculpted oversize on purpose
Vinyl and electroplating both shrink, and they shrink predictably. A shop that does not compensate for it hands you a duck that is noticeably smaller than the one you approved.
- About 8% total shrink from the wax sample to the finished PVC piece, across electroplating and casting
- About 1.3% per tooling generation — clay and wax run roughly 1.3% larger than the master mold, and the master runs roughly 1.3% larger than the production molds
- Compensated in the sculpt, so the piece you sign off on is the size that arrives on the pallet
- Why size matters to price — jumbo pieces need more material, more paint time, and more machine time per cycle
The production floor
What happens after you approve the PVC sample
About 45 working days for the full run, through the shop in sequence. Soft vinyl pieces are rotocast; hard plastic pieces run on a separate injection line.
1. Rotational molding
Liquid vinyl is charged into the brass production molds and spun while it cures, building an even wall from the outside in. Thirty rotation machines run the floor, so a large order runs on many molds at once instead of queueing on one.
2. Spray painting
Base coats and body colors are sprayed in the paint department, one color pass at a time, with each pass cured before the next.
3. Hand painting
Faces, eyes, trim, and the small details that make a character read as that character are painted by hand at the bench. This is the step that separates a collectible from a giveaway.
4. Packing
Pieces are counted and packed to your spec: bulk case-pack, polybag with header card, or retail window box.
5. Delivery
Freight booked to your dock or split across multiple ship-to addresses, on the date the schedule committed to.
Your side of it
What we need from you
- Reference art — a character sheet, logo art, sketches, or photos from a few angles. Vector or 3D files help but are not required.
- Target quantity and sizes — quantity per shape and per size drives everything downstream.
- Color direction — Pantone references if you have a brand palette, otherwise we propose one.
- An in-hand date — we back-schedule from your date and tell you immediately if 90 days does not fit.
- Fast approvals — one decision-maker who can sign off on the clay, the colored mock-up, and the PVC sample without a committee round trip. Every day an approval sits is a day added to the schedule.
- IP clearance — written confirmation you have rights to the character or likeness.
Why 90 days
Add up the working days and the calendar writes itself
16–18 working days to go from clay to an approved PVC sample, plus about 45 working days for the production run. That is roughly 61 to 63 working days of actual shop time, which lands right around 90 days on a calendar. Nobody grows a brass mold faster than the tank grows it. A supplier promising a from-scratch custom duck in a month is either decorating a stock body or about to miss your date in front of your CMO.
The clock starts at approved artwork
Not at the first email. The 90 days runs from the moment the production drawing is signed off, and it pauses whenever a sample is sitting in someone's inbox waiting for approval.
Reorders skip the whole tooling stage
Your brass production molds already exist, so a repeat run goes straight to the rotocasting floor — about 45 working days instead of the full calendar, with no clay, no wax, and no tank time.
Two gates, both hard
The colored mock-up and the PVC pre-production sample are both stop-and-approve points. If the piece is wrong, it gets fixed there instead of 2,000 times over.
Process questions
How long does a custom duck take?
Ninety days from approved artwork to delivered ducks. The shop time breaks down as roughly 16 to 18 working days from clay sample to an approved PVC pre-production sample — clay sculpt, silicone mold, mock-up, colored mock-up, wax sample, then ten days in the electrolytic tank growing the master and production brass molds — plus about 45 working days for the production run. That is around 61 working days of real shop time, which is where the ninety-day calendar comes from. We do not quote a shorter calendar than we can actually hold.
What is the minimum order for a custom molded duck?
Two thousand pieces per shape. Every Nash Ducks duck is sculpted and tooled from scratch for one client, and a dedicated set of electroformed brass molds only makes economic sense across a real run. If you need fewer than 2,000, a from-scratch mold is the wrong tool and we will tell you so.
Who owns the mold?
The tool is built for your shape and held for your reorders. Once it exists, repeat runs skip sculpt and tooling entirely, which is why the second order on a shape is dramatically cheaper than the first.
Where are the ducks actually made?
Designed in Nashville, Tennessee and produced in China. The sculpt is developed and art-directed here; the clay original, the electrolytic tank, the brass molds, and the rotocasting floor are at our dedicated molding partner overseas. Nash Ducks runs the whole program from Nashville: we develop the sculpt and revisions, hold both approval gates, ship you the physical colored mock-up and PVC pre-production sample to sign off on in hand, and coordinate paint, packaging, and freight. You deal with one company in your own time zone from concept art to delivered pallets.
Start the ninety days.
The sooner the sculpt starts, the sooner the tool exists. Send reference art and a target date.