Not to be mistaken for its polyester resin car repair namesake from the Bondo® Corporation, our bondo is a versatile material made from mixing Pros-Aide ® and Cab- O-Sil® (a trademark of the Cabot Corporation), hence its other name, Cabo patch. We call it bondo because it is used in much the same way body shops use it to repair dings and dents in cars. By mixing Pros-Aide® adhesive and Cab-O-Sil® together until you have a paste, either thin or thick, with which you can fill holes in prosthetics caused by defects during the casting process or during seaming, and you can use it to blend off edges during application. When the bondo is still wet, the edges can be further smoothed using a brush dipped in water or 99 percent alcohol.
Cab-O-Sil® is fumed silica (silica being the second most common mineral in the world) used as a thickener in food products such as ketchup, pharmaceuticals, and cosmetics. Fumed silica is nontoxic when ingested, but prolonged exposure by inhalation can result in silicosis, which is the most common occupational lung disease worldwide. Fumed silica is very fine, and care should be taken to minimize its dust when mixing with Pros-Aide®.
Bondo has also recently begun to be used to create 3D prosthetic transfers, similar to temporary tattoo transfers. Christien Tinsley won a 2007 Technical Achievement Academy Award for developing the process (Tinsley Transfers), for which he was also nominated in 2004 (Oscar® for Best Achievement in Makeup, shared with Keith VanderLaan) for Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ. I’ll get into some specifics of making your own 3D transfers in a later section of this chapter.