The Learning Curve: Casting My Own Models.

My hobby activity has been constant the last month or so. I have been heavily juggling my 40K Warzone tables and Wreck-Age projects. To compliment both I've started learning how to make molds and cast my own pieces.

In this series you will see one of my failures and some of my successes.

This first  image is off a mold box filled with urethane rubber.The first mold making kit that Anton (Hyacinth Games) and I worked with was for making urethane rubber molds. That was a huge mistake. The next stage from this pic is to demold the originals. The walls of the box are removed and the mold is peeled away from the urethane. Not only did I have problems with the urethane latching onto the finer details of the original masters, but additionally, the resin had a tendency to bond with the urethane. After several attempts like this one, I gave up on urethane rubber.

After giving up on urethane rubber I decided to switch to silicone rubber. This made a huge difference in my results. Here was my first attempt at silicone. I made two blank oversized bike bases and two bases with custom details for specific Wreck-Age models. One is for their Caravaneer Cart and has a cinderblock modeled onto the base for the cart to prop up on, and the second base is modeled with a small iron tether bar so that Wreck-Age Pack Boars don't wander off. 

Here are the finished detailed bases all painted up.

After these successes I decided to get crazy. This next pic is of a mold box all ready for pouring that has all the pieces necessary to build an Industrial Dumpster. The long side walls are converted from the Wreck-Age Weathered Storage Container and then the rest is all scratch built by me. 

The mold came out with a few hitches. On the first couple pours I had some undercuts that were creating air bubbles and I also found I had a tendency to run the resin slightly over the top of the mold. My solution to mitigate these problems was to cut channels to create a sprue.

All of the pieces of the Industrial Dumpster on the sprue.

Here we have the Industrial Dumpster all assembled. I was in a hurry and glued it together all crooked. The pieces actually work together much better than pictured.

Finally, here is the Industrial Dumpster fully painted and weathered. I'd say it exceeded my initial expectations and I'm really looking forward to expanding on what I've learned from this project.

Thanks for reading.

-Nick