Resin Casting: 1 Part Molds

I apologize for the brief hiatus. School has been keeping me really busy, but I have been squeezing in hobby time here and there. My latest projects have me working on casting as I have chosen Necrons as my second amy, but I don't want to pay a ton of money for canoptek scarabs.

Ron over at From The Warp did a great tutorial on making scarabs from epoxy ribbon (aka Green Stuff) and I messed around with that, but the cure time takes way too long and I wanted something faster. Eventually I will get into 2 part molds and specifically how to make scarabs, but I want to start on something simpler so I can explain the process. Today I have a tutorial on 1 part molds made from Instant Mold and plastic resin. Here is what you need to get started:

• Instant Mold (Bought mine from TheWarStore)
• Smooth-Cast 300 (Bought mine from Smooth-On)
• Blu-Tack. This is the stuff used to hang posters on the wall. Make sure you buy get actual Blu-Tack. There are a few other brands out there including a white version and one by Elmers. In my experience, they don't work well at all. Get the good stuff.
• Legos. My kids have tons of these, but you can order whatever pieces you need right from the Lego website.
• A piece with a flat side to cast. I casted one of the skulls from Games Workshop's Arcane Ruins, but you can do a chapter icon, a Rhino door, or something similar. Just make sure one side is perfectly flat.
• X-Acto Knife
• 3 small mixing cups.
• Sand paper.

Step 1: Build a mold box. I use Legos for this step as they work the best. You want to build a box that is just slightly larger than your part. You also want to build a second piece you can press down on top of your mold. Here is what mine looks like.

Step 2: You need to attach the piece you will be molding to the bottom of your mold box with Blu-Tack like I did below. Make sure the piece sits firmly down and doesn't have any raised edges or the Instant Mold will get under the piece and mess up your mold. I took my walls off to make sure my part was secure.

Step 3: Put the Instant Mold in hot water. I actually boil my water on the stove and cut the Instant Mold down into little pieces. This stuff dries super fast and once it starts to dry, the Instant Mold won't stick to itself so make sure its really hot.

Step 4: Shake off any excess moisture and quickly push the instant mold over the main detail of the part. Fill in all of the gaps and use your press to push down on the mold. Like I mentioned previously, this stuff dries really fast. If you mess it up, don't worry. Instant Mold is reusable and you can heat it up and try again. When you push down on your part, your press piece may stick. This is fine and don't mess with it. Put the mold in the freezer for about 15 minutes and come back to it.

Step 5: You are ready to de-mold your part. Take your mold box apart and remove the molded piece. Carefully pry out your piece with your finger nail or with an x-acto knife.

Step 6: You'll see there is a bit of flashing on the mold from pressing too hard. Just trim the mold with your knife and save the pieces. You can use them later. I heat mine up and roll the unused Instant Mold into a ball. Our mold is done and now we are ready to make our first cast!

Step 7: Working with resin can me messy. It needs to be mixed in equal amounts. I use a cup for each part because pouring from the bottle is way too messy. Nothing will stick to Instant Mold, so you don't need to use mold release or anything like that. Once you have equal amounts of part A and part B, pour them into your mixing cup and mix it well for a minute or two. Make sure to scrape the sides of your container.

Carefully pour the resin into your molds and start the pour on the lowest point of the model. This helps alleviate air bubbles. Don't over fill your molds. You can slightly go over, but you don't want resin pouring out all over as you'll have to sand the pieces flat later on which can be a pain. You'll see I did overfill one of the molds below, but that's the 2 part mold for the scarabs and we'll discuss how that works next time.

Step 8: This is the most agonizing step: waiting till it's done. As the resin cures, it'll get white in the middle and eventually expand out to the edges. This whole process should take about 15 minutes or so and when it starts, it'll happen pretty quickly. You don't want to de-mold the part too soon and ruin it, so be patient!

Step 9: Now that the resin is dry you can remove the part from the mold. You can use either your finger or a hobby knife. Below you can see the molded part and the original. Success! 

Step 10: Take your hobby knife and clean up the flash from around your part. You'll also want to run the back across a piece of sand paper to smooth everything out. If you look closely, you can see some minor imperfections here and there. I'm no master mold maker, but if you ask me this looks a hell of a lot better than Fine Cast.

Below are some of the other pieces I've casted along with the scarabs I have been doing. This method is fairly quick and I can pop out about 3 casts in an hour.

Next time, we'll talk a little bit more about casting and we'll tackle the process I used to create a 2 part mold for the scarabs. Have a Happy Easter!

Until then,

–The Harrower

Fixing Wobbly Model Syndrome

How many times when you play 40K do your miniatures end up like the picture on the left? Do you lay your models down and say, "They are right here!" in frustration? A couple guys in our club that play Tyranids and Orks (go figure!) do this more often than not and while we play a pretty lose game, it's still annoying and isn't conducive to a fun game environment.

The other problem is precariously placing an entire unit on a hill or other piece of terrain and as soon as you get the last model in place, they all fall over. This not only slows down gameplay, but also leads to broken and chipped models with no one wants to deal with.

There are some ways to remedy with this: use empty bases, creating terrain that is more model friendly (mine certainly isn't), or just advising your opponent where you models are standing (but this causes issues in more competitive games). Today, I'm going to do a quick tutorial for creating stand in markers for 25mm bases. Below is a list of what you need to get started. Let's go!

• Felt. Get the kind that is peel and stick as that is the easiest to work with. Color choice is up to you. I got mine at Michaels.
• 1/8" x 1" washers. You can buy these at any DIY store like Lowes or Home Depot.
• 1" Hole Punch. These can be purchased at any craft store. I bought mine at Michaels.
• A computer with a printer and some sort of image editing software. Hopefully, you have a Mac. :-)
• Card Stock
• Testor's Dull Cote or some other clear coat spray.
• Glue Stick
• Scissors
• Razor Knife
• Cutting mat or some other suitable cutting surface.

Step 1: Cut a piece of the felt with the razor knife on your cutting mat. You may want to be more careful than I was and try to minimize excess waste. Peel off the backing and stick the washers to it.

Step 2: Again using a razor knife, cut out each of the washers. You just want a loose cut here we're not looking for precise. I find it to be a lot easier to do the major cuts with the razor knife as the felt will get stuck to the scissors if you are cutting a really big piece.

Step 3: Once the washers are all cut out, use the scissors to trim off the excess by using the washer as a guide. This step is a bit time consuming as the excess pieces will stick to the scissors. I wouldn't recommend using the hole punch for this. I tried and ruined mine so take our time and stick with the scissors.

Step 4: Create an icon sheet with your image editing software package of choice. I prefer Photoshop CS 5.5, but I know everyone won't have access to that. I hear good things about GIMP if you are looking for software to use. If you need icons, you can download various 40K icon fonts here. Below is the image I used for my Blood Angels. I created one icon in white and one in yellow to represent a Sergeant or a model with a special weapon. When creating your icon sheet, be careful to leave enough room between the icons. I'd recommend leaving an 1 1/2" or more.

Step 5: Print out your icons onto card stock. Once the ink dries, spray the sheet with clear coat. This will help protect the tokens them and keep them lasting longer. When the clear coat dries (and you can use a hair dryer to speed up the process) use the hole punch and cut them out.

Step 6: Once you have all of the icons punched out, you want to add a bit of glue from the glue stick and glue the card stock in place. I'd recommend putting something on top of the token while it dries. Other washers work well. Let these dry for a couple hours and you're done!

Below is the same picture from the beginning of this post, but now I am using tokens instead of miniatures. This is far more preferably as I know exactly where my miniatures are, and I'm not worried about them falling over and breaking or chipping. The felt helps the miniatures "stick" into place and you can use the tokens at greater than a 45 degree angle without them sliding off as you can see from the second picture below.

Next time, I'll post some pictures of the desert table and terrain I created for a campaign I am currently running for my gaming club. I'll also be posting the rules I created with the help of someone else in my gaming club for a different way to play 4 player 40K games.

Until then,
–The Harrower

Blood Angels Captain new Gamesday Mini!

I didn't play 40K back in the 2nd Edition days, but I did buy the boxed set and I always loved the cover. Shortly thereafter 3rd Edition came out and me and a couple of friends decided to switch from Warhammer Fantasy Battle to Warhammer 40K.

It wasn't a coincidence that Blood Angels were my army of choice. The original artwork was done by John Blanche and I believe Mike McVey did a conversion of the model in White Dwarf back in the day. I have a copy of the issue somewhere and I'll see if I can dig it up and update this post with the pic.

The below pics leaked on Heresy Online today and the new mini looks amazing. Click on the below pics for a larger image. This was an awesome Christmas surprise, though being Finecast makes the baby Jesus cry just a bit. Hopefully, they have the whole Finecast thing figured out with the newer models. In any case, I want this miniature bad and I'll probably get raped on eBay when I go to get mine. Anyone heading to Gamesday this year and want to do me a huge favor? :)

Till next time,

–The Harrower

Craters in 40K: Part 2

Last time, I talked about craters in 40K. If you happened to have read that post and there wasn't much there or it didn't seem like it was finished that's because it wasn't. Apparently I hit the publish button when I just started writing it. I didn't notice until I posted and realized it wasn't showing up on From the Warp or any of my other feeds. Turns out the date was wrong because it was published a couple days sooner! Doh. So make sure you go back and read Part 1 before continuing.

Today we're going to finish off our trimmed craters. The goal of this tutorial is to create a crater that is roughly the size of a Rhino or Razorback. Here is what you need to get started:

• Vacuum formed crater. I'm using the Pegasus Hobbies Crater Set, but Games Workshop's Moonscape will work too. My wife prefers the Moonscape because they have sharper detail and paint up easier.
• A base for your crater. I use MDF.
• Cat Litter. I use Tidy Cats Non-clumping for Multiple Cats. I guess you can't use this stuff if you only have one cat (shrugs).
• Wood Filler. I use Carpenter's Wood Filler Interior/Exterior.
• Razor Knife
• Glue Gun. You could just use PVA glue, but that takes long to dry and I'm pretty impatient.
• PVA Glue
• Isopropyl Alcohol
• Eye Dropper
• Paint Brushes
• Paint. I use craft paints for terrain. You can buy them at AC Moore or Michaels. Wal-Mart even has a decent selection by the school supplies.
• Blue Foam
• Scissors
• Sharpie
• Sand Paper

Step 1: Cut out the crater you want to use with a pair of scissors. I used the triple crater that came with the Pegasus Hobbies Crater Set as it was the perfect size and I got three craters for the price of one!

Step 2: Trace your crater onto a base with a sharpie and leave about 1/4 to 1/2 inch all the way around. We don't want the base to be too big. Once your base is traced, cut it out. I use MDF which requires a jig saw. If you can't use power tools you can always just use foam board or card board. Once the base is cut, I shave the sides at an angle with a razor knife and I use sand paper to sand it smooth. In the pic below, I stuck a piece of foam under the crater to keep it upright and I attached the crater to the base with a glue gun.

Step 3: Here we need to build up the sides of the crater where we made the cut with the scissors. You can use various materials for this such as foam, modeling clay, green stuff, or even paper mache. I used blue foam and shoved it under the crater and affixed it with the glue gun. Once the glue dried, I cut into the foam to make it look like rock and match the rest of the crater.

Step 4: In this step we cover the sides of the crater with wood filler. There is no way to be neat about this step so just use your fingers from the beginning and save yourself time as opposed to trying to be neat. What we want to do is make sure that we are covering the seam where the crater meets the base or it will stick out like a sore thumb when we dry brush it later on. I love working with wood filler because it doesn't crack, it dries really quick, and you can sand it smooth.

Step 5: If there is anything I want you to take away from this tutorial it's the next few steps and how to make piles of rock and rubble. I got this tip from some dude on TerraGenesis and it's really easy to do and the results look great. If I made a list of my top 10 killer tips when making terrain, this would definitely make the cut.

Now that I have your attention, take out your cat litter and make random piles of rubble on the crater. Don't be afraid to stack it into large piles, because when we're done it will dry just like you place it. I'm adding in some other rocks too for variety. You'll want to do this on a piece of newspaper because once the rocks are in place, we can't move it and we'll be adding glue in the next step.

Step 6: Once we have all of our rock piles in place, you'll want to take your eye dropper and the isopropyl alcohol and get all of the cat litter wet. You don't want to go over board with this step, but you want to make sure that the cat litter and any other rocks you put on the base are well covered in alcohol.

Step 7: Now that the cat litter is wet with the alcohol, you'll want to again use the eye dropper and drop on diluted PVA glue. I dilute mine about 3:1 water to glue and I have a Tang container filled with the mix because I use it so much. The glue should be thin enough that when you drop it on, it flows through the cracks in the cat litter. If it doesn't flow and just sits on top, you can hit it with a couple drops of alcohol and that will do the job. Try not to get it all over like I did on the pics below. I ended up gluing the crater to the newspaper. Oops! Nothing a little sand paper and a spackling knife can't fix.

Step 8: Wait for the glue to dry. You should wait at least a few hours. I let mine dry overnight and work on it again the next day when I come home from work. In the pic below, you can see the cat litter stayed firmly in place just how I wanted it. A few pieces may flake off, but nothing too major. 

Step 9: Now that the cat litter is dry, we need to cover the rest of the base with sand. I just use straight glue from the jug without any thinning for this step and I use a cheap brush to apply it. Dip your crater in the sand, shake off the excess and allow it to dry. Sorry, forgot to take a picture of this step, but I'm sure you get the idea.

Step 10: This step was the easiest (at least for me). Paint the craters black and start dry brushing the different colors on. My wife is excellent at painting terrain, so I let her do it. We use craft paint for painting terrain because it's so cheap. She used black, gray, and white. For the browns, I had gallons mixed up years ago at Lowes. I believe I had them match scorched brown and vomit brown, but I'm not 100% sure.

Step 11: Marvel at your craters' greatness! And if you are me, you thank your wife for taking some time out before Christmas to paint terrain. Thanks babe! This doesn't solve wobbly model syndrome entirely, but it certainly helps and gives you a good looking piece of terrain that's also functional in the game. The craters are big enough to fit a full Tactical Squad and you can probably fit a few more models in there if you had to.

Below are some pics of the finished craters as well as a sneak peak at some of the desert terrain I've been working on. I'll have some pics of my desert terrain up in a future post as well as a sort fix I came up with for dealing with wobbly model syndrome.

Till then, have a Merry Christmas and may your dice always roll sixes.

–The Harrower