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| It's understood, we'll do or die. |
A few weeks ago, we showed our progress on our remnants of the Imperial Army defending the Thorn Moons. Since then, I have disassembled all of the models and built a few more weapons and sculpted some arms, preparing to create a silicone mold. I am pleased to say that I made the first mold for the guard, and it was quite successful! I wanted to show you a few pictures of the resulting mold and the resin casts it produces.
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| The two part mold turned out well, only requiring the cutting of a few additional gates. The mold was made using Smooth-On Oomoo 30 rubber from Smooth-On. |
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| The torsos and legs cast excellently, retaining all the detail that I added via green stuff. The casts were made using Smooth-Cast 300 plastic from Smooth-On. |
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| I was a little concerned that some of the smaller details like the picatinny rails might not cast well, but I am happy to report that they worked well. |
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| My first attempt at creating a model with the casted parts. I still need to add additional pouches and gear, but I am happy with the model. |
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| I modified his mask to make it look more like a gas mask and to distance it from the Ruststalker one. |
Overall, I am really happy with the first mold. It confirmed that my technique is suitable for smaller and more delicate models, and makes it clear that I will be able to use similar molds to dramatically reduce the workload to build a small army of guard to defend the Thorn Moons. Although the first mold was good, I plan to revise it a little to improve the casting process, as well as add some extra bodies and accessories. Having said this, I am extremely excited to finally get beyond this preliminary stage and actually finally start assembling and eventually painting some of the models!
-Adam Wier
That's so cool!
ReplyDeleteI am quite pleased with how everything turned out. There is still a lot of work ahead. Look forward to seeing more guard assembled soon!
DeleteHey, excellent work! Now you just need to use that mold another 20 times to have the start of an IG army! ;)
ReplyDeleteAre you going to do heavy weapons and command too? ~100 infantry figures need two platoon and one company command squads, plus at least two heavy weapons squads...
Ha ha, yeah I need to make as many guard as I can. We will see how many I can manage. I think since they have been away from the Imperium so long I will not be too strict with maintaining the standard guard platoon structure.
DeleteI need to convert a few more different weapons for them. Currently it is just the lasrifles and the light machinegun (styled off of the Browning Automatic rifle). I should probably convert a flame thrower, a shotgun, and maybe a sniper rifle. For the heavy weapons I am not sure yet.
Missile launcher and heavy stubber as heavy bolter seem like easy choices. Mortar too. I would really like to see a "realistic" lascannon though. Besides changing the form factor and size you might want to consider the crew sizes too... two men to a gun is a very gamey sized crew for most real life heavy weapons.
DeleteAwesome work!
ReplyDeleteThanks for the kind words! Keep checking the blog for more updates for the Thorn Moon guard. More should be posted soon!
DeleteI love these casting posts.
ReplyDeleteI am glad you like them. We will try and continue posting them whenever we make a new mold!
DeleteAwesome minies and cool looking casts. Did you use a pressure pot to do these?
ReplyDeleteWe do use a pressure pot when casting (one fashioned out of a paint pressure pot; see the following post for details: http://betweenthebolterandme.blogspot.com/2017/05/ways-to-improve-resin-casting-pressure.html). It does wonders to remove unwanted airbubbles while the plastic is curing.
DeleteLong time reader here, but would these molds ever be put up for sale? Im sure i speak for mor than myself, but i am sure many people would be willing to shell out the requiered amount of cash to buy some of these beutiful minis.
ReplyDeleteUnfortunately none of these components or the molds will be for sale since they are so heavily based off of Forge World miniatures. Hopefully sometime in the future we will actually fully sculpt some components for casting that we can sell.
DeleteThank you for the interest. Send an email to our blog e-mail address and maybe we can send you some of the cast pieces we don't use in the Thorn Moon project.
I’ve got a feeling sharing the copies might be a copyright violation - it’s no longer personal use? Nice castings though. I’ve been having a lot of fun learning moulding and cadtingfor metal and one day I’d like to try resin.
DeleteYeah, that is probably true. It could be stepping a little close to the line.
DeleteCasting is really an interesting process. You learn something from each mold you make. :)
Very interesting to read about all of this--I have been wanting to do some casting for terrain pieces for a while so this is all very useful.
ReplyDeleteYou should certainly give casting a try! It is a really rewarding process. Since you are trying to cast terrain pieces you might be able to get away without all of the fancy equipment (mainly the vacuum chamber).
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