Cossack Test Casting #1

Join me today as I create a two-piece press mould for the Cossack pikeman from the previous post, using Blue Stuff. 

First thing to do is The Coffin. It might look a bit creepy for the poor sod, but the point is to have the two parts of the mould fit as snugly as possible. Press moulds are going to have a lot of flash no matter what, as the material has to go somewhere, so we do this to prevent any excess.

Many people use Lego bricks for The Coffin, but I just superglue this hard foamboard, using the original dimensions of the master as a guide, to a sort of brick shape, with the top open. I also cut a piece that is the size of the aperture, to apply pressure later when both sides of the mould are set in place.

Testing whether the figure fits and there is enough space for the Blue Stuff. In the end I found it a bit large, so I added a few spacers (bamboo sticks and two extra pieces of foamboard).

Blue stuff is reuseable, so I cleaned a bunch using a brush and some water from the previous production line (a 6mm wooly mammoth which I hope you will be able to see soon for yourselves), and portioned it equally between the two parts of the next mould.

Now all I've got to do is boil some water, once boiling take it off the oven, drop the blue stuff in and wait three minutes. At that point I'm able to fish it out of the warm water and shape it.

I put the blob of blue stuff at the bottom of The Coffin, spread it around some so it reaches everywhere, then press the figure's back into it. There's really no difference between putting him in there face up or down, this is just my preferred method. The other pieces I cast were usually done sideways.

Here comes the important part: to have a better finish, I take a flat-bottomed brush handle and tap the blue stuff around the figure's outline. This is also to reduce flash and, thus, loss of extra material when casting.

At this point I could have noticed that the fellow had lost his moustache, but it's nothing that can't be fixed at a later stage. Smaller parts made from magic sculpt do that sometimes, all it takes is a bit of glue to put them back in place.

Once the blue stuff is shaped, it takes about 10-15 minutes for it to set to a rubbery but firm condition. At this time I apply some viscous material, such as vaseline, to the bottom half for easier separation later, and set the other part of the mould to boil.

I repeat the process above, only this time as the mould is closed I squeeze the blue stuff to a general shape, then put the flat closing piece of The Coffin to the top and apply pressure via a clamp or some weight (such as a stack of coins).

After a while I remove the top and one side of The Coffin, et voilá! The press mould is ready. Now the figure's hair also dropped off, but this was, again, a test piece to see how bigger items like this can be cast. I found both the hair and moustache later and re-applied it to the master.

By now I'm kind of good at measuring by eyesight the volume of resin required to clone a figure. This is about the right amount of magic sculpt for this one.

I spread the magic sculpt into the mould very liberally (the surplus amount will be pushed aside) so that pressure actually works in shaping the figure, then put the mould back in The Coffin and clamp or weigh it down again.

Magic sculpt takes about four to six hours to completely set. You can remove it from the mould a bit earlier as it will first dry to a semi-bendy state and retain detail, but I usually wait the full time. With a morning and evening casting, I can produce two figures per day using a single mould. I planned a dozen pikemen and the same amount of musketeers from these two masters, so they are going to keep me occupied for a while.

There were a few problems with the mould, some of which I foresaw and some I did not. The left hand is extended way too much from the dimensions of the rest of the body, which actually caused it to have really good detail, but at the same time it was brittle and broke off once I started removing the flash around it. It was a simple matter to glue it back on, but my theory proved correct that I need to cut the lower arms off the master and cast them separately.

The other problem was that details on the figure's face were really obscured, I guess there was not enough material or the press mould failed to take on detail just right at that point. Now with this first cast I remedied that by cutting off the faulty head Frakenstein-style, and replacing it with a helmeted Bloody Miniatures head from my bits box. Fortunately I've got a lot of spares just for such occasions, and the rest of the detail on the cast, once cleaned, was pretty adequate. I had to re-sculpt the back of the belt and scrape the flash off, but that was it.

So I made a new mould for the pair of hands separately, and another for the hand-less figure and started again. The Coffin is not re-useable for press moulds, but I can make some scatter terrain or such out of it still. Nothing goes to waste in Random&Creativeland.

Now I'm off to hunt for the cheaper version of blue stuff called Oyumaru, to increase production capabilities.