Alea Iacta Est

So, earlier in the week I made a mould of a Squat.  I've also made a second mould - of a Chaos Dwarf with Blunderbuss - but it's all academic until I actually pour resin in.  A hundred moulds will be useless if everyone turns out mangled rubbish with no detail and loads of air bubbles.  So it's time to mix up some resin and see what comes out!




The photo above is the two-part resin mix I'm using, again from TOMPS.  It's much easier to use than the silicone as there isn't any fiddly equation - just 1:1 weight of either part and stir.  That said, I found transformation to be really quick - it was a translucent liquid for about a minute then suddenly a white solid almost before my eyes.  This meant the first effort went poorly: as in "solid mass at bottom of plastic cup without pouring any" poorly.

Liquie Liquid Liquid Liquid HA HA SOLID BITCHES

However, second time round it went better and I was able to pour into my moulds.  To keep them together and prevent resin dribble out, I used sellotape to keep them inplace : I also placed some newspaper around them.  Finally I used my lego blocks to build a little holder for then.  This all seemed to work well, as basically no resin leaked out.

The resin, having turned solid.

 I poured it into my main hole but also dribble some down the side vents.  I gave them a little sway to make sure any air bubbles trapped had a chance to escape.  I then left it for 30 minutes and popped it out.  Here's the result.

The die is cast.  (Well, the Dwarfs, anyway)  Note the much better "key" marks on the Chaos Dwarf mould to keep the two parts together and in place - made by indenting a pen into the original clay.

As you can see, there's a lot of excess resin and a fair bit of flash, but the figures are recognisable as their masters.  Here's some shots comparing the originals and first case.

Squat Musician.

Chaos Dwarf Blunderbuss

 I then tried to clean the figures up, though on closer inspection it became apparent there's some air bubbles.  Thankfully few of them are serious - the worst one is the Chaos Dwarf Blunderbuss whose beard didn't full form.  Smoothed over with Milliput and pricked with a pencil to give it the "curl holes" I am confident it will be useable.

Wonky beard end and some holes on shoes and gun.

The front of the Squat was OK but the back had some holes in backpack and the very top of the helmet.  However, this is pretty straightforward to fix with Milliput.

Wonky backpack and helmet.

The true test of all this is, now that I've cleanead them up and tried to fill in the holes, how will they look painted?  The detail level seems mostly fine, but on the table can they pass for their originals?  Even just a spray of undercoat and a splash of wash to show up the detail would probably seal the deal.