Casting with Blue Stuff and Two-Part Epoxy

Not a lot of updates, but that doesn't mean I haven't kept busy. I am definitely a recovering bits addict, during my previous stint in the hobby I would buy whole Space Marine Tactical Squad kits just for the two or so studded shoulder pads. This was before the current prevalence of bits stores. That was like 2006, since then I have married, had a few children and moved 2000+ miles away. This time around I am having to be more conservative with my spending. That said, I am still a bits fanatic. So I started experimenting with casting my own spare parts. I watched a lot of videos, read several articles and started here. 

I ordered some reusable thermoplastic named Blue Stuff from Green Stuff World and a two-part epoxy resin named EpoPutty by Alteco. 

First step is to start a pot of boiling water and then remove your Blue Stuff from the package. While the water is boiling you can cut your blue bars into smaller blocks, but it isn't necessary. Once your water is boiling pour it into a heat safe bowl or mug. Next put your Blue Stuff into the water. 

After about one minute it becomes malleable and you are able to bend it into itself.

Now you are able to tear away chunks of Blue Stuff and make the first part of a two-part mold. Do your best to have half of the bit pressed into the Blue Stuff. I also recommend making guide holes to line up with the other half of your mold. I started with a Genestealer Neophyte Hybrid Power Pick and Head, a Cadian Command Plasma Gun and a Forge World Elysian Sniper Rifle.

It takes about three minutes for the Blue Stuff to become completely firm, but it begins to firm immediately so try to work quickly to capture small details. After the bottom mold is firm remove some more Blue Stuff from your hot water and firmly press it on top of your first mold and bits. 

After about three minutes it will be completely firm and you will be able to split the two halves. You will have to apply some pressure but be careful to rip or tear your mold. When completely firm the Blue Stuff feels like rubber.

Now that your molds are finished, open each of your two-part epoxies, tear off roughly equal parts of your resin (here it is the blue tube) and hardener (silver tube) and knead them together like you are playing with Play-Doh or Silly Putty.

Once you have an elastic putty that is solidly one color, begin to firmly press it into one half of your mold, followed by the other half. Then line up the guide holes firmly press the two half of the molds together. It is recommended to wait three hours for curing in open air and six and half hours curing when submerged in water (this is the go-to epoxy for making imitation reef for aquariums). In my opinion the resin becomes almost unworkable after about thirty minutes, so try to have everything set quickly. When time is up separate your molds.

I waited somewhere in between three and four hours. As you can see in the picture there was quite a bit of flash and that is caused by excess resin in the mold. 

After removing from the mold, clean away flash, remove mold lines and check for loss of detail. 

As you can tell from the picture there is loss of detail, mold lines, mold slip lines and areas where resin didn't get into the mold. In addition to using an excess amount of resin on the outer edges of the mold which caused the flash, I also used too much resin where the molds join and it made the bits almost one and half times thicker than they should have been. Also I lost a lot of detail when trying to clean the model with a hobby knife because some areas of the casts were not completely cured. At this point I was a combination of excited, disappointed and pleased. I waited over night and cleaned the casts some more and ended breaking some pieces.

Some take-aways from the first session, use less resin in each mold, be mindful of how to get the most out of the small details and know ahead of time where you want mold lines to be. After a few days of pondering it and rewatching a couple videos I decided to make a second attempt. 

Here is a comparison to the original plastic bits.

Here is a comparison to the original casts. (New casts are on the top)

Last is a comparison of all three. (Left is the original plastic bit, the middle is the second cast and the right is the original cast)

I was able to reduce the thickness issue, more effectively minimize mold line impact and capture more detail while avoiding detail loss. While it was considerably better it is still about 65% of where I want to be with a personal recast.

What will I do differently next cast? I will play with the surface area ratios per mold half and really focus on trying to capture any detail where the two halves meet. I will make an even more focused attempt to use less resin in the mold. I will let the casts cure for a minimum of five hours before clearing flash and mold lines, but since I work so late at night it will like be 16+ hours before I can initially clean them.

From all the research I did, EpoPutty seems to cure the hardest and has the best durability, but it can be prone to losing detail. I am in the process of tracking down some old Warhammer Fantasy Battle bits that have large smooth surfaces and not a lot of fine detail, and I think that is where EpoPutty will excel. On the flipside the consensus appears to be that Milliput Supre Fine White two-part epoxy is the best two-part resin for capturing intricate details. I am not ready to give up on casting yet, so I will get some Milliput Super Fine White and test it out. It might just be correct to have both on hand for different projects.

Quick shoutouts! 
Green Stuff World for Blue Stuff and Milliput purchases
crankmeisterj for EpoPutty (they are very knowledgeable and willing to help, great communication!)
Plasmo for a great video tutorial on the process I described

What's next? I need to get back into paint mode and try to finish a squad for Necromunda/Kill Team in about a month and half. Should be easy right? Well considering I haven't done that once in 33 years, condensing that down to a month and half puts some pressure on me. I also have four fluff blog posts in draft stages that I work on as I get inspired and be on the look out for plans/goals for 2019 in the near future ...

Stripping with Simple Green

I mentioned that I recently took a vacation, well during that time I visited family and picked up some minis/bits that I had stored. Most of them were from an old Imperial Guard project from long long ago (more on that in a bit), but there were also some cultists from the old Dark Vengeance box set. 

This is a group of Forge World Elysians that I murdered with old GW paint. These gents are a combination of FW resin and GW plastic put together with model super glue, painted with GW paint with minor green stuff work. With my recent obsession with Necromunda/Kill Team I figure I can do something really cool with them, but first I have to try and salvage what I can. I have stripped paint in the past, but it has been 10+ years and I probably had no clue what I was doing (not that I do now). So lets try it out. My stripper tonight will be the simply beautiful, Simple Green.

I have heard that SG is a pretty bad idea to use on Games Workshop Finecast miniatures but should be fine for FW resin. I know I used GW paints back then but have no clue what I primed them with, here's to hoping that it wasn't anything that bonded with the resin. Also I am interested if the SG will do anything to the little bit of GS they have on them. Lets find out!

The bits are now submerged and I have acquired a few toothbrushes from my kids' bathroom. I will leave them in at least 24 hours but likely longer than that. It just depends on how much hobby time I will have before the weekend. So stay tuned for the catastrophic results.

To reference my comment earlier about my IG project from long, long ago; when I got home from my vacation and could relax a bit I had Elysians on the brain so I googled them and I stumbled upon pictures of MY Elysians! Those pictures led me back to an old P&M thread I had on Dakkadakka (does anyone even use Dakka anymore?!?!)! It was all so surreal! The post was from October 2009, exactly 9 years ago. I had forgot about most of the project and that I had WIP thread. In the thread I found my plans for the project at the time.

I was pretty ambitious at the time and I didn't have a wife or kids so I probably could have afforded it! I had completely forgotten about the details of this project and was pretty shocked at how closely it matches some of my plans for my current Necromundan Spiders project. Eerily similar. Here is a link to the thread if you are interested https://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/260340.page. 

So that is what I have brewing at the moment and a brief bit of the past, what lies ahead in the immediate future? A few things actually:
- Removing the bits from SG and scrubbing them
- Receiving Blue Stuff instant mold and Epo Putty in the post (that will allow me to cast my own bits and save a noted bits junkie some money)
- Receiving 12 paints in the post (that will allow me to paint human flesh, GSC flesh, IG fatigues and my Atlas-Class Ferrojack)
- Working on two fluff posts (more communicae and a story of a Spyrer)
- Unboxing for some new miniatures that are in the post
- Constructing a light box (progress so far)

 Check back for the lessons I learned from stripping minis with Simple Green ...

Painting Van Saar Hystrar Pattern Energy Shield

On my Van Saar I wanted them to be mostly metallic with a striking color for minor details, and because of the RoboCop (2014) inspiration I knew I wanted a laser-like red for the detail color. The energy shield is one of my favorite aesthetics of the Van Saar kit and I wanted it to be red in addition to remaining translucent. In order to achieve this affect I used Testors Gloss Red Spray Enamel. I have also seen it called Candy Apple Red, and it is suppose to mimic a candy coat paint-job on model cars. 

 

I started with one light coat on the front of the shield, because honestly, I didn't know what to expect. Here is the front and back after spraying only the front once.

At this point I started to question what I was even doing (I am sure this will come up every painting post). I could see potential but it also looked a little weird and I thought I was ruing the beautiful bit. I fought back the insecurities and flipped it over and gave the back a light spray.

It still looked a little weird to me but I decided to do another coat, front and back at the same time.

Wow that is beautiful and exactly what I wanted! So I thought I was finished and went to bed. The next day I looked at it under natural sun light and it looked blotty in ways not visible in the pic and I started second guessing myself. That night I sprayed a third coat over it.

This made it look like a thicker version of the single coat. I believe an additional coat would even it out, however it will also likely remove the translucence. I am satisfied with how it looks, though I prefer the second coat. 

It is possible there are other circumstances that affected the appearance of the third coat, but I sprayed at the same distance for the same length of time in the same temp/humidity. I had residual spray hit my hand and it did the same thing, it just doesn't coat evenly. I believe (with my little anecdotal experience) that the next coat would even it out and that it isn't environmental. 

What will I do differently on the next shield? Plan for two coats, have some Simple Green ready and be more patient. I didn't have any Simple Green at the time and was so anxious to see the model put together that I just glued it on. I have also heard of a Tamiya Red spray that is supposed to be very similar, might give that a shot.

Big lesson for me from this particular project as small piece of my broader project, EXPERIMENT AND DON'T BE AFRAID TO FUCK UP. I am doing this for me (and you, if there are any of you), I am doing this to have fun and create a world and test myself. I think I was never able to complete anything in the past because I thought "that it had to be perfect, and if it wasn't perfect then why bother." Well how could it be perfect if I never even tried, if I never failed, if I never learned any lessons. I know it will be a struggle every time I sit down to paint something, I will have to fight my anxiety and my insecurity, but I have to trust myself and be prepared to fuck up. I will come out more patient, more considerate and hopefully more creative and more skilled.

Painting Van Saar Leader

It has been a couple weeks since my last update, I had a respiratory infection for a little under a week and then went on vacation for a little over a week, over 4500 miles and 50 hours of driving! I have been back a few days and started painting my Van Saar. 

I am huge 80s kid, especially when it comes to science fiction and dystopian future! One of my favorite movies from back then was RoboCop and I am big fan of the 2014 remake. I have watched Dredd, RoboCop (2014) and Mad Max Fury Road every weekend except one since I started modeling again. RoboCop (2014) was my inspiration for my Van Saar gang. My leader will be in the black armor and the rest of my gang will be in the silver armor.

I started off with an alternate model for my Van Saar Leader, he has a Plasma Pistol and a Hystrar Pattern Energy Shield. His primary model has a Plasma Pistol and a Las Pistol. In an attempt to achieve the metallic black affect of the armor I used Reaper Miniatures Adamantium Black over a Games Workshop Mechanicum Grey spray.

I was very happy with the look of the paint, however it is very thick out of dropper and dries quickly. At this point I had a lot of anxiety and was not sure how to move forward, this is the point in the past I would have just given up. I wanted the model to look metallic but not silver and I think the paint accomplished that but I didn't know how to highlight it. I decided to apply a light wash of Games Workshops Nuln Oil in an attempt to give it some definition.

I do think it helped to show definition but it greatly reduced the metallic affect. The plan at this point was to apply another layer of Adamantium Black to the larger smoother surfaces. After that I attempted a highlight and used Games Workshop Leadbelcher on the edges and raised areas of the armor. Also at this time I used Games Workshop Ceramite White on all of the ares I wanted to be red and flesh.

Next I started on the Hystrar Pattern Energy Shield, scroll to the next post for info on how I painted it.

I knew I wanted to have a laser-like red for the secondary color on my Van Saar. I used a combination of Reaper Miniatures Clear Red and Green Stuff World Fluorescent Red. I started with a 1:1 mix of Fluorescent:Clear, then applied a light wash of Games Workshop Carroburg Crimson and a very thin layer of 1:1 mix, next was a tiny highlight of pure fluorescent. On the plasma coils I did an additional highlight of 1:1 mix of the fluorescent and Games Workshop White Scar. Here are pictures with the energy shield attached.

The model is not finished, I still need to paint the crate he is standing on and his flesh, but since I am just starting out I still very limited on the amounts of paint I have.

You can see by the picture that it is just various monochromatic colors, metallics, yellows and reds. I am very pleased with him overall, he achieves the feel of the character I wanted. At this point he is the closest I have ever come to finishing a model and I am highly motivated to do so.

What will I do differently on his primary model? I will definitely attempt to thin the Adamantium Black a little more, I am getting more comfortable applying thinner and thinner coats. I doubt will use a black wash over the armor and skip straight to edge highlighting and I will likely start with a 2:1 mix of fluorescent:clear for the red.

Riding a high right now and trying to stay motivated!

Painting Sector Mechanicus Bases

When planning my narrative project as a whole, I came to the conclusion it was going to be on Necromunda. Shortly thereafter I started planning what mini projects I wanted to do and I knew Iwanted to have the bases be the same to tie them all together. After dauntless base research I decided to go with the Sector Mechanicus bases.

First I primed the sprue using Games Workshop Mechanicus Grey spray and then a heavy dry brush of Games Workshop Leadbelcher.

Next was a heavy wash of Games Workshop Nuln Oil.

This provided much needed texture and helped bring out the details underneath the grating. I find that this would have been a satisfactory look for what I wanted to achieve, but I just wanted to play around with it more. I wanted to try a brown wash to have an "exposed to the elements" look and not just a dirty look, but I don't have a brown wash. So I did a 2:1 mix of Games Workshop Casandora Yellow and Carroburg Crimson shades and did a medium wash over the top. The coloring is more visible in person but in the pictures you can see a slightly warmer/browner tint to the metal. Next, Hazard Stripes!

So hear I applied three very thin coats of Games Workshop Flash Gitz Yellow. At this point I am thinking "man I have heard yellow is miserable but I expected it to go on better than this." Especially with how impressed I have been with Games Workshop's "Base" line of paints. I have two yellows from Games Workshop and when I picked up the first one I didn't even look at the name I just saw that it was a layer so I assumed the other was a base, it wasn't ... it was Flashgitz Yellow, which is also a layer. This is when I realized I do not have a yellow base paint. So I add a medium wash of Nuln Oil and let sit.

When I comeback to it I add a fourth layer of Flashgitz and do an additional round of touch ups. It is still semi-transparent, but hey maybe it is weathering or maybe Necromunda just has some shitty industrial painters. Next I started adding the stripes with Games Workshop Abaddon Black. This is when I realize that I do not have a steady hand and that I can not paint a straight light. Zero consistency between my line work. But hey, shitty Necromunda painters right?

After letting it dry I came back with another layer of Abaddon Black and was able to touch up a few lines. I was going to add paint chipping affects but I was kind of teetering on whether I was happy with the striping or not. I decided that the solution wasn't adding more paint, so I just clipped them off the sprue and added a layer of Abaddon Black around the lip.

From a tabletop perspective and if you do not look at them for too long they look pretty good, I am happy with them overall. Once they get a mini on them they will help provide a background for the mini (again, from a tabletop perspective) and will hopefully emphasize the theme of Necromunda while tying the project together as a whole.

What will I do differently on the next sprue? I will probably poke some Vallejo German Grey into the nooks and crannies before the Leadbelcher dry brush. I am ordering Secret Weapon Miniatures Parchment Wash and Tamiya 3mm Masking Tape, which I hope will meet the needs of a "dirty wash" and help with more consistent hazard striping. Oh yeah, and some Games Workshop Averland Sunet base paint!

Lastly I just want to say that I have been messing around in this hobby for 20 years now and this is my first completed painting project. Crazy I know! It is not an amazing quality, but I am feeling both very pleased with the work and very proud of myself. I hope I can ride this feeling and keep the motivation high! Small battle won in this eternal war!

Modeling Atlas-Class Ferrojacks

A couple months ago when I was planning what I wanted to do for GSC I got some crazy inspiration and in my head everything clicked so I decided I had to do it. I have named it the Atlas-Class Ferrojack and written fluff about it (PLEASE see post below!). I named it Atlas to kind of be a mnemonic and keep the same nomenclature as the Goliath truck (I know one is a Greek titan and the other Judaeo-Christian giant but it makes sense to me and I like it!). I named it a ferrojack because it is a mining vehicle and jack brings to mind both lumberjack and some animes have referred to grunt mechs as jacks, and ferro is just a fancy way of saying iron.

The Atlas-Class Ferrojack will be a counts-as Armored Sentinel and it was inspired by combing Acolytes and a Goliath truck. Weird I know, but let me explain.

In this picture is the Goliath truck mining laser, cab and exhaust. This was the Goliath spark of inspiration.

In this picture is the Acolyte spark of inspiration. I wanted to mimic the silhouette of the left most Acolyte and give visual cues using the heavy mining equipment that would create something unique and feel at home in my project. What would that look like?

Behold the Atlas-Class Ferrojack! I am very happy with how it turned out. The cab mimic's the Goliath cab and it has the silhouette of a 1st/2nd gen hybrid. It has a mining laser, heavy rock saw and heavy rock cutter, which will count as a multi-laser/lascannon and a chainsaw. Here are some more pics.

It has the ladder, railing and handle from the truck kit. I am hoping this will visually tie it in with project, especially when next to a Goliath and especially especially when they are both painted in the same scheme. I removed all of the spikes in addition to adding the railing in an attempt to make it feel more imperial and feel like an actual construction vehicle. 

Please go read the fluff post, I think it kind of ties everything up in a neat little package.

I will leave you with a couple more pics. I magnetized the saw arm and the laser arm using 5mm x 2mm 3/16"x1/16" N52 Strong Rare Earth magnets. I didn't magnetize the cutter arm as the magnet was too big for joint and I didn't come up with a solution at the time. I learned a lot about modelling with magnets with this project and probably would do things a little differently if I were to ever build another one.

I also did some more painting. Trying to decide if I want to do a post on the progress. Hmm ...