Recent Musings 5-18
Monday, May 18th, 2009 Subscribe To Our Feed
Well, it seems it decided to eat some posts. That’s annoying. all set now, though.
Lately it’s been a question of just what I want to work on. There’s the chaos marine footslogging army that still needs some paint. There’s an inquisition army waiting in the wings. There’s an Ork army that only lacks 4 vehicle models to have everything I need to build it. And there’s more chaos marine ideas to work on, too. And let’s not forget the Warmachine army that’s been languishing for some time now (never seem to find enough local players!)
I’ve about come to the conclusion I should try to stick with chaos marines. They’re the only 40k army I’ve never seriously considered getting rid of, and they do still offer a lot of neat modelling options, even if a lot of them got gutted from the codex with the last rendition.
Among the chaos projects hitting the table is a revival of the sculpted daemon princess. That project got buried (figuratively and litterally) some time ago when I started trying to avoid the Lash-prince because it just felt so darn cookie-cutter. That’s more or less a death-knell o my interest when it because a sea of sameness. However, it’s still useful for any other prince version, and unlike the idea I have of using Monique de Noir from Reaper minis, it’d actually be tournament legal (yay for greenstuff casting hybrids!).
To that end I’ve started poking around with some more sculpting supply options. I’ve basically given up on attempts at mold-making with Flex Rubber. It’s just to darned time-consuming and labor-intensive. Back to good old OOMOO for me. I’ve heard something like a Mold Max 1000 latex compound is good, but haven’t found a good supplier yet. Ah well. As an added bonus, the extra supplies will give me the chance to refine my molding and casting techniques for customized bases. I’m trying to nail down a good consistent result and it’s basically going to require 2-part molds instead of the 1-parters I’ve been using. Hence, I need more molding material.
May 27th, 2009 at 11:44 pm
I’m having a bit of luck actually making molds on the cheap with some mechanical epoxies. I’ll have to double-check the brand names, but I figure you’d like ‘em.
As for Chaos, I vote for seeing some Chaos-Zilla. That list you’ve got could be hellaciously nasty from what I saw, and there’s lots of fun to be had with Dreadnoughts.
May 29th, 2009 at 12:32 am
Ok, I double-checked it. A bit of casting/mold-making on the cheap I’ve been testing involves JB Stick Weld. It’s a metal epoxy; it’s bloody strong and still lets you get away with something like Vaseline as a release agent. It can also mold with itself; I need to get pictures of the prototype molds and plasma rifles I’ve made with it.
The bright side is that it’s cheap; $5 for a tube of the stuff that’s about an inch in diameter and 4-5″ tall. It also sets fast; something like an hour to real working strength, so you can mold in a hurry. Well, it’s fast compared to green stuff, and takes to trimming reasonably well. I’m not so sure about filing it, though, and larger molds might need some internal bracing in the form of paperclips.
May 29th, 2009 at 9:38 am
I’ve used greenstuff before for mold-making when I just needed a part or two. One of my eldar has an arm made entirely of it. Some internal bracing on anything that big and long is a must. Greenstuff is kinda floppy and flexible on it’s own. (wow, Smilin’ Bob would be proud of that bit of text)
You can also use stuff like thinly-brushed on veggie oils for release agents. And it’ll probably clean off easier then vaseline.