Cloning

[me_in_japan]

Right. Before I start this thread, I am aware that the contents herein may get some people's knickers in a twist. I understand that, and I respect your opinion. Please do me the same courtesy.

Recent developments in the wide world of GW (or "the hobby" as they prefer to call themselves) has led to many people becoming rather disillusioned with them. I include myself in this category. I have spent literally thousands of pounds of my hard-earned, and thousands, possibly even tens of thousands of hours painting, prepping and converting their models. I love me my 40k.

However, GWs attitude to gamers, particularly experienced gamers and gamers overseas, has led me to lose all respect for them as a company. They dont care about me. Why should I care about them?

With this in mind, I decided that the time had come to try something I've had rolling around in my head for a wee while. To whit: casting my own models.

Now, I would like to point out that the casting is being done on an experimental basis. Yes, I intend to keep the models and play with them. No, I do not in any way intend to sell or distribute them to other people. Making a profit is not the point here. Seeing if it can be done, is.

So, here's what I did.

Step One: buy some mould making equipment.

1) lego blocks (or cheap equivalent, as pictured.)


2) silicon rubber (and catalyst. It comes as a set)

This is a one litre tub.

This is about 50ml.

3) resin. There are 2 cans like this in a set. Each is 1 litre.


4) a set of digital scales. These were nicked from my wife. (not advisable. Resin doesnt wash off. A placatory set had to be bought... )


5) paper cups NOT plastic ones. (resin gets surprisingly hot while curing)


6) oil clay (known hereabouts as aburanendo. Fantastic stuff, and dead cheap, too. It never dries out.)


7) a mini. This can be self-sculped, for the halo-polishers among you
IMAGE REMOVED BY AUTHORITY OF THE INQUISITION
Note that the model chosen does not have any major sticky outy bits, and has a clearly defined front and back half.

OK. The procedure:

1) make a wee box with your lego. Fill this about half full with clay. Make sure to use a stick or something to shove it right into the corners. If you dont, all your silicon will come pissing out overnight and go all over the floor. Then it wil set. This is a Problem.


2) press your master mini into the clay about halfway.
IMAGE REMOVED BY AUTHORITY OF THE INQUISITION

3) mix up your silicon and catalyst in the proportions in the instructions. (mine was 3% catalyst. So, for 33g of silicon, i measured 1 g of catalyst. This was enough for 1 model half.) Now, use a soon-to-be-dead paintbrush and paint this carefully over the exposed surface of the mini, making sure that there are no airbubbles. Once this is done, pour the rest of the silicon over the mini, to fill the mould. Take an electric toothbrush (or other vibrating home appliance. I leave this up to your imagination) and press it to the side of the mould for a coupla mins or until you get bored. This helps the bubbles percolate up. Now leave it to set for at least 24 hours.
(sorry, no pic of mould setting.)

4) remove the lego bricks. remove the clay (very easy, actually - it just peels off.) Now rebuild the lego in the same shape, turn the halfmould over, and put it back in. If youve got a decent silicon lube then now is the time to go to town on it. Now repeat the silicon application process (dab on with brush, pour on the rest to fill the mould. vibrate. wait 24 hrs.) If you have decent lube, the two halves should just pop apart. If, like me, it turns out that you dont, then you'll have to take a sharp knife and carefully cut through the mould, around the mini inside. This is not as tricky as it sounds, as the mould is pretty flexible, but hard to tear. You should end up with this.
IMAGE REMOVED BY JUNIOR ACOLYTE MIJ, ON REQUEST OF HIGH INQUISITOR PRIM THE PRIM.

You'll notice that there are a number of wedges that have been cut out of the mould. These are vents, and they are vital. basically, you need vents anywhere that resin is not flowing DOWN into. these places are where air bubbles get trapped. I tend to go a bit mad with em, and after casting my first piece, cut more wherever it looks like air was getting trapped.

5) strap your mould together with elastic bands (or just hold it with your fingers.)

Using the paper cups and the scales, mix your resin in as close to 50/50 proportions as you can. Do this by weight, not volume. Once mixed, pour it IMMEDIATELY, as thats when it starts to set. I cut a big vent to act as my intake.

0 seconds - like cooking oil
10 seconds - like fat in a cooling pan
30 seconds - like honey
45 secs - tar
1 min - not pourable
10 mins - fully cured. pop those moulds open!

6) open the mould. This is easily done with your fingers.
IMAGE REMOVED BY AUTHORITY OF THE INQUISITION

7) pop out the mini. This is where you find out if you had enough vents. First time around, you wont have, I promise you.
IMAGE REMOVED BY AUTHORITY OF THE INQUISITION

8) clean up the mini. Repeat until youre fully fed up with that model
IMAGE REMOVED BY AUTHORITY OF THE INQUISITION

And that's it, really.

My only caveat to the whole technique is: Its bloody messy, and the results are NOT as good as a shop bought mini. Absolutely useable, but I can see myself (fussy bugger that I am) spending a good long time filling air holes with putty. Still, I'm fairly happy with the results

[Primarch]

Having tried something like this myself before, I'd like to offer some tips/ideas.

1. When you're about to make the silicone mould, push the round end of a ball pen into the clay/putty etc. maybe about 1/2 cm deep, about 4 or 5 times around the model. When you pour in the silicone it will fill this gap leaving you with some large, regular lumps. When you put the second set of silicone on top it will create indentations in the top half.
These lumps are called keys. Basically they help to ensure that your two halves line up perfectly everytime.

2. Always use a lubricant between the two halves of the mould when you make it. This will prevent the mould from tearing.

3. Get the consistency of the resin mix right. As M_i_J says, its about weight not volume. I didnt know that when I tried this and consistently got a right old mess. If you put in more of A than B the resin will be like rubber. More of B than A and it will be brittle and will crack easily.

4. This project isnt for the faint hearted. The volumes the stuff comes in are pretty large. The outlay for the materials adds up to a fair bit (though once you've made the moulds they'll last for a while). If the Resin gets on ANYTHING it will NEVER come off. You have been warned. For infantry models, this stuff works out at about 1/2 the price of plastic models to begin with and goes down the more times you use the mould, though moulds will eventually wear out. However, I found that the amount of time and effort required would be better spent working and paying for the real models. (this was 3 years ago mind you). For tank models, you'd need to work out some way to keep the interior hollow because otherwise you need a massive volume of resin. This is best used if you are recasting your own sculpts (a-la M_i_J's nice Eldar-esque bases).

[AndrewGPaul]

EDITED BY THE ORIGINAL POSTER

Not sure what the position of Japanese law is, but round here, none of that matters a damn. I assume you know that and don't care, but I thought I'd mention it anyway.

[Spevna]

Very informative and easy to follow.

Cheers mate.

[Mike the Pike]

Not that I particularly care, one way or another, but I thought I 'd let you know that a certain Italian resident in Tokyo knows of this site and presumably peruses it from time to time. You might wanna EDITED )

[Primarch]

Not that I particularly care, one way or another, but I thought I 'd let you know that a certain Italian resident in Tokyo knows of this site and presumably peruses it from time to time. You might wanna LIKEWISE, EDITED

Pikey makes a good point. Steps have been taken....

[me_in_japan]

I'm not doing this in a super-secret cloak and dagger style because I think/hope/believe that certain mini companies have bigger things to worry about than me. I didnt post this thread as any kind of challenge to them. They have their highly profitable IP/business. Im just some dude who wanted to see if he could do something he read about on the internet. As I said previously. I was doing this to see if it could be done, not to make any kind of profit from it. Having done it, I will now stop. Perhaps it wasnt clear in my initial post, but there were 15 models cast, and there will be no further casts made from these moulds. I'm not out to single handedly deprive mini companies of their income. This was a one-time jobby, which is now done and over with. I posted the how-to simply as a means of documenting the casting process. I do not advocate copying other companies miniatures (and in fact, as you all know, I bought the silicon\resin about a year ago to cast my own custom bases with, as seen in my dark eldar thread.)

If the Powers that Be (i.e. Prim) think that this thread could be a problem for Naghammer, then I (of course) wont take any offence if they want to delete it. I've just now taken a quick shufty at Dakkadakka and Warseer, and they seem to actually close ANY thread that even mentions recasting in any context other than "heinous evil". I just wanted to demonstrate to folks that casting one's own minis is not so difficult as it might seem, and that it could be useful (particularly for people like Konrad who sculpts his own stuff.) I do intend to make some conversion pieces for my Rackham booglies that I got to use as Grotesques, and those pieces will be cast up, but theyre extra parts made for models made by a company which has gone the way of the dodo.

*EDIT* ah. I see the Inquisition have got here ahead of me. Fair enough officer - carry on

[ennui]

Not that I particularly care, one way or another, but I thought I 'd let you know that a certain Italian resident in Tokyo knows of this site and presumably peruses it from time to time. You might wanna EDITED )

Who, Mussolini??

[me_in_japan]

Mussolini lives in Tokyo?

[Admiral-Badruck]

Me finks demz barking bout Giovani... me finks im not care but iz boss might....