Jim's Terrain Project Log

[busbina]

Hey Jim, I got a ton of complements on your wrecks at TSHFT, do you want more of my money for some of this scenery?

[JMGraham]

It's like you're becoming a one-man reinvention of Armorcast. 

 

That's a hell of a complement! I'm a long way off from even touching their body of work, but to call Armorcast inspirational would be an understatement!

 

Thanks, Busbina! I'd love more of your money, but really need to find time to get back into it before I have anything saleable. Other things (painting for an Apoc game this weekend, getting my Nurgle army painted) keep interfering. I want to get a good proof-of concept large-scale terrain piece (like a building) done. I still haven't gotten to try my expanding foam, yet!

 

Currently, I'm getting set to get a pressure pot. I've done a lot of research, and while the re-rigged Harbor Freight route seems popular, I've read too many accounts of them failing (read as: exploding). I also want something I can use as a vacuum chamber if I eventually decide to move up to a vacuum pump. It's pricier, but I'm thinking of going this route: http://www.finishsystems.com/resincastingpressurepots.html

 

I've got some more walls ready to mold, along with a bunch of tombstone stands (for which I want to use the pressure pot). I've also got my eye on trying out some fillers so I can reduce the cost of some of my casts. Might have to move to a slower-setting resin if I go that route, due to changes in viscosity. 

[Raindog]

Oooooo. Shiny! I totally could see me buying the ruined walls and the badlands pieces. Keep it up!

[JMGraham]

Got a couple of pieces ready to cast, and I'm looking forward to trying out some new techniques. First up is a simple fantasy/steampunk building, size is 5" x 4", and about 6" (or a bit more) high. I carved the basic shape out of pink foam, and used cardstock from a cereal box to make the framing and the shingles. I used the same cardstock to punch out the rivets with a micro-hole punch. The idea was to try and do something that looked like a half-timber house, but with a bit more of a steamunk flair. I carved the foam with an x-acto knife, textured it with a rock (pushing in some stones, etc.), and used a pencil to better define the cracks between the stones. I had previously cast the windows and door in resin.

 

My plan is to try and do a cast of it. I'm planning to try and slush cast it with resin to pick up the detail, and then fill it out with expanding foam. I'm pretty sure I'll try painting on a silicone mold (with thixotropic additive to get it to thicken). Once that's thick enough, I'll try and make a mother mold out of some plastic paste (to keep the mold from deforming when the foam expands). If anyone has tried this sort of thing, I'd appreciate any advice you might have. I'd really like to figure out how to do bigger castings in an economically feasible way.

 

 

 

 

The other project is some gravestones. I reckon they'd be great scatter terrain in an area surrounded by some of the walls I've been working on. I had originally designed the gravestones as a giveaway for Walpurgis III and had them cut and etched out of MDF. To make these, I cast the stones in plaster so I could carve them up, weather them, and make them look less like laser-etched MDF. These are going to be the first things I try and cast under pressure, to better pick up the detail. Again, any advice is appreciated!

 

[Sammy]

I've made panel molds of a small terrain house out of silicone for resin casting before. The main issue with that technique is that you have to do some gap filling once assembled. Your master looks much more suitable for a single cast mold. I've never done a slush mold, but have read about them and the concept seems pretty straight forward.

[nathonicus]

That house looks really nice - the stone textures and the windows are great, and nice original flourishes with the iron banding.  Are you going to carve a recess for the door or will it sit raised on the outside of the wall texture like that?

[JMGraham]

Hmmm... I suppose I should carve it flush a bit. Maybe not set it in all the way like the windows, but at least make it look like it's not just pasted on.

 

I'll try doing the casting a couple different ways. Slush cast back filled with foam. Expanding foam by itself (I've got the self-skinning variety). I'm guessing the resin layer will look better and be more durable, but if there's a way to cast it in one less step, and still have it look nice, that'd be great.

 

@Sammy, any pictures of the stuff you've done? I've thought about going the panel route as well, particularly for bigger buildings. On the plus side, if you do a removable roof, it lets you have a playable interior, right?

[Sammy]

Behold some hastily taken photos! If the roof were to be removable, I think you'd want a larger structure, I think I was working with a 4x3 footprint.

 

 

 

[JMGraham]

That's a very cool cottage, Sammy! Thanks for the undershot, it gives me some good ideas about how I might try and pull it off if I go the hollow route. I'm wondering what it would be like to have slotted corner pieces, with the side panels sliding into them. That way you should be able to solve some of the difficult to assemble resin building issues, but make it customizable so you could mix and match different panels. Instead of me scratch building every building, I could make components that could be combined into different styles of buildings.

[Sammy]

Yeah, I like the modular concept. I thought about expanding my design with corner pieces, T-joins, cross-joins, and towers. I'm not completely happy with some of the elements like the windows and roof though, so I may retool when I get back to this project.

 

My plan in filling the hollow space was to make a cardboard guide plate for the foam and cutting sized blocks with a hot cutter. The main concerns I have are that resin is brittle, so if it's not filled it will definitely crack apart if you squeeze too hard.

 

A thought - your corner join method sounds like it might work for a hollow version, or maybe take some 90 degree corner plasticard and apply it on the inside for support. Or maybe there's a less brittle resin that you can use with a gravity fed silicone mold.

[Sammy]

Another thought - I'm not sure how you'd get the corner slots into the mold without making it a 2-part clamshell. Mold placed upright vertical instead of horizontal? Seems like it would be a rickety mold and you'd have less visibility to see if bubbles were catching while casting. Unless you're using a pressure system.

[Jay]

After working with resin buildings from a a couple different companies, I do not think that resin is a good medium for buildings. It's too costly for what you end up with. I love it for scatter terrain. I will stick to the laser cut wood for buildings or hirst arts.

[JMGraham]

I'm not worried about the resin being brittle or bubbles. I have a new pressure system, and feel pretty confident about making the corner piece molds (I'd cast them upright). The resin I use is pretty tough; I've dropped pieces off of 3 story buildings onto concrete with no I'll effects (though I gotta admit, I was pretty surprised it could do that). I think resin can get SO much better detail than laser cut MDF, but it's all about keeping the costs down. Worth an experiment, at least.

 

Jay, you're a heathen! The cost is the issue, though. Now that I have a pressure system, I'm going to try out some fillers: microbaloons and talc and the like. See if I can make stuff cheaper Nd still get good quality.

[JMGraham]

Well, I have my first mold curing under pressure right now. I didn't get all of the joints completely airtight, so the compressor still has to kick in every 10 minutes or so to keep the pot at a constant 60 lbs of pressure. I hate not being able to see in there, as I'm paranoid the mold has busted out, the originals have been crushed, and it's just a puddle of silicone in the bottom. 3 hours til I can check, though.

 

Next purchase will be a vacuum pump. I think I know enough to be able to rig up the same pot for both pressure and vacuum. That way I can degas stuff, and then switch straight over to pressure in order to compress those last few bubbles. I'll be trying to make the mold for the house this weekend; hopefully in time to try a first cast.

[JMGraham]

Wall of text and photos incoming!

 

Got some stuff done this weekend. First up, the trial run of my new pressure casting rig was a success! No blown mold, and it’s a nice way to get bubble-free castings on small things like the gravestones.

 

 

I experimented with some UreFil 15 (which sounds like some thing you put in your urethra) – they are “microballoons” that you can mix with resin to cut costs. Without it, the crates would be prohibitively expensive, but I got a formula mixed up that should be workable – retail price of about $25 for a set of 9 crate piles. Here’s 5 of them. I also picked up some black dye so I can cast in grey resin (normally, resin is off-white – all that grey resin you see out there? Same stuff, just with dye added. It photographs a hell of a lot better than the white stuff).

 

 

Here are the intact stone walls along with some pressure-cast gravestones, with some Infinity models for scale.

 

 

Made an attempt to mold my cottage. I started by painting on a layer of silicone, to pick up the details. It ran off a lot, so I had to keep painting it on.

 

 

It was taking a long time, so I decided to have a glass of wine while I waited. Man, I hate carnations.

 

 

Wine put me in the mood for some lasagna, so I butchered these veggies.

 

 

And sautéed them in wine and tomato sauce. The “no salt added” stuff isn’t half bad once you add a tablespoon or so of salt.

 

 

While the lasagna was baking, I had time ro do a few more castings, experimenting with filler and dye.

 

 

 

[JMGraham]

The silicone was getting tacky, so I mixed up another batch of silicone, this time with thixotropic additive (which smells horrible) to thicken it to more of a peanut-butter consistency.

 

 

Painted it on nice and thick.

 

 

While it hardened, I had time to beat my wife at Lost Cities worse than I think I ever have in my life. Usually she murders me, so it was particularly satisfying.

Also, The lasagna was delicious.

 

 

 

The next morning I trimmed up the edges of the silicone, and coated it all in lots of release. I mixed up some Plasti-Paste 2 to make the mother mold. Notice how lumpy that silicone is … more on that later.

 

 

Smeared the Plasti Paste on nice and thick, and smoothed it down with my hands (that were in latex gloves and wet with rubbing alcohol so the paste wouldn’t stick to me.

 

 

90 minutes later it was hardened and ready to go.

 

 

Unfortunately, I had thought that I could do a single-piece mother mold, and that everything would just slip right out. I was quite wrong. Because I had left the silicone lumpy on the outside, there were all kinds of grooves and notches to catch the mold. No way I could get it out, so I had to carve the foam out from the inside of the cavity, so that the silicone could compress and I could remove it. Crap. I hope I can get a decent cast, because the original is ruined.

 

 

Once I got the silicone out, I sawed the mother mold in half with a hacksaw. Not as nice as if I had actually made it in two pieces, but at least I can try a couple casts.

 

 

 

 

 

[JMGraham]

Here are a couple of attempts at casting. The piece at the right was slush-cast with a thin layer of resin, and then back-filled with expanding foam. The one on the left is just expanding foam, which was supposed to be self-skinning. It’ll be hard to tell until I get some paint on them, but I’m pretty sure the resin makes a huge difference in surface detail. Certainly, the grey resin makes it easier to see.

 

 

Here is the cottage, some walls, gravestones, and a stack of crates. Not bad!

 

 

Overall, I learned tons about what not to do when casting big pieces. I’m not sure if they’ll be worth it to mass-produce in the long run. The slush casting and expanding foam is a bit of a pain. I honestly may try slush casting and backfilling with a layer of plasti paste. It’ll make for a hollow, by very strong casting. Still, the big stuff might not be worth it. I love the UreFil 15, though – it makes some of the bigger pieces of scatter terrain more economically feasible to cast.

 

Not sure what I’ll try next. I think maybe a simple swamp/lava pool (for something simple to cast), and maybe try my had at a detailed rocky hill (for something bigger to cast).

[fluger]

Sandbags!  No one makes these well.  

[dkieft]

Damn Jim, that is a lot of smooth-on!

[JMGraham]

Damn Jim, that is a lot of smooth-on!

 

Yup, got a bunch of stuff to experiment with some new techniques. Some of it has panned out - the UreFill is gold, as is the MoldMax 14NV. Still not sure about the foam.

 

Hey Fluger, if you sculpted some sandbags, I'd cast 'em! 

[nathonicus]

Those look GREAT!

[fluger]

I should also say that this stuff looks amazing.  It's also crazy how the gray color makes it look SO much better in pictures.  

[JMGraham]

Thanks, guys!

 

It's why they add dye, I guess. It makes it so much easier to see the detail. It's still the same amount of detail, you can just see it and photograph it. It seems more than worth it to add $7 of dye to $180 of resin to get the effect. I'll be doing it from now on, for sure.

Unfortunately, my campaign for natural beauty in resin is over. It just looks too good when it's gussied up.

[Sammy]

It looks very nice! The dye does make the pieces more attractive when they're bare; undyed resin blanches in the sun to an unattractive color. But if you intend to paint the piece, I've always found it to be an uneccessary cost.

 

Did you gap fill the master at all, or was there minor undercut in areas such as the iron support beams (cardboard pieces)? Also how many casts do you target out of a mold? I find that in a mold designed with minimal undercuts I can get ~100 casts before the quality loss starts to get too questionable. This is for things like 25-50mm bases. For a larger mold like the building with more manufactured details, I suspect the threshold would be much lower.

[PourSpelur]

Dammit Man, those look freaking awesome!