Recasting a Tau Broadside [part 1]: Making the Mold [Warhammer 40k]

my teeny tiny monkey brain has been blown by these results this is by far the best recasting result i have ever been able to achieve and you and i are going to take a look at exactly how to do it just like warhammer 40k if you do it wrong recasting happens to be one of them wallet raping money burning crippling debt hobbies you will likely never financially recover from so in an attempt to squeeze as much useful information from each experiment i've been trying to document a record of the most promising approaches improvements discoveries and techniques that yield better results than the previous experiments every flipping recast attempt offers something new i can learn from and my most recent experiment is by no means an exception this latest mold of the tau broadside has produced by far the best recasting results i have ever been able to pull off and the two primary reasons for this apparent improvement in quality were first one being reinforcing the mold walls with additional rigid scaffolding and second is relieving any possible pockets of air through the addition of extra vents compared to my earlier recast made from a standard cut mold the new mold produces far less film in between the parts and nearly all of the model pieces come out practically bubble free this is of course compound to a number of other smaller discoveries and tricks i've learned throughout my experience and i will comment on those when you and i try to recreate a recast of the tau empire broadside unit [Music] now how about we get to it presently when recasting miniatures i have come to prefer to recast the whole sprue rather than taking out all the pieces individually because sprues are easier to store and sprue designs which these miniatures come in already provide the bulk of air vents that our recast will also need to use to allow air bubbles to flow up to the top and not get trapped causing cavities and defects in your recasts the first step would be to cut out the number of panels out of a project foam board look at that now my camera doesn't know what the to do [Music] nighttime time night time day time of course this piece is not gonna be enough so we're gonna have to get a much larger sheet first when measuring the largest panels make sure that you give yourself extra room at the top as that space will be occupied by additional silicone which will keep the two mold halves bound like a book second give yourself a bit of extra room on the sides to make sure that your sprue has a thick enough margin from the edges of the mold so that the final mold forms a wide enough seal and your resin or liquid plastic doesn't end up leaking out through the cracks or gaps when you press the mold halves together [Music] so [Music] do [Music] do [Music] so [Music] we would also need two thinnest strips which would of course match the height of our last two panels [Music] when cutting the panels for the mold box i tend to go a little bit extra in the sizes because the design of a mold box that we're going to be using actually allows us to very easily resize the dimensions as we see fit so in that case it's actually better to have more and not need it than need it and not have it [Music] of course the final piece is going to be the base of the mold box and for that i'm going to recycle this remaining piece of the project foam board i used in my last experiment [Music] this is a little note i left for myself i've been meaning to do this and i've done this once but i totally forgot the results i'm gonna make a record of how much silicone i'm actually using and what are the dimensions of the box that i'm going to get as a result so that next time around i could precisely calculate how much silicon i need for a certain amount of volume for my box you may notice that the panels i've cut make for a strangely oriented mold box and you would be right we're going to be orienting the sprue in an upright vertical position for this one and the reason for that is because from my countless failed butcherized sodomized molds i have discovered that this orientation actually produces the smallest surface area for any possible bubbles to get trapped under when we pour the silicone it's one of those pieces of wisdom i have discovered the hard way after a few of my recast molds ended up littered with thousands of small air bubbles getting trapped underneath of the sprue the next step is to determine what will be the most optimal angle to orient our sprue within the mold box we're about to build what we're looking for is a sprue orientation which allows us to take advantage of the vents and flow gates that were already defined on the sprue and simply build on top of them we're going to have to pay close attention to places where air can potentially get trapped and those spots will end up with giant gaping holes in the model and we certainly don't want that so let's take a look at this we can either orient it like this or we can do so like this now i'm pretty sure this orientation will actually yield a lot less work on additional vents some parts might actually get screwed up we're gonna have to place additional vents in this case so this piece there's absolutely no way for air to actually escape this event is too far this vent is too far the air is just going to get trapped right here and that piece is going to be messed up same thing for any triangular pieces like this piece here that piece there there's no air uh current there's no uh passage for the air to escape so that's gonna get screwed up uh this this little button right here is actually gonna get messed up as well same goes for this one uh this piece is basically gonna be missing entirely i can guarantee that uh we got this corner it might be okay it might not be all right we might want to place an extra vent there um this piece is basically gonna be missing entirely so they definitely have to have a nice tiny short vent coming at the top [Music] this top half is basically going to be missing if we're not careful enough if these could maybe use an additional vent in the corners just just in case i mean honestly if you're buying liquid plastic especially those trial packs i'm sure you don't want to be wasting stuff so better safe than sorry place place a few more vents if you're not sure i've got some vents right here that we're going to place here here here like we need to basically double up this fence these vents right here work fine for injection molding which is of course what this type of plastic is but you know you and i don't have ten thousand dollars burning a hole in our pockets to be able to afford that kind of stuff so we gotta make do with what we've got i'm fairly certain the shields will end up all right these little drone controllers are kind of if you might place an extra vent here going up to the top same thing here here and then of course one more right there these parts hmm we might want to connect little vents just in the corners here going up there or even like a double small vent going going from the top to the side top to the side top to the side might even be able to just connect them to each other maybe we'll see how it works out [Music] the next step is to establish additional air vents in these pockets to make sure that air bubbles have a path to evacuate the mold and not get trapped causing defects i use a simple common hot glue gun and to pull this off i carefully dab the hot end of the glue gun onto the model region that requires an additional vent and very lightly extrude a small strand of glue towards the closest point on the sprue the hot glue seems to work quite well and it's fairly easy to detach from the original sprue afterwards but eventually maybe i should play around with alternatives like maybe one of those 3d printer pants that extrudes a pla filament i swear if we could actually collectively design a much smaller nozzle for these hot glue guns we would all win [Music] so [Music] [Music] so [Music] well it took me a few tries but i think i landed a pretty uh decent one [Music] do [Music] i'm generally trying to get the bulk of the glue to be on the sprue rather than on the part you can't have it being too thin because otherwise you might actually detach and we won't be able to catch it when we split apart the mold and it can't really be too thick because then well it's basically a thick blob you gotta cut off when you're separating the piece from your raycast [Music] do [Music] this part here is real tricky it's got lots of detail on it and i think i don't think it really even needs one we shouldn't really get any any weird places where resin should pull or i should say we shouldn't really get any weird places where bubbles can form maybe [Music] now generally speaking you want to make sure that the vents you place are pretty darn thick we're gonna have to see how these two turn out [Music] do [Music] [Music] do [Music] do [Music] a very swift and gentle pass with a standard lighter is going to burn off any loose strands left behind without affecting your newly added vents and on an off chance if it did destroy your vents then maybe you should have made them thicker anyways once i'm done with placing additional vents i can move on to securing the sprue on a piece of project board and start building the mold box around it this is where you come up against one very crucial sprue orientation detail that you absolutely have to pay attention to i have this up so many times i'm legitimately concerned with how i managed to dress myself in the morning notice now how all the air vents we've placed allow the air to traverse upwards to escape well make absolutely sure that when you mount your sprue onto your project board you orient it at 180 degree angle instead you see the resulting multiple we'll be getting out of this will have a small pool through which liquid plastic shall be poured in the pool is actually going to be produced by the same blob of glue which will be securing the sprue in place on the project board this means that once the mold is made it will be logically rotated by 180 degrees and if you happen to be a smooth drain like me and mount the sprue with the vents pointing upwards then once you flip the mold those vents will be pointing down instead rendering the whole damn thing full of air pockets again to make sure you pay attention to orientation [Music] when hot gluing the sprue to the base we have to make sure that it stands in a optimal upright position in order to achieve this i use a right angle bar or a right angle ruler to make sure the sprue's at a perfect 90 degree angle or as close to it and then hold it in place until the hot glue cools and solidifies [Music] after securing the sprue i do a quick pass with the mold release spray from my local sculpture supplier i use sculpt to supply canada for my supplies they don't do any sponsorships or anything i just like doing business with them as they always keep the product stock and shipping rates are fairly reasonable and they carry most of their supplies in just about any sizes from little trial size packets to full on gallon kits [Music] now in terms of mold release something i discovered about these miniature spruce is that silicone that we're going to be using to make the molds doesn't seem to stick or bond to the plastic first time around you're making the mold from them that's a key word first time around it is likely they may be covered in some sort of thin coat of oil or oily residue from being handled prior this does however stop being the case around the second or third time i make a silicone mold from the same sprue in a row as the silicone starts to bond to the miniatures and it becomes a problem to clean off so from here on out if i haven't suffered enough and if i remember i apply a coat of mold release spray let it dry and only then pour the silicone on top of the sprue [Music] the next step comes from the very discovery that made this whole video happen in the first place you see the biggest problem i've had to combat until now is the uneven distribution of resin or liquid plastic within the mold most often i would experience a problem of resin pulling around the middle of the mold when the resin pooling occurs i end up with this thick plastic film occupying the space between the sprue and the miniature pieces sometimes this film is fairly tolerable it's a part of the gig part of the process and removing it is well it can vary from a little bit of work to a few minutes with a craft knife but sometimes you get unlucky and this film can get so thick that it's not even worth the trouble trying to post fix so in order to try and combat this i've been using clamps of various kinds to press the two mold halves together and minimize the gaps between the silicone however while fixing the problem of resin pulling the clamps also introduce the opposite effect in other parts of the mold resin deficit this is where certain parts of the mold especially the ones containing extremely thin walls have been squeezed by the clamps so much that they were left without any resin whatsoever and no matter what arrangement of what clamps i used i would often end up with either pulling or deficit one way or another in the end all this nonsense required a lot of fixing patching or kid bashing to make up for all the lost parts now the whole point of recasting is to get as close to the original result as i possibly can and if having a few defects and inaccuracies was acceptable i would have just stuck to 3d printing so now the question was how does one equalize and distribute the clamp pressure across the whole mold evenly do i use planks of rigid wood and sandwich the sandwich between them well i have and to be fair there actually has been a fairly reasonable improvement but it didn't really fix the problem outright an idea came to me when i was watching a video called why concrete needs reinforcements by a youtube channel called practical engineering the host explained that adding inner reinforcements to concrete distributed the forces more evenly across the block thereby improving its tensile strength that's when i thought why not apply the same concept to mold making in hindsight reinforcement may seem like an obvious answer for many seasoned prop makers and recasters but for me and i'm sure for many other hobbyist recasters watching this video it was a brand new discovery so now we need to assemble reinforcements for our mold balls i used three layers of ice cream sticks to create a rigid mesh having made two of them one for each half of the mold i proceeded to hot glue them to the project board using the right angle ruler to ensure they were as close to a 90 degree upright orientation as i could i also tried to place these reinforcements as close to the sprue without them touching each other so that i would minimize the amount of silicone i would have to use to create this mold now having gone through this process of using a whole bunch of ice cream sticks to glue together what is supposed to be a rigid wall i'm actually starting to think that um maybe it's a good idea to look for alternatives that i don't have to build one why don't you post in the comments your ideas for what can replace these ice cream stick rigid balls i mean to be honest even just a flat slab of wood could work as well it's just got to be rigid next we assemble the walls of the mold box using previously cut project board panels i would recommend splurging on extra hot glue at this stage make sure you plug up every possible crevice hole nuke and cranny because hot glue is cheap and you don't want your mold box falling apart leaking expensive silicone everywhere that happened to me once and let me tell you it was not fun coming back to the shop in the morning expecting a fully cured ready to cut mold only to discover that your stingy application of hot glue gave out and your mold box has accurately reenacted the chernobyl's elephant's foot all over your desk and floor here is the reason why we decided to cut such large chunks for the little side panels you see when we build our walls we can actually freely adjust how big the wall needs to be so realistically having a little bit of extra allows us to fine tune the size as best as we can [Music] finally it is time for us to mix and pour the silicone into the mold we've just made okay i will be using mold max 29nb for this which offers a very generous cure time of about four to six hours this particular tub recommends to mix a and b solution in a 10 to 1 ratio by weight i like to use these big yogurt containers to mix up the silicone these are actually quite large in volume what do we got 650 grams [Music] i would highly recommend that you go to nearest dollar store and pick up yourself a whole bunch of these ladles this is going to be great for pouring the stuff [Music] just don't forget to make a record of how much i'm pouring so that i can do the math of the future i've done the math once and uh i wrote it on the napkin which i then threw away smart [Music] i should probably screw in some uh some hooks over here to this little ceiling area so they could hang down these uh spatulas and these ladles uh so they can just droop back in the bucket that's actually uh that's an interesting idea okay we're at 681.5 so i'm going to write that down so this is how much a solution i have poured so since small max 21 and v takes a 100 to 10 which is 10 to 1 ratio we should be able to get exactly 68.1 grams alrighty shaken not stirred good thing i wrote it down my scale just went to sleep [Music] okay 68.6 i always go i always go a little bit over it's not bad but it also risks you having a whole bunch of a solution and none of the b solution left ah i got more to be honest take my advice it's sometimes better to just do two small batches or three small batches than doing one large batch because let me tell you this is a and i have to mix right now and you have to be careful with this stuff too you gotta mix it nice and thoroughly you can't even tell sometimes if it's uh if it's fully mixed because if you try to scoop anything from the very bottom it's not really going to appear because it's still covered by the rest of the mixed silicone so um tricky stuff got to be careful got to be thorough i think maybe a drill with a like a mixing tip uh could come in handy right now i should invest in that that'd be nice it also doesn't help the particular ice cream stick that i just picked as a special child [Music] all right here goes nothing [Music] there's a common known fact that if you are pouring your silicone make sure that you pour it always from the one same position from one corner one place of your mold because then allegedly it allows the silicone to seep in naturally into all the crevices now i haven't been able to prove or disprove this but i'm sure there's decades of prop making wisdom behind those uh practices so we're gonna we're gonna assume that they are correct all right so this here got us about i would say somewhere around halfway through the mold take the stick dip it in take it out all right here we go so where where are we so we are indeed somewhere somewhere in the ballpark of halfway up there more or less now we don't need to go all the way to the brim but we do want to get pretty close so by the looks of it we might need at least as much if not just a touch more at this point it's also a good idea to inspect our mold for any leaks this is where we left the mark so that's fine do however have a leak right there but not to worry because we have the hot glue gun ready to swiftly jump into action i think for the rest of it i've done a pretty bang-up job i would say maybe right there just touch i don't really see anything over there but i just don't like the way the model light comes through there so i'm just gonna it's gonna be nice nice and safe instead of sorry uh sometimes your hot glue may actually take too damn long to uh solidify so what you can do is you can take a piece of paper towel and while the hot glue is still hot just kind of press it against and this will use paper towel as almost like a piece of scaffolding by looks of it yeah we need as much if not more now we did 681 grams 681 grams so we got to do maybe at least 700 more it's perfectly fine to uh keep using the same tub because this stuff actually takes uh quite a while to solidify so we still got maybe 30-40 minutes before it really starts to get going so we can just reuse the same container [Music] there we go just a little over 700 this better work eh oh that's right hold on i gotta write this stuff down 709 709.7 before the batteries run out 79.7 so we need 70.9 of the b solution [Music] it probably doesn't seem like it but i've actually been recording pretty much non-stop for the past five hours yeah usually takes about an hour to make one of these but uh you know among all the script edits and it just got pooped by silicon yeah among all the script edits and changes and additions any advice and piece of information i discovered uh yeah it adds up all right here we go the forbidden yogurt is now done [Music] i am starting to see a little bit of light which means very bottom of this isn't fully mixed i'm just gonna quickly mix that up just touch [Music] [Music] all right now it seems like after adding a second batch of silicone we do see some imperfections in the seal so we are going to quickly patch these up oh oh no oh no i just saw a dip oh the elephant's foot is coming it has broken it has broken it has broken oh geez oh jesus oh no please don't oh god okay well um i did not use enough glue you know the thing that i told you to use enough glue don't get stingy on the glue guess what the i just did i didn't use it all glue and this thing is falling apart god i caught this thing in just in time as it started dipping uh i don't know if that's a win however because yeah um well to be honest this is kind of the first time i've ever used this much silicone in one single serving so yeah okay uh let's see solution solution solutions what solutions do we have we have we have clamps we can use clamps okay and then we can patch up whatever holes have just been formed okay but as soon as i let go it's gonna start sliding okay so let's try this yeah okay as soon as i let go it starts sliding technically i did use clamps last time but i totally forgot about them this time around okay let me see if i can uh do some spider-man okay notes in this drawer there we go okay i know that which clamp i'm looking at or for it's the red one oh okay all right all right all right here we go here we go here we go and okay cool the clamp is in um now because all the pressures at the bottom i'm just gonna move this up because all the pressure's in the bottom i might have to clamp it from the bottom oh yes there we go now okay okay all right we might be able to salvage this [Music] boy how i wish i had more of these right now [Music] okay okay if there was ever a more appropriate representation of recasting this is it right here this is actually it right here it's this okay now i think for the most part i think we've gotten the level of silicone back to where it's supposed to be or where it was before uh okay all right so the sticks are kind of rising but that's i think that's uh that's the least of our problems um okay [Music] let's think about it this way first first problem [Music] first problem is that we need more clamps i believe we need more clamps that's right and we need to somehow get this this set of sticks down into uh the mold cool okay so i have a plan for both here's what we're gonna do uh okay these are very cheap cheap clamps so i'm going to try this out i'm gonna push this down i'm gonna basically just dip this clamp onto this wall and that i believe should hold down that half [Music] that part at least okay now it's seen it seems like the other half hasn't actually risen up so we're gonna place a clamp there just in case okay dollar store clamps aren't really a good good deal right now okay let's try to start from this end okay in the garbage you go stroke lamps [Music] man hey at this point this is just like performing surgery [Music] okay now what do we do with the disaster at the bottom so for now any silicone that leaks out we can still put it back because it's liquid right so you should be able to just scoop it up and put it back the problem comes from the leaks you know what i'm actually going to put this clamp at the top like this so that it is simply holding down this sideways pressure [Music] we can also help by placing a few of these clamps just a little bit we don't just squeeze too hard actually i might even wanna [Music] start off just a touch now what are we going to do about all the leaked silicone this might seem like a pretty basic strategy but you know what it seems to work so i don't [Music] care well it leaked it looked pretty spectacularly but in the beginning of this video i did say that every recasting attempt has something for me to learn from and the one thing that i'm sure all of us can learn from is that if we are doing such a tall mold make sure you use clamps to reinforce its sides because there is going to be based on the height a tremendous amount of pressure pulling in to the sides and i think no amount of hot glue is going to hold that crazy beast together so now based on how much it has leaked and based on how much it is leaking right now i am fairly certain that the whole thing isn't going to leak out it might be close to actually not even revealing the top of the sprue and here's what's interesting even if the silicone does leak out i can cut up the silicone that we've uh that spilled out i can cut it up and i can use it as filler for the next silicone mold so all technically all's not lost even if this thing does spill out and it looks like this is baby elephant foot for today this i can still cut up and i can still use it as filler because silicone bonds to silicone so next mold can just get a bunch of filler instead of me mixing up and using up just as much silicone as i did today so all's not lost we should be able to recover a good chunk of this okay so i was going to make the second mold for the second sprue because the broadside comes in two sprues but well i think i'm gonna wait for this one and see how much silicone is actually gonna leak out which we'll have to see and um well i hope that uh there's plenty for you to learn in this one we're gonna wait until tomorrow and see the disaster area you

Channel: Rebel Workshop

Views: 13,354

Keywords: warhammer, warhammer40k, 40k, Tau, Tau Empire, Recasting, Casting, Silicone, Mold, Mold making, liquid plastic, liquid plastic molding, resin, resin art, resin art for beginners, resin crafts, silicone mold making, warhammer 40k, tau empire warhammer 40k, recasting miniatures, Hobby, diy, miniatures diy, miniatures painting, miniature, recasting minis

Id: jDGwsVDTFlc

Length: 46min 14sec (2774 seconds)

Published: Thu Jun 02 2022