The Complete D&D Dice Making Guide - April 2020

when you're getting into dice making the molds you make are usually the best thing you know at the time version one of my molds used a very large d6 as the sprue a ton of hot glue and opaque silicone where while it was much softer and easier to work with can't really see what you're doing inside of this thing version 2 traded out the opaque silicone for a transparent and kept the very large sprue on a straw which is great for getting resin in but also has a lot more clean up when you do wanna die that's a huge gap version 3 the latest thing that I've been working on moves the sprue to the face of a die reducing the finishing on something like a d-10 or a d20 down by 80% a lot quicker to clean one side as opposed to five and also scales very nicely also using plastic to have transparent sides on every single mold being able to see a lot better with what you're working on in short a lot has changed since the last couple dice making videos and this is about way more than just the Kickstarter so let's do a comprehensive update on the best process I found to date to create mold sand finish and ink your dice for Dungeons and Dragons so let's talk about the updated process using this fancy new top-down camera review for the updated mold I'm still using Dixie Cups who hold everything I'm still using molding clay as my base the difference here is using a toothpick and some hot glue to secure for the sprue this makes the sprue on average a lot smaller when trying to make sure that you're maintaining for the mold it also helps you maintain a much shorter overall sprue for a much shorter overall mold which means much less silicone being used now I use hot glue instead of drilling into my masters because I am not yet that brave after securing the hot glue and letting it dry slowly press the toothpick into a small amount of molding clay which will be used as the base and then stick that to the bottom of the cup from here we're back to the tried and trusty sword to clear 37 for our mold now this is a platinum based silicone that does not react with the SLA printing from the 3d printed masters which is important some silicones won't cure when in contact with the resin from some 3d printers make sure you are very careful when figuring that out using proper safety material including gloves which oh god I hope I'm able to buy some on Amazon soon I'm running out you mix this part one a to one beat now we're using the same graduated cylinder that we used the last time we did molds and I regularly do this when I do a full batch of molds but I rarely do full batches of molds anymore and for two reasons one its time-consuming to do a full set of eight to you start running the risk of running out of pot life on the silicone if you're not careful so let's start the clock now when mixing silicone is extremely important to mix not only in a circular pattern but from top to bottom now this is something I mentioned in the last video but I've seen this catch a couple people in the comments make sure you stir your silicone on all axes and make sure that you do so thoroughly this is dummy thick stuff and a lot harder than just like stirring soup or a cup water once that's in play pour the silicone into all of your molds making sure that you maintain just enough of extra silicone on top of the die to provide structural stability but not so much that you won't be able to de mold the die safely and also waste silicone this stuff is in very limited supply so you want to make sure that you're using just enough and you're not being wasteful I will be honest though I'm a little bummed that I didn't hi doc dog everyone I'm a little bummed I didn't get to the Jumbo d20 I did have the graduations on this which is basically set up to do eight molds it turns out it's pretty accurate with very little waste on top of that which means it makes exactly eight mold which is good you don't want to be wasting the silicone that means I'll come back to that little jumbo well a little jumbo the Jumbo d20 and do that in another batch potentially in another video explicitly around making larger D 20s and what to put in them now we wait for the most secure cut them and go on to casting and through the entire lifecycle of this of the dice after that they all go on the pressure pot insert which I desperately need to make a new one and that might be a quick video in a week or two and off to my newly revamped pressure pot space but it's really the same thing I've just doubled in capacity I cure these for at least four hours at 40 psi pull them out and start in the team molding process I'm gonna do this on the larger d20 because you don't need to see me cut a full set and this is the clearest of the mold since it's cast in a plastic cup as opposed to the paper dixie cups which finish a little bit more opaque what you want to do is cut down the edges of your die so this way you don't run the risk of interfacing with a number from your dice or potentially creating a misalignment on the face of a die which would make the entire die go off-kilter now you still need to be very careful when aligning everything just like you need to be careful here when you're making sure that the cameras in focus oh god no so what you do is you mix up an entirely separate large d20 mold in a different plastic cup and then come back to recording about five hours later and do this right making sure to focus down on the bottom when cutting through the silicon one smooth pressing motion is what you want to go with the exacto knife if sharp will not hesitate to cut through this stuff and you don't want to sawtooth this creating all sorts of air gaps or imperfections in your mold which would prevent you from being able to get a clean cut and a clean seal maintaining resin inside the casting space now be especially careful when coming up on your masters you want to make sure that you don't scratch them so here is where you want to make small precise and very detailed cuts never contact your razor blade with your master die and if you do a slight bit of finishing on the top three grits of the sanding papers who are about to talk about should be enough to take it out if not you have to go into more intensive repairs which is the subject of another video once you have safely D molded your master secure the mold with a rubber band and you're off for the next bit now we've done quite a few different castings this video is not about making dice it's about making molds so movie magic to a set of dice that we now have finished these new cherry blossom dice that I've been designing playing around with to mix things up from the Kickstarter I've started using these Zona polishing papers I've also used the 3m variant which uses the same color coding it's just a different brand now these are polishing papers as opposed to sand papers they maintain the same grit levels as the micromesh pads I used to use before but it seems like their intent is different and with it being weed fibers instead of a sandpaper grit it seems to come up with an overall better finish looking at some of the older dies that I finished compared to the ones that I'm using now I even went back and we sanded my old first set of masters and they come out a lot better than how they looked before you seem to be a lot more efficient and I'm able to get through a die relatively quickly only about 25 to 30 rotation on each of the polishing papers which I've cut into smaller squares in order to preserve the life of each individual piece of the paper small a little bit of water small a little bit of sanding and you'll see me cut rapidly through all of the different steps of the polishing life cycle and you go from something that's raw and unfinished and it's pretty bad something where you can't even tell which face is the one that held the sprue and that's something to be proud of but a dye and resin only does not they finished dice make and it's time to go to pinking for this cherry blossom set I'm doing a two-tone inking style for the first time ever combining a white and a metallic gold for all of the numbers now what I'll do for this is paint in a little bit with a paintbrush and use my finger to wipe away the excess paint I've seen people use paper towels or squeegees or q-tips with alcohol on it and just wiping your finger off very quickly and then making sure to come back with just a slightly damp q-tip or micro mesh cloth at the very end to clean up the excess paint seems to work extremely well I color in half of all of the numbers and then move to another dye giving that paint a slight a bit of time to dry I don't want it to get completely dry but I don't want it to be completely liquid either from there after getting two or three dyes as a set I'll go back and do the other half of the ombre for the numbers it comes out with this beautiful white gold gradient combination and it just looks fantastic now that's a set of dice which I'm extremely proud of and I'm keeping this one for myself I'll make more to actually go out on the store but I'm not making the same mistake I did put in my last dice the first one of each design are mine so I hope you found this video very useful and why this mold and this mold long needs a train while this one and this one reigns supreme if you found this video useful a positive rating or a comment down in the comment section would be oh so helpful I would love to know what you think also other build projects I know I've been very busy with the CNC but I'm still doing some resin crafting even if right now it's just making some new dye sets to experiment with anything that you would want to see me try out any ideas or successes or failures that you've had using this or similar tactics I would love to know more leave your thoughts down in the comments and until next time go out there be good to each other stay home stay safe and I'll see you next time [Music] you

Channel: Michael Makes

Views: 42,783

Keywords: casting dice, D&D dice, making dice, polyhedral dice, making resin dice, molding dice, making D&D dice, custom D&D dice, silicone molding, silicone mold making, resin die making, resin dice, pressure pot, resin casting, clear resin casting, pressure resin casting, vacuum chamber, epoxy resin, sanding dice, finishing dice, sanding resin, resin finishing

Id: PUdG1DUqj10

Length: 10min 21sec (621 seconds)

Published: Fri Apr 17 2020