Tips And Tricks For Making Miniatures

our next project was sent in by gerku and it's miniatures little bitty dudes this is another one of those projects where we get to return to the central theme of this channel which is if you want to cast something in resin you got to design it to be cast in resin and as usual gargu wasn't thinking about casting these in resin he was thinking about making cool little pieces but he was not thinking about the difficulties that he was designing into these pieces that make them difficult and a challenge to cast let's let's begin by looking at the feet you can see there's a hole between the legs which i'm not loving but that's not the biggest problem look at that gap between the tail and the base that gap is completely utterly unnecessary this piece when it gets cast it's going to hang like this in the mold so it's going to be inside of a cup and it's going to be like this so in the mold it's going to pour through the base it's going to pour through these feet so whenever you look at the design of your piece you always hang it upside down and right away instantaneously you see that that tail right there is a perfect spot for misery heartache pain and suffering particularly because it's got three lobes check those out each one of these lobes is a perfect place to catch bubbles so a much better design would have been to attach the tail to the base all the way down to the base and fill in behind the tail and behind the legs and also if you look closely right there you can see there's a hole between the scabbard of the sword see that oh look at that hole that's just a rubber trap because the rubber is going to go in and through and around and through you're going to have all these little cuts in there and you're going to have tiny little fragile pieces of rubber and you've got just a big stinking mess and it could have been designed so that the feet the sword and the tail all made a nice thick base to which the resin would just just poured right in no worries no problems lots and lots and lots of problems here cute little sculpt fun character miserably hard to cast i got the pieces mounted on these little waxed wooden discs which simply makes them easier to handle and fit in the cut better all three of these pieces have the same issues that i described on this one they both have gaps and holes between their legs which we are going to solve by filling would have been far easier to do this in the sculpt than it is to do this at this stage the tough one by far is this tail what do you guys think should i fill this in and just kind of build out a base that's not even it's not a disk that's what i'm gonna do okay see what i've done totally filled all that in now i'm gonna go back in and re-sculpt a little make it a little nicer i'll clean it all up make it prettier but at least now i have a reasonable chance of it not catching air under there and the mouse is the same thing the mouse just has a just the the entire underneath part of the mouse is just a giant trap of bubbles so all that has to be filled same thing they're all the same they all have the same flaw no thought given to casting there's a giant giant space be between the cape and the feet and the back there you just you simply cannot cast things like that that's a trap that causes the rubber to flow in there and then in the first casting it just breaks off because it's locked into place as a toy prototype sculptor this is exactly what i did for a living was look at characters and then turn them into sculptures objects that could be manufactured and that meant you have to sacrifice detail and you have to sacrifice design to make things possible i've got the vents going and because it's going to hang in space like this and fill from the bottom the air is going to vent out of these little tubes so let me show you how i put those on there so let's just take a little tiny dollop of sticky wax let's get this thing anchored on there just touch that on there like that okay now obviously it's way too long let's cut it off that fix it to the base i'm using these little teeny tiny vents because these pieces are so small so it's pretty well attached now you just want to make a clean attachment point to where the vent attaches to the part the cleaner that is the less you have to clean up later you still have to cut off each and every one of those vents and clean each and every one of those connection points there's no getting around it so now i'm just looking at this piece wondering if that's all i'm going to need with respect to vents hold it upside down because that's how it's going to pour that's how it's going to cast is upside down like this okay so now these two are basically done this one really only has one critical thing hanging down and that's the scabbard of this sword okay attach the attach the vent cut it off like that and go ahead and just push it into place okay so now the vent is basically running to the sword but we want to make a nice clean connection between the vent and the model i think these are ready to go we can get them mounted in the cups and let's pour some rubber as always pour it from the bottom up let it rise up push the air out in front of it it's always how you do it you let the rubber push the air up and out of the mold okay you want to try to avoid doing what i just did on that face trying not to drape the character i think we're going to get away with it from where i did i just barely hit him but you definitely don't want to be draping rubber around your character you want the rubber to rise up i'm kind of waiting now because i want that i see a gap between the sword and the ear and the side of the face and i want to see that rubber rising up in there and you give it a nice eighth of an inch quarter of an inch maybe of rubber on top now i completely guesstimated how much rubber i was going to need for these three just eyeballed it as i am want to do and we'll see if i have enough to cover the tip of that sword that's sticking up there i got just a little bit sticking up so what are we doing when that happens to us break out the chunkies just shove them in shove in the chunkies this works out really well to fill up spaces just using pieces of old molds perfect all right let's wait 24 hours see what happens well let's cut these cups open without cutting my fingers open how about that for a project wouldn't that be funny that was efficient worked out pretty well beautiful thing about the bases is they don't have to be perfect they don't have to be perfect and then the question is is the part going to pop off the base easy oh yeah look at that i got all the wood plugs taken out and i popped the sculptures off the bases very easily another advantage to sticky wax as opposed to hot melt glue sticky wax holds strong but pops apart easily that's why i love wax for this purpose the vents tell you where your cuts are going to be so let's do one and see how we get on the easiest way to cut rubber is to stretch it so i stretch it apart with my fingers i'm also using a brand new razor sharp exacto blade it's very very handy to have a very sharp blade the hardest part with cutting a mold is starting once you get going it gets easier and you use the vent as your guide you want to cut down right down through the middle of that vent and that vent is telling me where i'm going down to see how you can see it there nice and clear now we only want to cut far enough to release the part you never ever ever ever want to cut a one-piece cut mold apart that's why they're called one-piece cut molds those are they stay in one piece you don't cut them into chunkies i see this all the time you guys send me your projects i see the mold has been cut into 28 different pieces and you'll never get that you're never going to get that thing reassembled properly this is not going to happen the genius of one-piece cut molds is the part that says one piece it's what you want it to be little molds are the easiest to cut actually great big molds can be very tricky to cut because the rubber puts up such a fight little molds generally pretty easy to cut so i'm cutting right along that here cut along that ear perfectly nice that's probably more than enough to get that part out of there hello look at that popped right out nice and clean i think that's going to make a clean mold i'm not seeing any bubbles well we'll see what the casting and look at that parting line look at that party line close up look at that look at that party line that is what you want to see look at that parting line look at it admire that this is why i don't do two-piece molds you are never in your life gonna get a parting line that looks like that out of a two-piece mold in visible parting lines that's what we want to see i'm going to go ahead cut the other two just exactly the same the only difference is this one has three cuts so i'm going to come in from here here a little bit just enough to free the front part and here and we will have molds ready to pour all right so all our little guys came out of the molds just fine no problems at all no breaks nothing so that's good and the molds themselves nice and complex uh came out just fine too no worries closing up nice i think that that's going to give us a good result this was the first one we cut that i showed you and that's just about as clean a cut mold as you can get now you understand the power of those jagged surfaces this is what those surfaces exactly what these surfaces need to look like they don't need to be wildly interlocking but these surfaces will just fall together and just lock together just as neat as you can as can be and we i'm fully expecting to get very minimal parting lines same with this see the interlocks and that mold looks good it should all release just fine all right let's ban these molds on up and let's go pour some resin all right let's mix up some res there's a scale of sensitive enough to weigh each and every one of those drops let's mix it and pour it oh yeah 30 grams is going to be way enough more than enough mix mix mix this is quick cast goes off fast but it's quite cool in the studio today so we're not in any big hurry okay and away we go now what i'm going to do is just pour them wow they're little they pour it quick they pour quick and then i'm going to rock them and roll them jiggle them rock them roll them not seeing any bubbles coming out that's a good sign if you vented them properly you won't get a lot of bubbles but sometimes it's helpful to rock and roll a casting like i'm doing get into all the points and projections already i can feel this resin getting warm i think we're ready to get these into the tank let's do it close the outlet valve put in the lid away we go witness cup tells us we're ready to go let's pull them out of the tank beauteous all right and see what we got fun and games thank you you did your job you did your job everyone did their jobs rubber bands did their job so what do you guys think think we got a winner here let's try this one first doesn't matter let's open it up let's see what we got oh let's see what we got let's see if we got a cast in here let's pull it oh yeah look at that look at that that's pretty nice i'm not seeing any bubbles anywhere uh oh little bubble right there in the tip of the tail but that's pretty easy to fix but we'll watch out for that in future castings that's an area that once says it fills it but up in there wants to catch a bubble at the bottom all right but we got the axe to cast look at that it's gonna be some cleanup but no big deal we got it to cast all right nice all right number one this one's complicated because it has more vents so let's get it going sometimes the first one out of the mold you got to look at it and make adjustments see if anything you have to do to change it to get a good casting let's pull it wow looking what do you guys think see it looks pretty good i don't see bubbles any bubbles yet any bubbles see why i stuck that tail it's hard to see it but right there is where i stuck that tail onto that base and they cast perfectly and that's not a big change on this piece but it made it castable all right i think he's clean man i think he's perfect he came out perfect excellent and then this guy look at this guy coming out of the mall look at that oh there's a bubble right there oh wicked bubble that would be have to be a repair job uh oh we're gonna see if we can't get a better casting than that okay let's look at him back's good everything's good but we did okay so we did catch a bubble in there that would be a pre-paint area that's easy enough to fix but who wants to fix castings we want to come out clean otherwise i think we got him looking good that chip is in the sculpt the chipped here nice all right pretty good i would say pretty darn good so let me show you how i'm going to go about fixing these pieces this one's perfect we don't need to do any modification we can just pour them again this one where we caught the bubble was right in there so we're going to pre-fill that a little bit and one way to do that i notched the mold where the problem is so i can do a lot of tapping right in there to help force that resin in there but i'm also going to push it in same exact thing with this the problem area was this little scabbard right here and that is right here right down in there see that see that little area that little place that's where it caught the bubble right down in there same thing we're going to pre-fill that we're going to make sure that resin gets down in there so let's go mix up some res small batch mixes up quick and easy okay we can go ahead and dump this just like that now let's we don't have a rubber band on this yet let's see if we can't drop some resin right down in there just dropping resin down into that tail just like that okay now we can band it make sure it's all together we can pour it and we can tap it i don't see any bubbles rising up okay same with this let's see if we can't get some resin down into that problem area down in there okay down in there there you go get the rubber band on there and pour it go go go same thing stab it okay let's fill let's fill built bill gotta go it's gonna set up on us now this is fast cast i'm i'm moving fast because it's already starting to gel but it is looking beautiful let's get it into the tank see how we did now one way to fix these little guys that need repairing is i mixed up a small batch and i do mean a small batch of resin all i'm gonna do is use that resin to fill the little hole just put it on there like that a bubble if you make like a little bubble of resin you can see that if you make a little bubble of resin on the end that might be just enough just enough to fill it and it'll stick see if we can just drop a drop onto there just like that and that might be all you need now you could sand it with any luck that will stick yep might work okay let's see if that worked just literally using the same resin that i just mixed to make a repair all right let's see how we did now we know that this boy came out good the first time he yep looks good another clean casting okay winner on that one now let's take a look we know we had some problems with these let's see how we did on that tail looks like we got it it's kind of weird let me see something here yep the tail has got a little raggedy ending to it and this caught that just perfectly so we got that one so that's a winner that fill job worked well and let's see about this one and this time i think because the resin was gelling a little bit we caught a little teeny bubble in here little bubbles not too bad both easy to fix sometimes you fix one thing and you cause another problem but i really think that if you are just doing this one character and you were careful you could do it you have a couple of choices if i was doing this in production i needed to make 100 i'd be inclined to put event event right there and solve that problem all together and that would just eliminate that problem and uh this cat tail i would just make sure that i got it in there got that resin down in there because this otherwise this one cast just perfectly i really do believe that the bubble was caused by the fact that the resin i could tell was getting a little syrupy as it was going in there i was a little worried about that but overall this is a perfectly usable casting with very minor flaws and easy to fix overall i'm pretty pleased with the way these things came out if you like this video hit that like button it really does help the channel thanks for watching i will see you next week

Channel: Robert Tolone

Views: 152,683

Keywords: silicone rubber, casting resin

Id: MuxynPYpy0c

Length: 21min 11sec (1271 seconds)

Published: Fri Oct 15 2021