Lessons on Casting (3 Viewers)

kilted vampire

kilted vampire

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Always Always Always ;) follow the da#@ instructions. Fortunate for me I remembered most of them. I did get a few good castings. I will get them flashed and primed tomorrow (I hope) and get some pix:D
 
I did some more casting after lunch. New rule ; wear gloves! The molds them selves need to reach an operating temperature. They get hot!!!;)
 
Hi KV

All these rules

Hmm I think I see a trip to the er if we're not careful....

But seriously what are you casting? How about a picture or two?

Dave
 
Right now Napoleonics and ACW figures. Did some drummers already posted in General Look for my Napoleonic pioneer Focussing on toy types.
 
That is a whole other can of worms I fear. Casting my own soldiers, that must be extremely time consuming. There are only 24 hrs in a day good grief KV. They look good, Mike.:eek:
 
modwalls said:
That is a whole other can of worms I fear. Casting my own soldiers, that must be extremely time consuming. There are only 24 hrs in a day good grief KV. They look good, Mike.:eek:
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Thank you. Actually it is not all that bad timewise. There is a saying,"That wich you fear will bring you the greatest joy.":D
 
Hey vamp did you try those napoleonic molds we got on ebay out yet? How are they, do they make nice clean casts or is there a lot of flash and half molded figures?
I,m going to wait till the weather gets better and bring them out side in the spring and try some with the 100lbs of lead that I have down in my basement that I use to make my fishing sinkers. I got the lead for free so what the hell i,ll give it a try.

Has anyone here tried using 2 part resin in these molds and if so whats it like using it with these molds and how do the figures come out?
 
fishead19690 said:
Hey vamp did you try those napoleonic molds we got on ebay out yet? How are they, do they make nice clean casts or is there a lot of flash and half molded figures?
I,m going to wait till the weather gets better and bring them out side in the spring and try some with the 100lbs of lead that I have down in my basement that I use to make my fishing sinkers. I got the lead for free so what the hell i,ll give it a try.

Has anyone here tried using 2 part resin in these molds and if so whats it like using it with these molds and how do the figures come out?
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Indeed I did. Check out the drummer boys and Napoleonic Pioneer.:D
There will always be some flashing to remove. As far as the half molded figures that is usually the cause of the mold not being warm enough or not enough talc, or a combination of both.

Uh Tim did you look at the picture above?

http://www.treefrogtreasures.com/forum/showthread.php?t=3352 link for Pioneer
 
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Plastics? Yup- if you use mold release as well as talc- and get the liquid plastics that take longer to set (giving you time to tap, shake vibrate all the bubbles out and consider buying a de-gasser the whole time). The downside is that in order to be sure to get no air bubbles you will get a lot of 'useless' plastic sprue with each good cast- so your savings get eaten some there. I also started to do a 'pre-coat' stage where I would lightly brush resin into each mold halves cavity of the casting- doing this will fill the detail perfectly so there will be no surface bubbles on your casting as the hollow will be 'smooth'. Once it hardens you slap it together and drop cast just like with metal.

Back before I sold the rights to my 20mm sci-fi line I was designing my pour cavities and flow chambers in sci-fi shapes- so every time I poured a liquid plastic sci-fi fighter jet (for example) I would also get some feul drums and consoles by reclaiming the pour cavities castings. Damaged pour cavity castings were still great for blown up versions.



So in theory one could design a mold that made 'things' out of the wastage. The easiest would be tree branches as it wouldnt require much of a change. You could also make rock formations easy. Another method- which I used with my molds, is to string a series of small items along the path of my flow chamber. The disadvantage to this is that with drop casting pressure is everything- so in order to get a perfect casting of your main bit you WANT a super huge easy flow pour chamber and thin but uniform flow channels as it creates a pressurized cavity- doing this means that my drop cast stuff is getting near the same detail as my 100% reproduced resins.

Smooth on sells cheap sample sets of their products- you'd prolly be looking at about $50USD to do a 32oz set with release agent


Very cool castings- I'm eager to see how they paint up. Are you thinking of selling/trading some? :D
 
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The nice thing about metal casting is the waste goes back into the pot and remelted:D I am enormously proud of my pioneer and look forward to doing more. I will be casting more figures and placing the pics some where in the "How to" section I guess. I don't mind selling the figs as long as I don't step on any toes. PM me for info.
 
The following are soldiers that I cast primed and painted in my spare time. Nine guys in a weeks time.

 
The backs of the french. The british never show their backs to the french.Sorry Capitolron!

 
kilted vampire said:
Back of the British line troop. Note french are gone.

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Or could it be that he saw the 4 to one odds and ran like hell!!!:p

Looks like those napoleonic molds are working well. How many have you cast up so far and how many casts can you get out of the molds before they are junk??? I tried a few last year with some lead I had kicking around and most of them didn,t come out right and had lots of flash and then my self pouring lead pot jammed up on me and wouldn,t pour out the bottom like it should and got clogged up so that ended my efforts but when the weather improves I want to give it another try.
 
Tim, until all the molds are warmed up there will be unusable figures. I have only cast the nine so far, not much metal left. The other thing is the metal content. You might need more tin. Don't forget the talc as the form release.
 
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