Well, I’ve just ordered another four molds from Hirst Arts so hopefully I’ll see them in a week or so. I picked up the following molds:
- #203 Cracked Floor Tiles. Chris has this mold already and I’ve even done a ‘preview’ cast from it so I’m quite happy to pick up my own copy. It’ll be very handy for buildings and dungeon floors.
- #250 Small Brick Mold. This mold has been on my wish list for years and finally made it into an order. I suspect I’ll mainly be using it for chimneys and fireplaces.
- #42 Gothic Arena Accessories. At this point in time I have no real plans for these two gothic molds, but they’re just so packed with excellent looking detail pieces I had to pick them up.
- #43 Gothic Panel Accessories. I suspect they’ll see use either in some City Fight/40k ruined gothic terrain or some vaults and sewers to slide under my Mordheim table.
Once again I can’t recommend Bruce Hirst’s products enough. They’re just so incredibly versatile and you can produce fantastic 28mm terrain with minimal effort once you’ve mastered high detail plaster casting.
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I’ve been considering talking my gaming club into picking up a few for member use but was concerned about lifetime on these. How many casts have you done with your? Have you noticed any loss of flxibility or cracking in the moulds?
I’m thinking I could sell the idea to the club exec if we could have a number of “precast” blocks on hand and sold at a premium to finance the next batch of moulds, but the lifetime on the moulds would a factor. What is your opinion?
Hi, IMHO lifetime should not be an issue as long as the molds are reasonably well treated. I don’t know what molding product Mr Hirst uses but it’s certainly of high quality. I suspect from the light green colour it may be a medical or dental molding rubber and it’s flexible but very robust.
I’ve owned some of these molds for 3 years now (February 11th, 2003 was my first order of Fieldstone) and have noticed no wear or damage.
I have done tens of casts with most of my molds and am probably approaching 100 casts with some of my earlier fieldstone molds. I’d suggest posting your question again on the Hirst Arts EZBoard forum as there’s people on there that have done a lot more casting with their molds than I.
One thing I would consider it *not* using Mr Hirst’s ’scraping’ technique for levelling the plaster in the molds but instead use the plexiglass (or cheaper CD cover) method I mention in that high detail casting link. I believe you get better results and it’s less hard on the molds than scraping.
I think your precasting idea sounds fine as you’d want to protect the club’s investment and have maybe one or two people you can trust to treat the molds with the appropriate respect. They are after all rubber and can certainly be torn through rough handling.
But treat them with even a little respect and they’ll last for years. As I said in the original post I can’t recommend them enough!
Sigh I’ve just ordered the Gothic Tomb mold as well, riding the coat tails of a friend’s Hirst Arts order.
So soon I will have all the molds required to create the Hirst Arts Cathedral. Gulp.