A while back Jonathan mentioned he’d had some success using strips of weed mat and brown builder’s caulk to create flexible 15mm roads. I didn’t have any caulk handy but I did have half a tube of Selley’s Liquid Nails in the garage so tried it out myself. My test road features in the above photo. It’s nicely textured and takes paint well and is easily flexible enough to mold to the contours of my modular table set up. It worked so well I’ve put together this brief tutorial on how to create as much road strip as you need for negligble cost.

1. Assemble the materials. Like Jonathan I used a cheap, porous, textured weed mat for the base of my roads. It’s thin and sturdy with a low cost of around $8nz for a 5m roll of the stuff. Cut it into strips, arcs and other shapes as you need for your table. For this tutorial I’ve glued a couple of scraps together to create a ‘T’ junction piece.

You also need something to texture your road. Jonathan used a brown builder’s caulk, however I opted for Selley’s Liquid Nails. This DIY product dries to a water-proof flexible rubber consistency and I suspect it’s simply an industrial strength PVA. The advantage of using porous textured weed matting as the base is that the Liquid Nails will have no problem adhering to the matting, and dries into a fairly robust piece of terrain.

To detail the roads I used a mixture of cheap kitty litter and mixture of Woodland Scenics model railway ballasts (that is what’s in the plastic container in this photo). Three bags of varying grades of model railway ballast mixed together with some kitty litter for larger boulders and you’ve got yourself and endless supply of texturing gravel. I’ve been using this same plastic container of gravel for seven years to detail my Mordheim table and buildings, my 15mm North African terrain, other random scenery pieces and various figure bases.

The roads were textured with a set of cheap Chinese hog bristle art brushes, which were also used to paint the roads with a mixture of several interior acrylic house paint test pots from a local paint manufacturer.

2. Apply your Liquid Nails or Caulk. Once you’ve cut your weed mat into various shapes, it’s time to start slapping glue around. This is a particularly messy process so it’s best performed in old clothing in a work area. I found the easiest way to do it was to apply the Liquid Nails from the caulking gun in a tight ‘S’ pattern across a third of the weed matting. Then spread it across the mat to create a smooth surface using a wide, slightly wet brush. Take your time, cleaning the brush regularly but being careful not to dilute the liquid nails at all.

The glue will travel through the weed mat, so use a smooth work surface that you can peel the final road section off once complete. Here I’ve used the lid of a large plastic pail. Also don’t concern yourself about keeping a clean edge on the road piece. Just slap the glue around because once everything is dry you can just go back with a pair of scissors or an Xacto blade and trim the edges back neatly. It is also worth leaving yourself a couple of cm of weed mat uncovered at one end of the road so you’ve got something to handle the section by. I neglected to do so in this photo, so got a little messy when it came to removing the road strip to dry.

3. Coarsely texture the road with tire tracks. You need to apply some texture to the glue before it dries so you’ve got something to paint. The amount and type of texturing you want to do at this point depends on your setting. I textured my roads fairly heavily as they’re meant to represent hard pack sand trails through the North African desert. Of course depending on the final paint job they could have just as easily represent muddy Normandy farm roads or frozen rutted tracks across the Russian steppes.

At any rate what I did was take an old piece of bamboo and carved it into a spoon shape (see photo) and used this to carve fairly deep and rough ‘tracks’ into the glue. You can be fairly crude about it because this isn’t the final step of the texturing. If you don’t have bamboo handy, light dowel or balsa would work just as well.

4. Add some roadside gravel. For additional texturing I scattered some of my ballast mix around by applying several generous pinches of mix to the roadsides.

Don’t be too liberal because of course the point of roads is that they’re usually clear of obstacles! However once again this is meant to be a sort of crude desert trail and gravel at the road edges helps it visually blend into the table. Don’t worry about how well the stones are placed in the glue because the next step will help blend everything together nicely.

5. Smooth with a damp brush. To take the edge off the heavy texturing from step three and to get a good bond for the gravel from the last step take a wide, middling wet brush and lightly smooth it over the road section in a consistent direction. You’ll have to wash an re-wet the brush a few times depending on the length of your road section. You’re not trying to remove any glue here, but just to bed the gravel down and soften the heavy ruts so they look a little more realistic.

6. Leave to dry. You’re done! Make sure you give your brushes a good clean and leave your road strip somewhere warm to dry. It’s worth checking on the strip once or twice and once it’s started to cure, peeling it off the work surface to ensure it’s not permanently bonding to that! However make sure you leave the strip to dry completely before doing anything else with it. Obviously this depends on your climate and the type of ‘Liquid Nails’ or caulking you’ve used but I find overnight is usually sufficient.

Once dry you’ll have a flexible, textured piece of road strip that will be ready to paint. Don’t be surprised if the road curves inwards slightly as it dries because we can correct this during painting, and in the next post I’ll discuss how I’ve painted my road pieces to match my own gaming table.

Related posts:

1. Tutorial: 15mm Palm Trees
2. Tutorial: Desert Basing 28mm Pulp Figures
3. 15mm North African Stone Walls

Base Coat your Model

For this tutorial we’ll be applying the base weathering coat to a Flames of War 15mm German ‘Famo’ 18-ton half track. This first photo shows you the model after it’s been base coated a with Tamiya German Gray spray can and left to thoroughly dry. You can also see the other supplies I’ll be using: a Tamiya Dark Yellow spray can, a fresh pot of delicious Marmite, an application tool and an old toothbrush. As our European or American visitors may have some difficulty finding Marmite, they may wish to experiment with other foodstuffs. The Marmite is really just used as a cheap masking medium that can be dabbed onto a model easily, isn’t too greasy or sticky and dissolves in warm water. Let us know what else works! It’s also worth noting that this technique requires you apply the top coat of paint as a spray, so you’ll either have to find a spray can of your chosen colour or own an airbrush.

Apply Delicious Marmite

My Marmite application tool is made from an old paintbrush handle, a rubber band and a torn half from one of my lovely wife’s round makeup sponges. Marmite is applied with the torn edge of the make up sponge which of course has a nicely random pattern to it. Dab the tool into the Marmite to load it up. Don’t get too much Marmite on there at once, I typically dab it on the bad of my hand or a scrap of paper to remove any excess until it produces a nice stippled pattern. I then dab the Marmite over the vehicle in appropriate places wear would occur. Reference photos and common sense apply here. Paint chips and damage usually happen to the fronts of vehicles and wear from crew entering/exiting the vehicle happens around doors and hatches etc. This second photo shows the Famo after I’ve applied the Marmite. Generally I’m not too fussy when it comes to applying the Marmite. If you end up with a few dabs here and there in the wrong place it doesn’t matter because you can always block paint over those areas while you’re finishing the vehicle off post weathering. For this particular model I haven’t bothered weathering the back tray at all because I have a set of stowage glued to some plasti-card I’m going to paint separately and drop into that space.

Top Coat your Model

Once you’re happy with your Marmite application simply spray the top coat of paint on and leave it to dry. Here’s the Famo after a Tamiya Desert Yellow spray. It’s essential that both the base and top coats of paint are completely dry for the weathering to work correctly. This is because the final step involves a moderately vigorous scrubbing with warm water and your old toothbrush. So leave your vehicle until you’re absolutely sure the paint has dried to a sturdy top coat – otherwise you’re likely to scrub the vehicle back down to the base coat!

Bath Time

For the final step, take your painted model and immerse it in a mixture of fairly warm water and household dish-washing detergent. Leave it there for a minute or two for the Marmite to soften and then carefully scrub every surface of the model with your old toothbrush. The Marmite will dissolve into the water, taking patches of the top coat with it and reveal the base coat underneath. Keep scrubbing until you’re confident you’ve removed all trace of the Marmite and then leave your model to dry.

Here’s the 18 ton Famo after it’s been scrubbed. This completes the basic weathering effect and over-painting and detail work can now begin. The weathering at this point may look quite stark and a touch over-done, but it’ll be toned down with futher painting steps. Typically I brown ink-wash my vehicles after this step to bring out the edges etc. and then block coat the basic colour over the vehicle again, fixing up any overly zealous weathering as I go. Then a couple of layers of lighter colour are drybrushed on to pick out the edges and mute the weathering down.

Comments and questions are welcomed as always!

Related posts:

1. FOW: Three Month Painting Challenge II
2. 15mm Tank Weathering Tutorial
3. 15mm Tank Weathering using Toothpaste

This left the figure looking rather dark and very shiny because of the wax in the Klear floor polish I used. That’s fine though because once the wash dries you’ll have a very stable, hard coat you can easily paint over.

5. Painting Over the Magic Wash. The point of the chestnut ink wash was to define the folds and edges in the figure. In a sense the quick ink wash provides a similar effect to the ‘black lining’ others paint with. This is where you prime your figure black and build up the colours over that while leaving thin black lines between the various areas of the figure.

However I prefer priming white and find that a simple ink wash is easier to apply than a lot of careful painting over black, and yet has much the same effect. The translucent nature of ink is also an easy way to give the flat base colours some more depth and character.

Once the magic wash is completely dry (usually overnight) I start repainting the figure in exactly the same colours I used to base coat the figure over the primer. Although of course I’m not attempting to entirely cover the ink wash, but rather using the way it has dried on the figure as a guide to highlighting the figure. This is a little hard to explain in words, so have a look at a few of the photos. The inked areas are always fairly easy to spot because they’ll remain shiny until we varnish the figure.

At this point I usually also spend some time highlighting any areas of flesh on the figure. I do this now because they’re usually relatively small areas on most of the figures I’m painting, and the face is quite a central feature on any figure. As an aside I use Games Workshop paints fairly exclusively as they’re easy to source locally and I’m familiar with them. However I really detest the GW range of flesh tones, because not a single one of them is remotely flesh coloured in my opinion! I regularly buy a couple of GW mixing pots and blend up my own basic flesh tone from a mix of Bestial Brown, Scab Red and Bronzed Flesh. I find since GW changed to the new style of paint pots their empty mixing pots are a fine investment because they’ll hold paint for quite some time without drying out.

I paint my highlights by simply mixing a couple of colours between the base flesh tone on the figure and the lightest flesh tone I want to appear on the final figure. I invariably mix these on the top of my GW pots as I paint, which can make it hard to find a pot of a certain colour on my paint station! I really should get around to throwing together a wet palette because that would be less messy in the long term.

6. Highlighting the Figure. From this point on I’m simply painting smaller and smaller areas of the figure with lighter and lighter tones. I don’t blend the paint on the figure, but tend to blend three or four intermediate tones on my pot lid ‘palette’ as I apply one colour of highlights to the figure.

For example this figure has had roughly six rounds of highlighting applied to it. Red for the fez, a custom blend for the skin tones, Desert Yellow + Bleached Bone for the cloak and puttees, Scorched Brown/Bestial Brown + Bleached Bone for the leather work, Sun Yellow + Bleached Bone for the trousers and various metals for the pistol and grenade.

You may have noticed above that I’ve been lightening my basic colours with Bleached Bone (a creme colour) rather than a hard titanium white like Skull White. I find mixing colours with Bleached Bone means you tend to retain the same tone to the original colour, whereas Skull White tends to change the base colour more radically, moving red to pink for example. I’m sure a more learned painter could explain this in terms of colour theory, but I’ll just offer it as a piece of simple advice.

I paint my figures based on the assumption that the natural light is usually falling from almost directly above – ‘high noon’ style if you will. Also keep in mind that as a gaming piece, this figure will spend most of its life viewed from a ‘gamer’s eye’ view of about 3′ away at an angle of around 60 degrees. This means you can often avoid highlighting any part underneath the figure and rely on the base coat + ink wash to provide adequate coverage over the white primer. For example this Moroccan figure has been painted with yellow pantaloons, although only his right knee has seen any attempt at highlighting.

Since we’re speed painting a figure for the tabletop I always try to cut corner if it’s not going to have a large effect on the final figure. For example this chap, like most of my Pulp figures, has no painted eyeballs. This can look a little odd if you examine the figure closely, but trust me you’re not going to notice the missing eyeballs once he’s on the game table – plus you can always say he’s squinting in the harsh North African sunshine.

I’ve dodged some more painting too by simply leaving his beard as it was after the ink wash. It’s a little redder than is probably common on a gentleman most likely of Semitic descent, but hey the Vikings made it down to ancient Spain which is a stone’s throw across the Mediterranean to North Africa! Just keep the ‘three foot’ rule in mind while you paint for the tabletop. If you can’t distinguish a particular piece of detail on the figure from three feet away, don’t spend a lot of time finely painting it.

7. Killing the Shine – Varnishing the Figure.

Once you’ve finished painting it’s finally time to do something about that awful wax shine! Let your painted figure completely dry over a couple of hours and then varnish it. I double varnish my figures these days, first hitting them with a good dose of cheap artist’s matt varnish that frankly isn’t terribly matt at all. Once that’s completely dry I give the figure a final dusting of an excellent local New Zealand spray varnish called ‘Moana Matt Varnish’. This is a stellar product available from Gordon Harris art stores. It’s not cheap, a small can will cost you $10 but you only need a light dusting to get a really matt coat on a figure.

So there you have it, I hope you’ve enjoyed this slightly disjointed series of tutorials where I’ve taken a raw metal figure and painted it, and as always feel free to ask questions or add your own painting advice in the comment section below.

Related posts:

1. Tutorial: 28mm Pulp Painting to Tabletop Quality I
2. Pulp Painting: Zombies and Baboon
3. Tutorial: Desert Basing 28mm Pulp Figures

For this tutorial I’ll be painting up one of the Anglian Miniatures Moroccan Spanish Civil War tank hunters from the basing tutorial. As I’ll be using him for generic Pulp gaming I’ve made no attempt to adhere to historic colours so apologies to any Spanish Civil War buffs out there!

1. Prime Everything. First I seriously recommend priming anything you paint for gaming, be it figures or terrain. Priming both your metal and plastic figures with an appropriate product will help make your final paint jobs much more resistant to handling and knocking about during gaming. This is because primers are formulated to cover metal and plastics well and also dry to a finish with some ‘tooth’ for further layers of paint to adhere too.

For figure priming I’ve always used Games Workshop’s increasingly expensive Citadel Skull White Primer. However be careful where you purchase it from as I’ve picked up dud cans in the past. Several gaming friends use cheaper spray products, typically flat grey automotive primers. However I don’t mind paying a little more for a product I know has worked well for years.

Apply your primer sparingly and try to hit each side of the figure evenly. I typically line up a bunch of prepared figures, spray across them and then rotate each individually 90 degrees (yet another reason to blue tack them to old drink bottle caps) and repeat until I’ve hit each side. Don’t douse your figures in primer as that will just obscure details, instead aim for reasonable coverage and don’t be too concerned if you can see a little bare metal from certain odd angles once you’re done. You just want to make sure you’ve primed the areas that are going to be handled during gaming. For example you can see the base on my example figure hasn’t been that well covered, but the figure has. That’s because I usually handle figures by the shoulders when gaming.

2. Flat Paint Basecoat Colours. Once the primed figure has dried I transfer it to my paint station and start applying flat base coat colours from my motley selection of Games Workshop and Tamiya acrylic pots. The idea here is to lay down basic colours to completely cover the primer. This is where the fun starts as you need to make choices about how you want the final figure to appear. After this I’m going to apply an ink wash and then work them up with some quick highlights, but as this first layer dictates the overall figure colours, choose wisely!

One beauty of using a white primer is that you’ll only ever need a single coat of acrylic to cover it which makes for fast figure painting. I find white primer also gives your base colours a nice ‘pop’ and I’m sure it helps contribute to the clean look of the final figure. It also makes sense when you’re painting figures for a desert theme as it reflects the kind of harsh, flat white light you’ll find in that environment.

I’ve tried black priming in the past and generally found it to be a nightmare to paint over, particularly with any kind of light colours like yellows and flesh tones. I’m fully prepared to admit I’m in a minority here, but really can’t understand why so many painting tutorials published by large gaming companies insist on teaching you to black prime and then laboriously cover the black primer with layers and layers of paint.

I paint with a handful of artist’s OOO and OO paint brushes. I only ever paint with sable brushes (ie. the red ones) and completely avoid synthetic nylon brushes (ie. the white ones) as frankly I’ve found them to have little merit. Nylon brushes in particular seem to lose their ‘point’ quickly which makes them almost worthless for figure painting.

I’d say find the best mid-price sable brushes you can at your local art supply store and use those. Certain companies will try and sell you overpriced ‘hobby figure painting brushes’ which are of course just re-branded art brushes! Also don’t bother with fancy brush soaps etc, just keep a pot of clean water nearby and make sure you rinse your brushes after you’ve finished apply each layer of paint and never let paint dry on the brush itself. Also never leave any brush head down in the water pot because that’ll bend the bristles and destroy the ‘point’ on the brush, making it useless for figure painting.

While painting figures there’s only two common-sense guidelines I try to follow: Inside out and light over dark. Inside out is where you paint the central details of the figure out to the edges because the central parts of the figure are generally harder to reach. Our example figure shows this nicely with a number of straps, holsters and pouches covering his chest while his ‘outside’ consists of a simple flowing robe.

Light over dark is where you apply dark colours earlier and then lighter colours later. This is because it’s very easy to correct light colours accidently painted over dark areas by applying some more of the darker color, however it can be difficult to correct dark colours slopped over light areas by applying more of the lighter color!

3. Dry Brushed Ground. I’m about to apply a ‘magic ink’ wash as the next step, however before I do that I dry-brush the figure’s base to bring out the textured nature of it. Using a larger, older sable brush I dry brush GW’s Bleach Bone over the base, followed by a lighter dry brush of Skull White. I don’t pay too much attention to keeping the dry brushing off the character’s shoes because I like to think it adds a cheap ‘dust’ effect to the shoe leather.

4. Magic Ink Wash. This is the final step we’ll cover in this post as it seems to be getting rather long. Here I’m applying a chestnut ink ‘magic wash’ over the entire figure as well as the ground underneath.

This is another process that speeds up my figure painting considerably because it gives you some interesting depth to the figure for almost no effort and also guides you towards which area of the figure should receive highlighting later on.

In the photo you see the example figure after the magic wash has been applied and you may well be thinking ‘wow that looks like crap’ about now. However keep in mind this is an intermediate step and at least several coats of repainting are going to go over this in the next post in this tutorial, so bear with me!

Magic wash is a blend of finest tap water and Johnson & Johnson’s Klear Floor Polish product mixed in a 7:3 ratio respectively. Klear Floor Polish is largely made up of wax, dissolved in an ammonia solution by the smell of it. I pre-mix this magic wash and store it in cheap dropper bottles which I then mix in a 1:1 ratio with Games Workshop inks.

Why bother? Well, if you paint with straight inks you’ll find they tend to pool as well as not flow that well into minor details, this is because of the surface tension of the ink (or rather the water in the ink). Mixing your inks with a wax solution reduces surface tension which means ink flows into tiny details on the figure and tends to pool less which is good. For more details Google for ‘magic wash’ and you’ll find articles like this from the Painting Clinic. They’re using a slightly different product but for the same reason.

The other advantage of Klear is because it’s a floor wax it’s designed to dry to a hard, rather shiny coat. This works for us because it nicely seals the base coat colours and gives you a robust coat to paint further colours over. In the past I’ve also found that painting over straight ink washes can be problematic depending on the ink. The high shine finish is a downside, but that’s easily fixed by applying a decent matt spray varnish once your figure is complete.

Note that because I’m painting my Pulp figures for a dusty desert environment I typically use a fairly brown/red palette of colours which allows me to get away with a single chestnut ink wash. This single wash also deals nicely with the tanned or Semitic skin tones. If you’re interested in magic washing blue and green inks you certainly can but it’ll add more steps to your painting process as you’ll have to hit individual areas of the figures with different washes.

Also note my single quick and dirty chestnut ink wash has been applied to both the figure and the ground. Post ink wash the ground is complete for this figure and I’ll be apply no more paint there.

Stay tuned for the next post when I’ll finish the example figure off with some repainting and highlighting and then varnish the beggar. Comments and questions are welcome as always of course.

Related posts:

1. Tutorial: 28mm Pulp Painting to Tabletop Quality II
2. Tutorial: Desert Basing 28mm Pulp Figures
3. Pulp Painting: Zombies and Baboon

Of course, before you paint a 28mm figure you’ve got to base it! So I’ll start the ball rolling with this tutorial on basing figures for the Egyptian/North African desert setting we game in.

1. Assemble your materials. I use Selley’s ‘Permafill’ wall repair product for basing my figures. Applying and clean up is easy because it’s water soluble, and it also dries to a very hard surface. I use the Permafill for a basic smooth sand effect, to add a little variety I scatter small rocks across the bases too. Primarily I use a mixture of three different sizes of Woodland Scenic’s Model Railway ballast and fresh kitty litter – that’s the white stone you see. For larger rocks I use pieces of cheap green marble scatter from the local gardening centre.

2. Prepare your figures. Do the usual clean up on your figures, removing mold lines and flash and then super glue them to your basic bases! For this tutorial I’ll be using three figures from the Anglian Miniatures Moroccans range I purchased recently.

I use Games Workshop round plastic bases because I have so many of them in the bitz box. Unfortunately they have a textured surface which can make it hard to get a decent bond between the figure’s metal foot plate and the plastic base. I usually sand this texture off first by rubbing the bases across a strip of 180 grit sandpaper.

Once the figures are securely glued down I give everything a wash in warm water and dish washing liquid, just to get rid of any commercial mold release residue and/or greasy finger prints. When the figure is dry I attach them to the disposable plastic cap from kiddie drink bottles with a large dollop of Blu Tack as you can see in the photo. I’ve found it’s invaluable to have some way of handling figures during painting that doesn’t involve touching the figure or their base at all.

3. Apply Permafill. I use a double spooned sculpting tool I picked up from Pityak Studios that has since become invaluable. I keep the sculpting tool fairly wet from a pot of tap water as I apply the permafill around the figure. Keeping the tool wet helps to get the permafill onto the base as it’s moderately tacky, with a texture a bit like gritty toothpaste.

Essentially what you’re trying to do is build up a little rounded mound of material that smoothly travels from the plastic base edge to just cover the 1-2mm thick metal foot plate of your figure. I think the above shot nicely shows this transition.

Don’t be concerned if you can still see the metal plate through the permafill once you’ve applied it, the trick is simply to cover that smooth metal with a bit of texture. Everything is going to be primed prior to painting anyway!

Also don’t concern yourself with trying to make the permafill perfectly smooth, as it’s meant to represent sand that your figure is running, walking through etc. So slap it about a bit to give it some character to dry-brush over, which this second shot hopefully shows.

Having said that the permafill in that second shot does look reasonably smooth because of the water I’ve mixed into it during application. However it will still dry to a nice rough texture while moderately diluted and those smooth curves will end up with textured edges.

Then I clean up any splashes on the base sides by running my finger around the base and move onto the final step.

4. Pebbles to Boulders. This final step is actually optional. If you simply apply permafill and leave it to dry you’ll have a figure that is essentially based in simple sand which is fine. However that can get a little monotonous over an entire group of figures, so I usually apply some scattered rocks onto the base while the permafill is still wet. Varying the size and amount of material applied as desired!

The above three figures show the possibilities. The street hawker on the right has simply been based on permafill. The central zombie has had a light scattering of very fine Woodland Scenics ballast applied, while the adventurer on the left is standing in fairly rocky patch of desert which has a mix of ballast sizes applied to it.

I have a large pet food container containing three different baggies of Woodland Scenics ballast mixed in with kitty litter. I grab a pinch out of the container and scatter it over the wet base as I see fit. The permafill will form a reasonable bond with small pieces of grit, but I generally push larger pieces down lightly with the sculpting tool.

For large boulders I hand place pieces of the green marble I mentioned at the start. These will definitely have to be pushed firmly into the permafill. Once it’s dry it will form an excellent bond with any mildly textured stone. For the light MG team I’ve applied a few larger rocks around them for cover. For the other chap I’ve applied a fair amount of small gravel to his base. It looks a little ugly in the photo, but will prime and dry brush up quite nicely in the finished figure.

Once I’m happy with the figure base I put it aside to dry, typically overnight before priming the whole figure ready for painting. This technique works fine for 15mm scale figures as well, in fact my entire Flames of War NZ 2EF Rifle Company is based this way.

Hopefully this short tutorial will be useful to some visitors, comments and questions are welcomed below.

Related posts:

1. Tutorial: 28mm Pulp Painting to Tabletop Quality I
2. Tutorial: 28mm Pulp Painting to Tabletop Quality II
3. Pulp 28mm Egyptian Obelisk WIP

The latest arrival in my mail box is two 15mm DBA armies from Corvus Belli (thanks to Olympian Games). The Carthaginian army included a multi part Elephant which needed assembly so I thought it’d be an excellent chance to snap some shots of a little dodge I use to make pinning easy – Blu Tack!

The first photo just shows you the tools involved: a pin vise for careful hand drilling, some 0.9mm garden wire for the pin (although a paper clip works fine too), some well loved clippers to cut the wire down, super glue and of course blu tack. As an aside if you don’t own a pin vise, pick one up immediately! Next to a sharp Xacto, a pin vise is the most used tool in my paint station.

1. Drill the smaller part. Prepare the two metal parts you want to pin to your satisfaction, making particularly sure they dry fit together well.

Select one part to drill an initial hole in. I usually drill the smaller part which is going to be pinned to the larger part. In this case I’ve drilled a pin hole 3-4mm deep into the back of the Elephant’s head.

2. Blu tack the larger part. Tear off a small blob of blu tack and stick it onto the larger part where the two parts will join. Make sure you’ve really stuck the blue tack on there well – it helps if the parts are reasonably clean and grease free. I’ve pushed the blu tack into the Elephant’s neck here.

Now wet the blu tack with a bit of water from a brush washing pot, or in a pinch a lick of spit on your finger (not recommended though unless you really want to ingest lead containing pewter dust) and forcibly fit the two parts together in the final configuration you want.

3. Drill the larger part. If you carefully separate the parts the blu tack will remain stuck to the larger part, only now it will contain a very obviously nub where it has has been forced into the hole on the smaller part. If the blu tack lifts away from the larger part you either didn’t stick it down well enough, or the surface of the blu tack wasn’t wet enough. No matter, replace it and try again.

Leaving the blu tack in place, simply drill out that nub until it’s 3-4mm deep as well. Now you’ve got a pin hole in each part that will match up well for pinning.

4. Pin those parts. Take your garden wire, or paper clip and snip it down to an appropriate length. The easiest way to do this is simply fit a length into one part and clip it off a shade too long, then just clip it down until a little at a time until both parts fit together well around the pin. You want to leave the pin as long as possible because then it provides more strength to the final join.

Superglue the pin to one part, I usually pick the smaller but it makes little difference, and wait a few seconds until it’s dry. Then glue the smaller part to the larger part with a thin layer of super glue, holding the parts together firmly for a at least 10 seconds to ensure a good set. Once the glue is completely dry you should find the resulting pinned join very sturdy.

5. Done! I know I struggled with pinning for a while by simply trying to get pin holes aligned ‘by eye’ before something made me try blu tack. Some people talk about using a dab of web paint in a similar manner, but I prefer my method to be honest. Blu tack is cheap, reuseable and leaves no residue in the join at all that might effect bond strength.

Hopefully this little tutorial is of some use to somebody out there!

Related posts:

1. Tutorial: Desert Basing 28mm Pulp Figures
2. Tutorial: Cheap Flexible 15mm Roads
3. Tutorial: 15mm Palm Trees

11. Checking the mold is set.

Once you’ve waited long enough return to your mold and examine the dregs in your mixing pot. You can see in the photo I’ve peeled almost all of the dregs out in a single piece so it’s clearly fully set. Once set RTV is a very flexible vulcanised rubber that you can stretch out quite some distance before it snaps.

Since ‘Ultrasil’ has an 8 hour recommended curing time and I left this mold overnight for about 22 hours, I would expect it to be set.

12. Removing the pour box.

After rolling the Klean Klay back and saving it for another mold, peeling back the masking tape and carefully tearing the foam card walls away from the mold I’m left with this: a block of RTV clinging tenaciously to my glued down masters.

Click on the photo and you’ll see some RTV has snuck under the edges of the foam card and was stopped by the masking tape and/or Klean Klay. This shows you how easily RTV can escape from an incompletely sealed pour box. I usually trim this off with a sharp Xacto before peeling the mold away from the base.

You can also see there’s a lip of RTV standing proud from the mold bottom as well as several set drips. I cut these away when I bevel the edges of the mold with the same Xacto to make the mold bottom reasonably flat.

13. Removing the mold.

You need to be careful removing the mold from the masters because if you’re going to damage anything it’ll be now. I slowly lift the first edge away from the base and then work at rolling the mold off the masters from each side a little at a time as in the photo. Eventually the mold should release itself from your masters, popping right off. Don’t be afraid of bending the RTV mold back 90 degrees or more while doing this as set RTV is very flexible.

Some people will recommend you coat your masters with a mold release product before pouring the RTV to aid removing the final mold. As I brush on the first coat of RTV in all my molding (and this tutorial) I believe the use of mold release may be a little redundant.

However if you want to try it I’d suggest picking up a spray can of mold release. Avoid using any kind of brush on product (some tutorials I’ve seen use vaseline) as it may unintentionally add an additional brush stroke texture to your masters! We use RTV for molding because it is very good at picking up minute surface details after all.

14. Tidying up the mold.

Ah the perils of tutorial writing! While removing the mold two of the smaller masters snapped off the base, remaining in the mold as you can see.

Click the photo and you’ll also see RTV has got under a fair amount of one master edge as well. This highlights the point that there’s a trade off between really gluing your masters down to your base, sealing all their edges and actually getting them off the base ever again.

As I mentioned in the first of these posts I opt for a weaker bond with the base as I often reuse my masters later on, possibly in different layouts. However that does mean that this particular problem can occur. Fortunately it can easily be solved by popping the stubborn pieces out and then trimming away the excess RTV with a pair of fine scissors. I use both straight edged embroidery scissors (borrowed from my wife’s sewing box, ssssh!) and a curved set of nail scissors for snipping away excess RTV.

15. The finished mold.

There you have it! Your mold is ready for casting and I hope you’ve enjoyed this rather long tutorial. Feel free to post questions or comments and I’ll answer them as best I can.

If you’re considering casting your mold in a hard plaster product like Hydrostone or Ultracal 30 you may be interested in a much earlier post about the plaster casting technique I use to produce the 15mm wargaming terrain for sale on this blog. I may also publish a photo tutorial of plaster or resin casting in the future so keep an eye out.

Related posts:

1. Tutorial: Mold Making I
2. Tutorial: Mold Making II
3. Tutorial: Cheap Flexible 15mm Roads

Estimating the Mold Volume and Mixing RTV

4. Assemble your materials.

The RTV product I use is called ‘Ultrasil’ manufactured by Barnes, an Australian company and available from TopMark in New Zealand. I’ve also grabbed a small previously set mold, a cheap hog bristle brush, a permanent marker, a clean pot to mix RTV in, a mixing tool (cleverly disguised as an HB pencil) and a large 1L bottle of beach sand. I’ll describe the use of each below.

Ultrasil is a 1:10 RTV (room temperature vulcanising) product consisting of a large pot of white rubber and a small bottle of blue hardener. I’d seriously recommend purchasing RTV products with coloured parts like this, because mixing a 1:10 product by weight when both components are white is an absolute nightmare. Particularly when one of them is a thick, sticky, viscous rubber. Having a coloured hardener also makes it very easy to see your RTV is fully and uniformly mixed prior to pouring which is obviously important.

However the real beauty to a coloured hardener is you can mix all of your molds ‘by eye’ using colour matching to determine when you’ve got roughly enough hardener into the mix to guarantee a set mold. This saves you measuring anything and is fast and reliable. I’ve mixed roughly 30 molds this way and only botched one early pour.

The only down side to this method is you tend to over use hardener which could lead to you running out. Although that’s never happened to me. I suspect Barnes gives you excess anyway in anticipation of most molders being lazy devils and mixing by colour. Varying the amount of hardner added will change the working time and final strength of the set RTV, but most of these products should have an ample working time anyway. Definitely check the MDS (material data sheet) for your products before mixing them though.

5. Estimating mold volume using sand.

RTV is an expensive product here in New Zealand so I want to waste as little as possible. This means I need a way to get a good measurement of the volume of RTV I’ll need to fill a given pour box. The easiest way to estimate the volume is simply to pour some other ‘liquid’ into the assembled box.

Water springs to mind and I know at least one professional caster that does use water for mold volume estimation, but to me water is far too messy and makes your masters and pour box wet! So I use good old washed and dried beach sand (nabbed from Whangamata several summers ago).

Take your sand and fill the pour box with it, completely covering the masters and then some. Gently shuffle the box around until the sand is level then take a tool/finger and poke around in it until you hit a master. Do this to make sure your masters are buried sufficiently deeply – like the external mold walls you should be aiming for 4-5mm of sand covering the highest point of the tallest master in the box.

6. Marking the mixing pot.

Once you’re happy the sand sufficiently fills the pour box, gently pour it out into some large container (I left that out of the above photos) being careful not to lose too much onto your work area. Pour the larger container into your mixing pot and mark where the sand fills the pot to. This is how much of the basic rubber component you’ll need to fill your pour box.

Tip the sand out of your mixing pot and brush any extra grains out. You’ve also got to clean any extra sand out of the pour box. I use a combination of gentle shaking, blowing and brushing off the masters with the hog’s bristle brush. It’ll only take a couple of minutes to clean up and you’ll have a dry box ready for filling with RTV.

7. Mixing RTV by colour matching.

Finally we’re ready to mix! Carefully pour the white rubber component into your mixing pot until it’s been filled to the mark. This can be a messy process and I find it handy to have a scrap of foam card nearby to scrape the edge of the rubber pot clean before putting the lid back on tightly.

I believe RTV products like these can be degraded by exposure to air moisture so don’t leave the lid off your rubber pot for longer than required. The shelf life of an opened pot may be reduced too, so it’s often a good idea to plan and pour a series of molds together in order to use your RTV up in a reasonable space of time. Discuss these details with the manufacturer/reseller when you purchase your RTV.

Add hardener a fair amount at a time and thoroughly mix it in with your mixing tool. Be particularly careful that you mix in the white rubber on the sides and bottom of the pot. I find it handy to use transparent or semi-transparent mixing pots for this reason. I have a cat and a three year old in the house so have an endless supply of plastic pet food containers and jelly pots that get seconded to the garage once empty and cleaned.

Compare your mix to any set mold you have handy. Mix in more hardener until you have a rough colour match to the set mold. Always keeping in mind that a mold that’s seen a lot of either resin or plaster can get a little lighter in colour.

Of course if this is the first mold you’re mixing then the above paragraph is a little useless. In this instance I’d recommend either following whatever instructions came with your RTV or use a roughly regular shaped mixing pot (no curves or sloped walls) and dividing the space between the bottom of the pot and the ‘fill’ mark into 10 roughly similar proportions. Fill nine of those with white rubber and one of them with coloured hardener then mix thoroughly. If anything you want to be a little too generous with the hardener for your first mold, just to make absolutely sure the RTV will set. I’d also suggest your first mold pour be reasonably modest in size. For future molds colour match to your first one as appropriate.

Pouring the Mold

8. Brushing on the first RTV coat.

Now you have a pour box and your mixed RTV ready to go you may be tempted to just slop it in and leave it to set. Beware! For this will almost certainly lead to trapping air bubbles in your masters and related annoying blobs appearing in any casts you make. ‘Act in haste, repent in leisure’ as they say, and remember that air bubbles are the garage caster’s nemesis.

Without fail, I always brush the first coat of RTV over the masters by hand using the stiff hog bristle brush you have handy. Brushing the first coat of RTV on like this will reduce the chances of trapping an annoying air bubble somewhere on the surface of a master. It won’t guarantee you have no air bubbles in your mold but it will significantly reduce the chance of it happening.

So take a deep breath, load up your brush with mixed RTV and start painting it over your masters. You’ll need a good stiff brush (hence hog’s bristle) because RTV is a very thick liquid. You should have ample time to carefully paint each and every master in your pour box before the RTV is anywhere near the end of its working period. But check your RTV MDS to be sure!

Once you’re done, put the brush aside in a cleaning fluid. RTV cleans up in painter’s turpentine and make sure you come back and thoroughly clean this brush once your mold is fully poured. It’s a little ironic while working up this tutorial I was so busy taking photos I completely forgot about the brush I’d used until the next morning. A brush loaded with set RTV is a throw away. This is also why I use cheap hog bristle brushes for all my RTV and plaster casting work, because you can throw them away! I buy a pack of 10 various brushes from a local ‘$2 shop’ regularly.

9. Filling the mold with RTV.

Finally, take your remaining RTV and slowly pour it into the box to fill your mold. I generally try to pour in at a corner or edge and let the thick RTV ‘roll’ across the masters to cover them completely. I believe this should introduce less bubbles than say sluicing RTV all over the mold.

Another tip with pouring is make sure the rim of your mixing pot is clean. You’ve just mixed the rubber and hardener in there and there may be some unmixed components around the rim of the pot which you do not want to pour into your mold.

While pouring you may notice there’s a little colour variation in the RTV as it goes in. Usually this is obvious because you can see the ‘ribbon’ of RTV you’ve just poured laying on to of the RTV already in the box. Don’t worry about this too much unless it’s very clear you have unmixed rubber at the bottom of the pot. If so take a moment to regret not completely mixing the components before pouring. Then stop pouring and try gently stirring up the RTV in the mold with a brush or tool to mix it in with the rest. You can also try to recover the partially mixed rubber left in the pot by adding a little more hardener.

It’s also worth noting that RTV is ’self adhering’ which means you can later pour additional RTV into a box partially filled with set RTV – providing the set RTV is reasonably clean and free from dust etc. I wouldn’t recommend it but you can use this to recover botched pours where something has gone wrong with your mixed RTV halfway through.

10. Leaving the mold to set.

And you’re done! Stand back and admire your handiwork for a few minutes. Pay particular attention to the edges and seams of your pour box because if you notice RTV escaping anywhere you’ll have to deal with it now. The truely paranoid might light to keep a blob of Klean Klay handy just in case they need to shore up any gaps or holes. This hasn’t happened to me yet but you never know…

Make sure the mold is placed somewhere level and out of the way to set. Level is very important because eventually you want to turn this mold over and pour resin or plaster into it which means the bottom has got to be flat and level. Out of the way because there’s normally a long setting time involved. Again check your RTV’s MDS for details. Then wait at least twice as long as that before you go back to it.

Seriously, I usually pour in the evenings and wait 24 hours for a product with an 8 hour recommended setting time. Do not be tempted to mess with your mold until you’re sure it’s set. RTV is a deceptive product – the surface can appear set while the interior (next to your masters) is still goey. Imagine your surprise at discovering that while trying to peel the mold off! Yes I speak from bitter experience.

There are three techniques I use to avoid this issue:

1. The first I’ve already mentioned – be patient!
2. The second is to keep the mixing pot next to your setting mold as in the photo. The pot will likely contain some dregs of RTV from your pour. You can examine these dregs to see how set the poured RTV is likely to be.
3. The third I like to call the ’spring test’. Come back to your mold later, when you suspect it may be set. If the surface looks set and the dregs in the mixing pot are fully set take a blunt tool (eg. paintbrush handle) and give the mold surface a good robust prod and hold the tool there. Then suddenly pull it away. If the RTV quickly springs back to a flat surface it’s likely the interior is well set too. If the RTV exhibits any reluctance to return to a flat surface, with the indent you made slowly fading away then for goodness sake walk away because the interior is not fully set.

I realise this last test is quite subjective but believe me it works. Cast a handful of molds and you’ll likely see at least one that does this when you expect it should be completely set. Be patient and give it another day of curing time. If you’ve mixed the RTV well enough that at least the surface has set then eventually the interior should set too.

If you finally give up and peel the mold away from the masters only to discover some or all of the interior has failed to set then it’s likely that your rubber has been contaminated or has aged (consider throwing the batch away) or you constructed your masters from some material that retards the RTV setting process. This is unfortunate. As I mentioned in the previous post sulphur containing plasticene can have this effect, but that’s the only mastering material I know to avoid. There may be others – I use a lot of DIY products, epoxy putties including green stuff, resin pieces and plasticard for my masters without difficulty.

In the next post where we reveal the final mold!

Related posts:

1. Tutorial: Mold Making III
2. Tutorial: Mold Making I
3. Tutorial: Desert Basing 28mm Pulp Figures

This tutorial focusses on ‘garage’ one sided mold making with off-the-shelf RTV and casting with resin/plaster products. Using one-sided molds you can create spectacular terrain and modelling details to improve your gaming table.

Two sided molding is possible with these techniques but I find the results are often disappointing. For high-detail two sided molding you really need professional and expensive pressure vulcanisers and spin casters imho.

I learned mold making simply through Googling the web and trial and error. Hopefully this tutorial will save you some expensive mistakes and be at least as useful as others already out there.

As I live in New Zealand the mold making products I use are fairly specific to the Australian market. My materials are all supplied by TopMark in Auckland who are excellent to deal with if you happen to be a NZ mold maker.

For our US visitors I’d recommend checking out the Hirst Arts site mold making page and/or related forums for US product suggestions.

Create Your Masters

The first step to creating a mold is having something you want to copy in plaster or resin. You should expend a considerable amount of time creating your masters and you should aim to make them as sturdy and as highly detailed as you can.

Make them sturdy because it’s always nice to keep your masters after molding them for future modification and possible remolding. Molds created with most RTV products do not have an infinite life so being able to create additional molds from your master can definitely be useful. Particularly if you’re a hobbyist seller like myself. In fact the pieces I’m molding here have already been remolded several times.

Make them highly detailed because once you have successfully created a mold you can easily reproduce them, producing tens or hundreds of casts with ease (and a little time). So it’s worth applying all your modelling skills and equipment in the creation of a master worthy of molding.

A final word on masters: Copyright applies to all original works. It’s illegal to copy and sell work derived from other individuals/companies without their explicit contractual permission. Don’t do it. Create your own masters. Take it from me it’s infinitely more satisfying molding your own work.

Making the Mold Pour Box

1. Assemble the materials for your mold pour box.

The pour box is a watertight container that holds the RTV around your masters while it sets. I build all my pour boxes from 3mm MDF, foam card offcuts, masking tape and Klean Klay modelling clay.

MDF (medium density fibreboard) is a pressed wood product with a fine grain. I use 3mm MDF for most of my terrain basing so have a lot of smaller offcuts left which I use for forming the base of the pour box.

MDF is good for the base because it’s stiff and flat. The base will form the open face of the final mold so I want it as flat as possible as I use a ’smooth cover’ technique of casting. This is where a flat piece of plastic or glass is laid over a poured mold to ensure the cast pieces have flat bottoms.

2. Arrange your masters for molding.

RTV is expensive so you want to arrange your masters with minimal wasted space. However you also need to leave at least 4-5mm (or 1/6th of an inch) between each piece inside the mold and a little more for the external walls, say 5-6mm. Set RTV is quite flexible, so you need relatively thick internal and external walls to ensure your cast pieces aren’t deformed by the walls bowing when you pour resin or plaster into the mold.

Obviously the best thickness to use varies depending on the set strength of the RTV product you’re using and these estimates may be a little generous. I notice molds from professionals like Bruce Hirst have 2-4mm internal mold walls.

Once you’re happy with the arrangement glue each master down with a small dab of superglue. It’s important the masters are firmly fixed to the MDF base. RTV is a dense liquid, so light masters can float up before the mold sets which in the worst case can leave you with a solid block of RTV you’ll have to cut your masters out of!

If you ever want to remold or modify your masters chances are you’ll want to get them off the base. A small dab of superglue can be broken by twisting the master off the MDF. However if you’re confident you won’t rework the masters then definitely glue them down solidly because it won’t hurt.

3. Assemble the pour box.

Foam card is ideal for this because it’s breakable foam sandwiched between two layers of thin card. You can cut through one layer of card and some of the foam while leaving the other layer of card intact and then fold it to form watertight corners.

Take a continuous strip of foam card that’s long enough to entirely surround your masters. Stand it on the base and cut the outer side (from the centre) of the foam card and fold it in towards the masters, so the intact layer of card forms a watertight inner corner. Rinse and repeat for as many corners as you need.

Don’t feel obliged to make square or rectangular pour boxes. Many of my molds are irregular shapes simply to avoid wasting Ultrasil filling empty corners. The only important thing is there should be sufficient space between your masters and the foam card so the RTV will form a decent external mold wall.

Once you’ve cut the foam card into a shape you’re happy with, tape it down to the MDF using strips of masking tape around the outside of the box. I usually also tape the final edge of the foam wall shut too.

Enough masking tape would probably be sufficient to stop the RTV from escaping from the pour box but it’s pretty viscous stuff and can flow out or under the smallest gap. For this reason I also run a bead of Klean Klay around the entire pour box, making doubly sure the edge of the foam card wall is nicely sealed down to the MDF base and the final open edge is completely sealed.

Klean Klay is a reuseable modelling clay for use with RTV molding. Normal plasticene and some other modelling clays contains sulphur which will stop any RTV that contacts it from curing properly. This is a bad thing. You can also create temporary masters from Klean Klay, as well as use it for sealing off half of a master for two sided molding, so it’s handy stuff to have around. It’s pretty cheap too and you should be able to pick it up from any supplier that also stocks RTV molding kits.

Right! That’s your pour box made, next comes estimating the amount of RTV you need and pouring the mold. This is covered in the following post…

Related posts:

1. Tutorial: Mold Making III
2. Tutorial: Mold Making II
3. Tutorial: 15mm Palm Trees

Gather your tools! I used paper masking tape and 0.9mm gardening wire. I had 0.6mm gardening wire handy as well but I believe it probably wouldn’t be thick enough to make a palm that could stand up to regular gaming. You’ll also need something to cut the masking tape, and something to cut the wire too.

The final ingredient is a half used up tube of Selley’s ‘Knead it’ Multipurpose. This is a two part roll of epoxy putty with a working time of roughly 5 minutes. It fully cures to a wood hardness overnight. Fellow modellers recommend the ‘Aqua’ flavour of this product but I’ve never managed to lay my hands on it. It always seems to be out of stock for some reason. Our US visitors may be able to suggest a suitably cheap, DIY epoxy product available in the States?

First step is to cut a bunch of lengths of gardening wire. For my palms I usually go for 19-20cm long pieces and use five pieces per palm tree.

Then cover the end of each piece of wire with a folded strip of masking tape, between 6-8cm long for a 3-4cm long palm frond. Don’t worry about folding the masking tape exactly in half, since you’ll cut away any excess shortly. As you can see I’ve just banged the masking tape over the wire disregading excess on either side.

Now you need to cut each piece of masking tape into a reasonable looking palm frond. Going from right to left this is all I do:

Cut the tape into a rough ‘club’ shape, tearing off an excess at the end. Don’t worry about leaving a tatty stub at the base of the frond, because it turns out on painting that actually adds to the effect.

Take the scissors and cut into each side of as far as you can go. I start from the tip and work my way back to the base of the frond, varying angle and depth a little as I go. I also try and make the cuts a little wider towards the middle for a thicker frond.

Repeat for all five branches. Leave the fronds flat for now, the frond on the far left has been bent a little to show you what they’ll end up looking like after you’ve assembled the palm.

Now take all five fronds and start winding them together, about 2cm down from the base of the fronds. The only trick here is to try and keep the wires as ’smoothly’ wrapped as you can (if that makes any sense).

Try to avoid any large loops or one wire being more prominently wrapped that the others. This is really only important for the final step where I wind an epoxy ribbon around the palm for the trunk so everything ends up as even as possible.

Don’t twist the entire trunk, but leave 2cm at the bottom as well. Splay the ends out and you’ve got a some straight roots to fix to an MDF or plasticard base. I usually masking tape the tree down across the roots and then lay down a thin layer of Selly’s Knead It around the trunk to secure it to the base.

At this point I bend the fronds out in a sweeping curve, which tends to spread the individual leaves apart. I mess around with the fronds until I’m happy with their final arrangement and straighten and angle the trunk appropriately. I also run each frond through my fingers to bend the masking tape down, making them hang more naturally towards the ground, rather than straight out in the photo below.

Finally I mix some Selly’s Knead It and roll a piece into a 3mm tube and flatten it out into a strip on a wet piece of plastic. Taking the strip I spiral wind it around the tree from under the fronds down to the base, forming the trunk of the palm.

Actually once you’ve started it’s easier to hold the putty and spin the tree slowly, pulling it onto the trunk. As the putty hardens in 5 minutes it’ll usually take me 2-3 strips to wrap the entire tree.

Once I’ve finished I leave the whole tree overnight so the trunk fully cures. In addition to looking kind of like a palm trunk, the wrapped epoxy also adds a fair amount of strength to the finished tree and holds the wrapped wires in place.

They’re not the most realistic looking palms, but they’re cheap, with roughly $30nz of materials giving you enough to make maybe around 30 palms. They’re fairly quick to make too once you get the hang of them. I can bang out 4-5 in an evening in front of the television.

As with all terrain, a decent paint job can make them look as good as a store bought product once they’re on the table! I’m in the process of painting a couple of bases of them up for my Flames of War table so I’ll post them sometime this week once they’re done.

Addendum: Painted Palm trees appear in this later post.

Related posts:

1. 15mm Palm Trees Painted
2. 15mm Scale Palm Trees
3. 15mm Scouring Pad Trees

If you’re plaster casting it might be useful to you as this is how I go about casting 15mm detail pieces with almost no air bubbles. I reject around 1 in 10 pieces cast because of problems with bubbles.

1. Preparing molds for casting:

1. Mix a capful of Finish rinse aid ‘anti-spotting’ agent into a 1.5L soft drink bottle of water.
2. Fill a container that’s large enough to hold your molds with this mixture.
3. Sink your molds into the container so they’re completely submerged.
4. The above steps are essentially the Hirst Arts ‘wet water’ technique.
5. Take a hog bristle art brush and run it through the molds while they’re submerged to dislodge all the air bubbles you can see trapped in the mold details. I use hog bristle brushes because the stiffer bristles help remove bubbles.
6. Remove the molds you’re about to use from the container, pouring out most but not all of the water in the mold. Leave the molds maybe 1/3 full of water depending on where the most detailed part of the mold are. The idea here is you want the mold detail to remain underwater so no new air bubbles can form.

2. Mixing plaster for casting:

I’m lazy so never bothering measuring anything. I find I can mix Ultracal 30 and Hydrostone successfully ‘by eye’ now. It’s really more about achieving a certain consistency of mix than exact measurements imho.

1. Pour a suitable amount of plaster into a container and add the same Finish/water mix to the plaster that you used above.
2. Thoroughly mix the plaster until it’s a thick but still liquid consistency – very like a thin pancake batter. Don’t concern yourself with bubbles too much at this point.
3. After mixing, give the bubbles a few seconds to rise to the surface then ‘dust’ a little more plaster over the top. This will kill the surface bubbles and thicken the mix more. Carefully stir this additional plaster in…avoiding air bubbles as much as possible.
4. Leave the plaster mix to ’slake’ a for a couple of minutes before you move to the next step.

3. Pouring plaster for casting:

1. Before pouring make absolutely sure the prepared molds you’ve removed from the ‘wet water’ mix above are on a flat surface with nothing trapped underneath them. This is essential for the CD cover method (detailed below) to work properly.
2. Pour plaster into the mold from a height of 5-8cm and as a thin, unbroken stream. This will cause any remaining bubbles in the mix to pop before they enter the mold. Don’t completely fill the molds but cover any detail in the mold with plaster. Recall that the molds are still at least 1/3 full of water. The heavier plaster will initially mix with this water but will eventually settle to the bottom of the molds, displacing the water towards the open face.
3. Take your wet hog’s bristle brush any vigorously run it through the plaster in the mold. You’re trying to dislodge any remaining bubbles in the mold details before pouring the rest of the plaster. Of course plaster is opaque (unlike most two part resins) so you can’t see what you’re doing, but you should see some additional bubbles rising to the surface.
4. Once you’ve finished with the brush make sure you give it a good rinse – otherwise you’ll be throwing it away once the plaster sets.
5. Carefully pour the remaining plaster into the molds, overfilling the molds a little.
6. Take a long, heavy object (I use a steel ruler) and give each outside wall of the mold several solid taps. I find this tapping is just as effective as the ‘pound boards’ or ‘vibrating tables’ people swear by on the Hirst Arts forum. This should release any final bubbles lurking in the mold details.
7. Let the plaster settle into the molds for a couple of minutes until you can see a surface layer of clear water forming in the open face.
8. The open face of the mold may contain some very small bubbles underneath the thin layer of clear water. You may wish to ignore these as they’ll be in the hidden face of whatever you’re casting. However I find these tiny bubbles can be popped by simply blowing air across the mold at about 45 degrees.
9. Take the clear cover of a CD jewel case and slowly smooth it over the mold from one edge and direction. This will press the excess water and plaster out over the edges of the mold. You can see what’s happening through the clear CD cover. Smooth the CD cover down over the mold until it completely covers the mold and all excess plaster has gone. If you find that air starts to leak back in underneath the CD cover and forming bubbles then your mold isn’t on a flat surface, your CD cover is warped or you under filled the molds while pouring. This particular step may take some practice to get working consistently.
10. Once the CD cover is placed over the mold I usually slide it around in a few small circles to spread plaster out over the CD cover a little more. This helps the plaster form a hydraulic seal between the CD cover and the mold and stops air from sneaking back in.

4. Demolding cast pieces:

I generally leave the CD cover on while the plaster is setting however this tends to trap water in the open face of the mold. This simply means you should expect demolded pieces to still be quite wet, despite the fact they’re fully set. You can remove the cover earlier for drier pieces but beware of adding unwanted texture to the open face when doing so.

Ultracal 30 takes around 40 minutes to set before it can be safely de-molded. If you’re casting fine detail I’d leave it for up to an hour before attempting to remove pieces from the mold.

Hydrostone seems to set faster and can usually be demolded in around 20 minutes (or half the time of Ultracal 30). Unfortunately Hydrostone is more expensive for me locally so I always use Ultracal 30.

Both these plasters are very hard once set, however I have noticed that the above technique can reduce the strength of the set plaster slightly. Particularly in the open face of the mold where plaster and water have mixed freely while the poured plaster settles. However a light sand of the ‘underside’ of cast pieces will remove any loose or patchy plaster.

Related posts:

1. Tutorial: Mold Making I
2. Tutorial: Mold Making II
3. Tutorial: Mold Making III

Base:

1. Selley’s Perma-fill mixed with sand and applied around glued down figures.
2. Base and figures primed with GW’s Skull White spray.
3. Bubonic Brown base coat.
4. Bleached Bone drybrush.
5. Skull White drybrush.
6. Wash with 2:10 Wax/water dilute Flesh Wash (with a little India Ink to darken it)

Figures:

1. GW Scorched Brown base over primer.
2. 50/50 Bestial Brown/Bronzed Flesh flesh tone.
3. Desert Yellow helmet.
4. Khaki uniform/gaiters
5. Bleached bone pack and webbing (NZers used to scrub their webbing and it faded in the North African sun).
6. Bronzed Flesh flesh highlighting.
7. Chaos Black weapons.
8. 50/50 Chaos Black/Chainmail drybrush on weapons.
9. 50/50 Bleached Bone/Catachan Green for socks.
10. Graveyard Earth rifle strap.
11. 50/50 Bleached Bone/Desert Yellow highlight on helmet.

Related posts:

1. Tutorial: 28mm Pulp Painting to Tabletop Quality II
2. 15mm Palm Trees Painted
3. Tutorial: 28mm Pulp Painting to Tabletop Quality I