Recently I peeled myself away from the Xbox long enough to play in a Pulp .45 campaign Aaron started. The first (and possibly last) mission was set on the Tramp Steamer I started scratch building years ago and never quite finished. I stalled because I got to the point of detailing it and realised I needed a bunch of custom built bits and pieces.
However playing an interesting Pulp scenario across various hand drawn maps representing the interior decks, and finishing on the ship itself was great fun and inspired me to do some sculpting to finish the blighter off. First up I needed ship’s doors and portholes to cover the blank holes I’d cut in the 2mm cardboard used for the superstructure. A little research netted various pictures of ship’s doors. I went for a simple double dogged door and frame. It’s all just cut from 1mm plasticard with dremmeled curves and detailed with trimmed plastic rail and greenstuff. The frame and door aren’t very symmetric, but once molded and cast that shouldn’t be too obviously hopefully. Heck it’s a rusty old tramp steamer after all.
I plan to cast these in Ultrasil Blue and them mold them in resin. I briefly considered trying to make the door have a working hinge, but then figured tiny 2mm resin hinges wouldn’t stand up to any serious gaming. I’ll leave the doors detached, but probably glue some plasti-card rails to the backs so they can be pushed into the fixed frame.
Unfortunately I discovered while I still have plenty of Ultrasil rubber left, the blue hardening compound has dried to dust, which after some experimenting seems to just be the blue colouring as the rubber will no longer set. Damn. Guess I shouldn’t have left it on the shelf for years. So I’m picking up a new kit from TopMark tomorrow and will have to finish off a few projects to try and use the kit up rather than sticking it in the garage for years to expire!
Update: Picked up another small Ultrasil Blue kit from TopMark today and had a word with their ever helpful staff. Apparently it’s not uncommon for people to want to purchase more of the blue ‘Part B’ hardener out of these kits so they sell it separately in 50ml (for $16NZ) and 25ml bottles. 50ml of hardener is what you get in the smallest Ultrasil set that I purchased, so I certainly didn’t need that much. Unfortunately they were out of 25ml bottles at the time. Ah well, I’ll stretch the new kit as far as I can on hardener and see how it goes. Molding up a couple of sculpts as we speak to finish off a few things.