Making Press Molds
Whilst I wait to start on the cool stuff I’m working on the little side projects that will be part of much bigger projects. Vague? Sorry. Currently I’m building a right handed chainfist for Rogoth The Berzerker but I’ve also been making a press-mould of Khorne’s skull-rune. So I thought I’d document how I did this for anybody that is interested.
To start out you’ll need
Green stuff
A base within which to make the mould. I used a 25mm circle base.
The item you wish to make a mould of (in this case the skull-rune from the chaos vehicle sprue)
I also have a second base and the square 40mm one but I’ll explain them as we go along.
Mix enough green stuff to fill the recess of the base.
Smooth this out when you’re done. Then take the item you wish to make a mould of and give it a good coating in cooking oil or some such, this acts as a release agent for later on. Once it’s oiled up place it on the green stuff.
One of the key things to making a press mould is keeping everything straight when you press it in. To do this I used the flat side of another 25mm circle base (make sure to oil up this base too) pushed down by the flat of the 40mm base.
Now you’ll have to wait for the green stuff to cure.
Once it has cured you should be able to remove the item. You might need a thin bladed knife or some such to carefully lever it out if it’s a very flat object (as this was). Be careful as the knife can very easily slip as the item can sometimes be quite snug in the mould.
You should then have something that looks like this
Now to make a copy of this item you first have to cover the mould in oil, again to act as a release agent and stop everything sticking together and getting wrecked.
If you then roll out another ball of green stuff and you press this into the mould using the same method as you did with the item. Trying to keep it as flat and straight as possible. Make sure to use plenty of oil on anything that will touch the greenstuff to stop things sticking.
Leave this to cure again. Lots of waiting for this!
Once it’s cured you should be able to ‘peel’ away the green stuff from your mould and have a clone of your item.
All you have to do then is cut away the excess green stuff with a sharp blade as I’ve mostly finished doing in the pic below.
You can then repeat this as necessary. Hope that was of some use!
Provided by Elazar The Glorified
Posted by Elazar The Glorified
on March 29 2010. Filed under Blog, Modeling & Scenery, Warhammer40K.
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Wow! I never would’ve thought of doing that! Awesome technique!
Wow! I never would’ve thought of doing that! Awesome technique!
Alternately, instead of using green stuff for the clone, what I do is use resin. it tends to be harder and it doesn’t warp when you peel it out.
Alternately, instead of using green stuff for the clone, what I do is use resin. it tends to be harder and it doesn’t warp when you peel it out.
I think that counts as copyright infringement.
You are technically correct Darren, it is copyright infringement. However copyright infringement is generally measured in court by the degree of impact the copy has on the value, availability, and viability of the original. So long as you are not selling products to others, hindering the ability to find the original, or making it impossible to produce the original you are unlike to be prosecuted. In this case there is also a depriciable difference in quality of the copy which would actually make the GW boys laugh, well not their legal team.
It is an excelent modelding method and i'd say it would be most enthusiastically welcomed when doing bases where you might be trying to put a specific logo on each base or do an identical rock surface texture to all your miniatures. It would also be a good idea to use to make master blanks before actually making a miniature piece such as making a basic sheild face from plasticard, then doing some sculpting work to add a skull to it, before press molding it to make storm sheild with custom iconagraphy.