Smoothing Seams and Priming the D-Sserd

Pretty much self-explanatory thanks to the voice overs:







Some still images of it at this stage here.

Molding and Casting the Santa Claus Ornament

I managed to get my ornament resin cast and it made for a gift that was very well received.

Here's me smoothing the clay that fills the space between the original piece and the mold box that I built of Lego Blocks. With the clay smoothed out, the negative space in the box will be filled with Room Temperature Vulcanizing mold-making rubber.



This one actually has voice over narration that will explain the mold box a bit.


This is an absurdly long video of me applying mold release to the piece itself and the clay and the blocks around around it. I give it to you in the hope that it will impress upon you the importance of doing this both when you are creating your mold and when you are casting copies of the piece. If your copies, or worse yet your original gets locked into the mold then you will be very sad.


DO NOT DO what you are about to see in the next two videos. I Chopped up some old tin-catalyzed RTV to use as filler in the first mold, but then I discovered that the unmixed tin-catalyzed RTV had passed its expiration date and turned into nasty chewing gum-textured stuff. So I grabbed a bottle of Platinum-catalyzed RTV imagining that I could combine the two in a single mold. They DO NOT COMBINE well at all. So learn from my mistake and don't ever combine them.

The Mistake:

The Result of the Mistake:


Luckily I had enough of the pink stuff to make two more copies of the mold that actually hardened properly. So now here's me pouring the resin - which is a two part mix that fully hardens within about 20 minute - about into the molds.


The Resin itself is Insta Cast White.

It doesn't have the same look and feel that professionally made garage kit resin has, but it worked out great for my purposes, and it was pretty inexpensive.

I really like doing ornaments like this for xmas presents because even though it probably takes about the same amount of time as shopping would take, it's more personal, I'm participating less (or differently) in consumer culture, and it ends up costing me less money.

I'd recommend trying it if you like this sort of thing.

D-Sserd build begins

I'm getting a group L-Gaim build together over at the best modelers community online.

This is my entry: an old Bandai 1/144 D-Sserd.



Here are the first parts I've put together:



Here's a video of those same parts:



And here's a noisy video of me priming the arm with Mr. Surfacer 1000:



And here's a shot of the first three parts all primed: