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.

santa claus is on his way

OK, so this is SO not anything to do with mecha, but it is a sculpture project I'm working on right now. So I'm posting an image here, if only to let anyone who actually reads this blog know that I am working on SOMETHING.



And furthermore, I will be cleaning this up then making a few molds and casting copies of this over the next few days. So that'll give you a chance to walk through a simple moldmaking and casting process. I'll shoot some video so you can see the finer points of RTV and resin mixing and pouring in a flat one-sided mold.

Volks 1/100 Helmine

I got this kit from Yahoo Japan Auctions by way of the proxy bidding and "deputy" service website Shopping Mall Japan in the neighboring state of Indiana. Including all the service and shipping fees it cost just over $250.

This is the front page of the typically bare-bones instruction sheet.


And here's a picture of all its 47 parts laid out in the classic resin kit part layout "pose."



I'm not entirely sure whether or not this kit was worth all the money I paid, but I do like the design which is a kind of Five Star Stories "cousin" to the Gundam known as Qubeley.



Since the kit is about 20 years old, it is a pretty bad cast. Lots of pinholes or bubbles that were trapped and hardened into the plastic resin. Some mold misalignment causing damage to details or the design of the original sculpt. Some bigger bubbles that just completely wiped out details.

Those who know me, however, will know that I (perhaps perversely) enjoy repairing and resculpting parts on bad kits to make them better. This is what I will be doing in this case, and now I will take it a step further and re-cast the kit when the parts are up to standards that should improve considerably upon the original. I don't feel like I'm stepping on anyone's marketplace toes with this. The kit is really old, as I said, and very few people even know that it exists at all.

I'm well into the repair process already and I want to share some of it with you.

First up is a youtube video of before and after work on the big shoulder armors:



Next are before and after pics of repair I did to the point of the helmet's horn which was lost in the casting process:






Here is a video of the process for the resculpt.

[Edit] BTW I just found out that I've been mispronouncing the name "Helmine." It is German (duh to self) and short for Wilhelmine so it should be pronounced as "hell-mee-nuh". It means "the resolute protector" which I think is nice.