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I wish to state here that I do not sell any of these molds. View this page more as an mold making instruction than a cataloge. I had several requests regarding this but must insist in not selling any molds.
Than you for your understanding.
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| | Meine erste Gussform!
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Since visiting the webseite of Nikolas Lloyd, where he built worker monuments in 30 years style, I was intrigued by the idea of making decorated relief tiles.
Warmaster miniatures are ideally suited for this purpose, the only draw back is their high price. But if they could be casted in plaster...
Lets go to work! Some tiles were quickly prepared, those leftover and never painted snake swarm wanted to worked into decorative tiles for lizardmen architecture. I made 2 sizes, one 1x1" and one 1x1/2" in landscape format. I thought of making the background of the tiles completly flat, but I think a little texture wont hurt and if it did, I could just as well not drybrush the background.
Then I wanted to have some more tiles so I scanned the legions on unpainted figures and finally came to warmaster skeleton bowmen. I had some to spare (making command unit for them pays off, I knew it!) so I made one looking to the left and one looking to the right.
That was enough, so I launched a new age of my model building career and bought a can of RTV with trembling hands. So this was the magic material, would it keep its promises? It wasn't that expensive after all (ATS 300.- for 500g) smelled horrible and would kill me in the instant I would drink it - or so I thought... From wood and cardboard I made a mold for the mold (sounds funny, doesn't it?) and started preparing the RTV rubber.
Lets weigh 100g - hmm, no scale? - ok, lets estimate. Then 80 drops of catalyst - strange no drops coming out - ok, lets estimate again... It is a small miracle that the result was somehow usable. Remember for the next time: Estimating is not the optimal method for preparing RTV rubber.
The result was satisfactory nonetheless. The edges of the mold were very weak and started to break after 10 casts or so. Oh well, I can live with that for now, for the next Time I will have to get some legos and work more carefully.
The amount of details that can be molded and cast is surprisingly high. I didn't expect the skeleton bowman to have any detail but even the small bones can be distinguished. The small tooth stuctures in the snake tiles are also easily visible. I was positivly surprised as I rather expected a washed out apperance.
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| | Ein 1/2 Zoll hohes Kriegerrelief
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| | Jetzt muss der Kautschuk nur mehr fest werden...
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| I envisioned a sarcophagus with a decorative relief running all the way around showing warriors in heavy armor, the deceased could have been a hero of war or a general. This idea followed me until I gave up and made a mold.
This time I bought a unit of chaos warriors, they represented my vision of armored figures best. The tiles were 1,5" wide and 1/2" high so that they could take a whole strip of warriors. The minitures turned out to bee a little too high (who except GW makes 10mm miniatures which are 15mm high???) so I had to cut off the base and strengthen the tips of the weapons to prevent breaking.
This time I used a different method of getting the miniatures on a plaster brick. While I carved a brick last time and glued the mini on, I made a small mould and poured a new brick behind the miniature strip this time. I made a little mistake there resulting in the bricks having different thickness.
Then I borrowed a scale to weigh the RTV and lo! the result was much better. The mold is harder and more durable if less flexible - but the pieces do come out of the mold. The weapons tips are very weak and break off ofter also there are undercuts which ruin the mold in time. Maybe I shouldnt have used chaos warriors, they are very 3 dimensional and the relief feeling is lost.
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| | Vier stolze Reitersleut
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| After visiting the British Museum in London and seeing the Parthenon Frieze I was very impressed by the horsemen frieze which decorated the metopes. I decided to do something about this and so I began searching for miniatures.
I found the Imperium character blister for Warmaster. It has 4 mounted figures which are 1" high. At fisdt this seemed to high, but I decided to give it a try. Fortunatly there are enough 1x1" tiles in various molds and so making the originals was not so complicated.
This time I used legos to make the form for the form and it worked well. The RTV rubber does not run unter the legos and the distinctive brick pattern can be cut away.
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| | Ein 3/4 Zoll hohes Kriegerrelief
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| | Ein 3/4 Zoll hohes Kriegerrelief
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| Armed with the experience fromn the 1/2" Warrior Relief Tiles I wanted to try something new. I thought if I'd make the Tiles 3/4" high I would be able to fit the whole strip on the tile without the time consuming trimming.
I also wanted to use miniatures that had less depth so I gave the Warmaster Chaosbarbarians a try. As with the 1/2" tiles I poured the plaster behind the figures, this time I took more care to get all the tiles to have the same depth.
I ade 3 strips with Chaosbarbarians and 2 strips with warriors since I still had some. I used Green Stuff to eliminate all indentations since I wanted the plaster tiles to come easily from the mold.
I still had some space left on the mold and so I thought I'd just try something fancy. As a Dungeon Master and passionate base-decorator I had an extremly high demand in small skulls. So I just took 6 skulls from the skeleton warrior plastic sprue and 6 zombie heads and stuck them on a strip of cardboard. And then I hoped for the best...
And true, the skulls can be copied. I had to watch for air bubbles but it worked. The copies are almost undistingishable from the originals. The reliefs are very nice, they have less figural depth which adds to the overall relief character of the tile.
All in all a succsessful redesign.
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| | Eine ionische Säule
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| Dire need inspired this mold. I needed some ionic columns for a greek temple so I had to come up with a mold for them really fast. I found the middle parts of the column in an old wooden board game called "Akropolis". The base and the headpiece however I had to sculpt all by myself.
The base was not so difficult but the head piece challenged all my modelling skill. I must admit that I am not overly good at sculpting so it cost me all my patience and skill to make the piece. But I am proud to have made something that actually looks like a ionic column head.
Too bad I had used up all my patience sculpting, so while making the mold I forgot all. I made it before the column head was completly dry, so I ruined the original in the process. I also forgot to seal the parts with varnish, maybe that would have been enough. O well, thats life!
This time I used a different kind of RTV. The clerk said it was better suited for "softer" materials. I did not see any difference except for the color of the rubber, which should not be a criteria *g*. But it definitly was different since it took forever to cure much longer than the other stuff. I think I will go back to the red rubber.
All in all I am quite pleased with the results, the technical faults come from sloppyness and lack of concentration which is not good. The columns head was very hard for me to sculpt but the result is quite good and looks ionic, too! It is not easy however to build many columns that shall have the same height, I will have to adress these problems in the next mold.
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| | Die Mauerring Gussform
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| I wanted to make myself a building and casting aid for the celtic round tower, otherwise I figured I would have to cast tiles for eons. So I assembled a complete tile ring and made a mold.
The tile ring should be used when there are no windows and doors. I thought of cutting out pieces with a hobby knife, but this approach seems to be too delicate to be realized.
I added 4 plastic skulls in the corners of the mold, they are universally usable.
The result is satisfying. The ring is not exactly round and will not come out exactly the same each time, which is ... interesting. But the results can be used to assemble towers quickly. Lets see how this speeds up the celtic round tower construction.
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| | Miniaturen Bases Gussform
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| And so came the time, when Stephan wanted to base his Mortheim warbands on very special bases. So he thought long about it and tried this and that. After some fruitless tries and several kilos of ruined materials he came up with something completly different.
No kidding, making the originals for this mold was very difficult. In the end I used two plastic bottlenecks and the Cobblestone mold to create the piece. It was then sanded and brought into final form. The larger base was made using a plastic ring I "found" at a construction site.
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| | Originale und Gussform
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| | Die Teile in Verwendung
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| For a Mordheim gaming board I wanted some flagstone pieces with little accessories in them, as skulls, missing tiles and such. These pieces had to be extremely flat so that miniatures could stand on top of them without falling.
I made 8 pieces: 3 skulls, 1 missing tile with sand, 1 missing tile with water, 1 skeleton, 1 hand and 1 ribcage piece. |
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