Neil Merryweather
SMF Supporter
I must apologise, gents, it’s been over a month since my last confession…..
But although I have not been reporting, there have been developments.
Firstly, as I was hoping to be able to sell the castings, I decided not to bother battling with the moulding myself but to go to a professional; and on advice from Richard Pearce I sent the bits to Richard Wharton of Oakwood Studios, who makes a range of fine wooden bases.
Richard advised me not to bother with the plinth to keep the cost down, since apparently many people prefer their own style(or indeed, one of Richard's)
I was originally planning to set up my own little ‘cottage industry’ selling my own sculpts, but the more I looked into it and thought about what would be required the less I liked the idea. I would have to be mostly a manufacturer and salesman, dealing with customers and running a website or whatever, which doesn’t appeal to me at all. All I really want to do is sculpt, so I shall just be trying to find someone to buy the master from now on, and if I can’t, so be it.
I still want to paint him myself and by the time I had this epiphany Richard already had the master for the moulding process, so I just limited the number of castings. Richard did an excellent job at a very reasonable rate, and I now have four sets of resin parts.
Unfortunately he was unable to get a successful mould of the helmet veil, so before I split it into two to facilitate his one-piece moulding process, in my arrogance I am having my own attempt at a two-piece mould.
I half-embedded it in Plasticene, inside a box made of Lego(other brands of building blocks are available).
I would like to point out that I didn’t steal the Lego from the grandkids, it was actually mine from back in the day and they have been allowed to play with it!
The dimples in the corners are for registration when I put the two halves together.
I last did this about twenty years ago so I’m not qualified to do a masterclass in mould-making, but I will be flagging up the pitfalls and mistakes I made as sort of ‘how not to do it’. Remember, Granny had to be reminded how to suck eggs in my RAF Pilot thread……
I did remember to wrap the Lego box in masking tape to prevent leaking ,which turned out to be wise.
So far, so good
When the rubber had cured I removed the base and the lower courses of bricks, and you can see where the rubber leaked between the bricks.
and then I removed the plasticene
IF there is a next time I will use a release agent on the Plasticene…..
It’s easy enough to clean away with white spirit on a cotton bud, but better not to have to do it, eh?
So then I painted all the silicon rubber with Vaseline –DO NOT FORGET TO DO THIS- and built up a couple of courses of bricks for the second part of the mould.
Lego is really brilliant for this
It is now full of rubber, and this is as far as I have got.
Thanks for looking
Neil
But although I have not been reporting, there have been developments.
Firstly, as I was hoping to be able to sell the castings, I decided not to bother battling with the moulding myself but to go to a professional; and on advice from Richard Pearce I sent the bits to Richard Wharton of Oakwood Studios, who makes a range of fine wooden bases.
Richard advised me not to bother with the plinth to keep the cost down, since apparently many people prefer their own style(or indeed, one of Richard's)
I was originally planning to set up my own little ‘cottage industry’ selling my own sculpts, but the more I looked into it and thought about what would be required the less I liked the idea. I would have to be mostly a manufacturer and salesman, dealing with customers and running a website or whatever, which doesn’t appeal to me at all. All I really want to do is sculpt, so I shall just be trying to find someone to buy the master from now on, and if I can’t, so be it.
I still want to paint him myself and by the time I had this epiphany Richard already had the master for the moulding process, so I just limited the number of castings. Richard did an excellent job at a very reasonable rate, and I now have four sets of resin parts.
Unfortunately he was unable to get a successful mould of the helmet veil, so before I split it into two to facilitate his one-piece moulding process, in my arrogance I am having my own attempt at a two-piece mould.
I half-embedded it in Plasticene, inside a box made of Lego(other brands of building blocks are available).
I would like to point out that I didn’t steal the Lego from the grandkids, it was actually mine from back in the day and they have been allowed to play with it!
The dimples in the corners are for registration when I put the two halves together.
I last did this about twenty years ago so I’m not qualified to do a masterclass in mould-making, but I will be flagging up the pitfalls and mistakes I made as sort of ‘how not to do it’. Remember, Granny had to be reminded how to suck eggs in my RAF Pilot thread……
I did remember to wrap the Lego box in masking tape to prevent leaking ,which turned out to be wise.
So far, so good
When the rubber had cured I removed the base and the lower courses of bricks, and you can see where the rubber leaked between the bricks.
and then I removed the plasticene
IF there is a next time I will use a release agent on the Plasticene…..
It’s easy enough to clean away with white spirit on a cotton bud, but better not to have to do it, eh?
So then I painted all the silicon rubber with Vaseline –DO NOT FORGET TO DO THIS- and built up a couple of courses of bricks for the second part of the mould.
Lego is really brilliant for this
It is now full of rubber, and this is as far as I have got.
Thanks for looking
Neil
)
