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I've got some custom weapons I've made from plasticard and rod and instead of struggling to reproduce these, I want to do some casting to produce more. Looking online, my research has shown me my best bet will be smooth-on's Mold Max 30 and Smooth-Cast 300 for my molds and castings. But I'm trying to find more information regarding casting using white metal, pewter and/or (possibly) lead. This way, if I botch a casting, I can just melt it back down and try again instead of being stuck with the scrap. Anyone have any suggestions on how to make molds capable of withstanding the temperatures and where one would find the materials to do metal casting?

Use a heat-resistant silicon rtv (room temperature vulcanising) rubber. Casting suppliers tend to separate their heat-resistant and not into two sections, and the heat resistant ones are mainly for metal casting.

I've used both Dow Corning RTV and a local supplier's replacement for everything from tin/lead and other 'white metal' to bronze with no issues.

I don't know what you'd be looking for in the US, though.

Ah, great, thanks for the info.. Also, where would I start to look for raw material to do my casting with, or should I just say good bye to some of my lesser liked metal minis and toss them into the melting pot?

I use aero marine Rtv silicone:

http://www.jgreer.com/silicone%20page.htm


Make buy a good hot plate if you are going to mess with metal, otherwise you will ruin your molds, it is far cheaper to use resin and mess up than to use metal. Not to mention I have never heard of a emergency room visit with people that use resin....

Well, the supplier here who sells the casting media also sells alloys and resins to go into the casts.

In the past, ALL of my unwanted metal pieces that haven't found new homes went into the smelter (Mainly the remains of minis after conversion projects have left them quintuple amputees and offcuts. Although a few Steel legion have also found their way into the pot) - but I also had a mate who gave me 10kg of white metal allloy back in 1993 (scrap from his work), so it wasn't like I was short of materials.

The last few pieces I've cast have been bronzes, though (props and suchlike). Similar procedure to white metal casting, but the molten alloys are a different temperature.

This will answer all your questions about casting:

wakakakakaka

http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/236516.page

Clthomps- After doing some price checking I've found that the only metals I'm willing to invest the $ into using also happen to have high lead content and being that my friends I game with have children and I intend to have my own soon, lead minis are not a good idea. Not to mention I'd risk exposure to myself while trying to cast with it. I may as well cast with resin..
chromedog- I believe I'll start this process as well. Any metal model I get a hold of and don't care for shall be smelted into ingots! Maybe sometime at a later date, I'll have a large enough collection of it to make castings with.
LunaHound- Wow. While informative, I don't think a tutorial could get any closer to giving page by page instructions to violating GW's intellectual property rights. I plan to use the information to good use, but not with the same purposes as the original poster, I promise before dakka dakka. Thanks