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I play Grey Knights and was debating about picking up etched brass for doing decals and attempting to use it to try and cast a mold so I could do some Inquisition symbols for my vehicles. I've never worked with any form of etched brass before and was wondering if anyone had worked with it and could give me a few pointers. Also, about doing casts to produce some of my own stuff. I figure that in the long run it works out a lot cheaper. I need some insight before I go a head and make an order from Forge world. I don't want to invest in it and then screw it up.

Recasting is bad. Even for personal use.
Now, if you want to use brass on a curved surface, like a shoulder pad, forget it. It is way too hard to get it to sit level. Otherwise, it's just a matter of removing attachment points, just like a plastic piece from a sprue, and gluing it with super glue.

I've never used the etched brass before.

As for casting tips, there are a few blogs here on dakka that go over some general techniques.

However I think it would be much easier in this case to just buy the specific vehicle doors from GW, forgeworld, or some third party manufacturer like chapterhouse. The amount of effort that you would have to go to isn’t worth it imo.

Thanks for bringing this small but relevant topic up!

Stupid question (absolutely no intention to hijack this thread):
- Does one paint the pieces of etched brass?

 dominiquekee wrote:
Thanks for bringing this small but relevant topic up!

Stupid question (absolutely no intention to hijack this thread):
- Does one paint the pieces of etched brass?

I was wondering that myself

Yes, basically. Brass corrodes, after all.

Brass corrodes...however it corrodes about as readily as Pewter or aluminum. That is why you can find 200 year old brass beds which are unpainted with minimal signs of age.

You generally want to paint the brass - though it is more because you don't want a brass color to what you are dealing with, and less because you want to protect the metal.

Working with etched brass isn't that difficult. You will want a few new tools in order to work with the frets, files which are suitable for removing the nubs...cutters to remove the items from the fret...tools for shaping.

What specifically will depend on where you want to put the brass. I have a lot of specialty tools - though if you are only doing a single army...you can get away with cheap/found objects. To get an applique to sit properly on a shoulder pad, I use a tool and die....though a properly sized steel ball bearing and a somewhat soft surface can be used to put the needed curves into it.

so why use it instead of plastic?

I haven't actually used the Forgeworld brass - but looking at this, the smallest icons from a sheet of their brass look to be a good size for weapons and what not:

http://gravengames.co.uk/forge-world-crimsonimperial-fists-brass-etch-review/

Doing that by hand would be a pain - especially doing a few dozen of them for a whole armies worth of figures. You can also do them in putty and then press molds from those to copy them to other figures...though some people don't have the chops to do that.

Of course, as opposed to etched brass - you can create a laser etching in plasticard and then use those in a similar manner as brass. That would require a bit of artistic ability and knowledge of creating laser engraving files (not difficult...but sometimes too much for some people to wrap their heads around). Plastic also isn't quite as malleable as brass is.

With the proper tools - you could take one of those discs from the article I linked to and wrap it around a sphere to create a hemisphere of etched brass. You can do similar with plastic - though the forming process is a bit more difficult without a vacuum table and leads to more distortion of surface details.

It's been said before, I'm going to say it again - recasting is bad. I've worked with the FW etched brass and it's not that difficult to shape to shoulderpads or even the Space Marine chest pieces. The trick is to shape it before gluing it into place. Cut the piece you want to use and then shape it by burnishing the brass to match the contour. I even built myself a couple of burnishing tools using lengths of bamboo skewer and plastic headed sewing pins. I filed the bamboo smooth then drilled into one end and used the pin end to pin the plastic head on top of the bamboo.

I appreciate the advice.

Yeah, etched brass can be primed and painted. But it can be left as is with some wash/ink to give it more definition. Inquisition symbols would probably look better painted.

Working with it simple: snip it off, file off the connector points(where it was connected to sprue), bend into shape if needed(vehicles don't need it), superglue it onto the model.