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Hi all,

I am looking to make up some terrain for Necrons and for the smaller, finer stuff I want use some molds of bits and pieces I have (cogs, gems etc).

I have seen a load of options such as blue stuff and press molding but I was wondering if anyone had any experience with it and importantly, what in the UK I should buy (all the guides I find are from the US)

Specifically, I am unsure what to buy for both the silicone and the resin. I know where to get the blue stuff but unsure if this would work with resin.

Any help much appreciated

There are some good terrain moulding guides on the Hirsts Arts website.

You can buy most anything you need for casting and moulding on the 4D Model Shop and EMA Models sites amongst others.

Oh and I am looking to make some simpler push molds for scarabs as I want once scene to look like them swarming over some dead marines. I am mindful that greenstuff is quite expensive but wondering if anyone had any experience using milliput instead?

For the UK, Tomps and Tiranti.

Milliput can be difficult to get out of press moulds. I once made some milliput bowls using halved ping-pong balls as formers. Despite a generous layer of vaseline as mould release, it stuck so hard I had to break the plastic apart - like a really hard boiled egg. I might stick with GS (mix more yellow so it's softer and pushes into crannies a bit better) but if you're going to make a big scarab scene, maybe try something 'milder' than milliput, like apoxie sculpt or magic sculp.

(Milliput's still nice for sculpting, though, once you get used to it. )

I make a lot of stuff with pink sillicone molds (soft) and polyurethane (resin). But it depends on the amount and size of bits you need if you really want to use this stuff.
The pink sillicone that I use begins at 22 euro for 1 liter and the resin at 14 euro for half a liter. But for that you could have a whole lot of bits if you do it right.

If this is what you want I could give you more advice on how to use it.

Sylmasta are also good. I have been using their PU resins along with Anson Fast cast from Tomps and get reliable results.
Although I usually cast larger pieces so YMMV.

For press moulds and even 2-part moulds of small to medium sized items, I would recommend Oyumaru (otherwise sold as Instant mold).

It's a heat softened silicone-based polymer. Chuck a lump in boiling water for 3 mins and it goes very soft (softer than fresh GS or Milliput). When cooled back to room temp', it's harder than cured GS. This means it can pick up very fine details and then transfer it to your putty of choice for casting.

It can be cut up and stuck back together (or into larger lumps) just be heating.

And it's reusable.
Make a mould, make a cast, make another mould...
Fold it around an item and cut it away from the cast, remake the mould...

Can't recommend it enough.

And has no problem with milliput.

If you go for the pink soft silicon then you can glue an item at the bodem of a plastic cup (watch out with superglue if you do this, weird reaction with the silicon) and fill the cup with silicon. After that you remove the cup and free the model from the mold. You can also use a scalpel to make some release cuts. then you can just poor the resin in the mold and make copies.

Found some old pictures:

I just got finished making some zombie dogs. I took a small plastic sheep (I Know, why is it so hard to find a suitably sized dog??) and carved it down to start as the base for the sculpting with greenstuff.

I cast the mold with this: http://www.hobbylobby.com/Crafts-Hobbies/Clay-Molding-Sculpting/Casting/Amazing-Mold-Rubber-Kit/p/20504

Worked great (I had used this before to duplicate some mini bases) and then once I removed the mini (I used the flip-out method for the mold where I carved the mini out of the mold so the top flips up and out, but still stays connected so subsequent casting is easy, since the mold is still one piece and can be put back together easily.

Then I used this to cast, simply because I already had this lying around from another project: http://specialtyresin.com/product/model-pro-black/

Because the mold only had the four small holes in the top from the feet, I used a hollowed out ball point pen to blow the resin into the mold from one foot hole until it came out of the other three. I could only do one at a time, but since I only needed six total, it was a fairly quick process, since the resin cure time is about 15 minutes.

The casting rubber and the polyurethane resin holds every exact detail. This may be a bit more involved than you need to do simple pieces, but is fast, cheap and provides perfect replicas in 3D.

Now I have my unique Zombie dogs for my custom campaign module for Dungeon Saga. I would like to have made two poses, but just did not have the energy to make two models and molds! Maybe I can try to heat up the mini and see if it bends, like other companies' mini resin...

Thanks all. Much appreciated