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Okay, when I was in Germany, we painted the trucks we had in 4 color woodland pattern camo. That was Green+Brown+Loam+Black

Used to have the old 4 color desert pattern in sand+brown+Mustard yellow+black Now they use a sand all over color, maybe the "Chips of black over white and some light brown.

Woodland/Desert/Urban/Arctic are old basics.

Camkierhi wrote:On the camo, just a thought but Grey, brown and dark green triangles of different sizes maybe. Be a bugger to paint, but would kinda look like the elven LOTR cloaks as worn by Frodo etc in movie.

I think I know what you mean, I'll show something tomorrow.

shasolenzabi wrote:Okay, when I was in Germany, we painted the trucks we had in 4 color woodland pattern camo. That was Green+Brown+Loam+Black

Used to have the old 4 color desert pattern in sand+brown+Mustard yellow+black Now they use a sand all over color, maybe the "Chips of black over white and some light brown.

Woodland/Desert/Urban/Arctic are old basics.

Good good. I have a reasonable list of schemes to try so I'll do some tests tomorrow and show you lot then.

With a combination of:
More plaster in the mixture,
The addition of PVA into the water,
Thicker casts,
Better shaped moulds,
Leaving them longer to set before de-moulding,
AND a better and more gentle method of extracting the casts from the moulds...

I have some whole casts. They still need a little more time to fully dry before I'll attack them with scalpel and sandpaper...

However the previous test piece with the added plaster and PVA appears to be much stronger than those without. So good call Cam.

On the other side of the coin, I've not managed a good cast of the toilet yet, but I will modify the mould and try again with the PVA.
I am however producing some "nice" broken toilets...

In other news, I am currently painting the camo' tests, paint drying time is slowing progress though. This does mean that there is still time to add further ideas to the camo' cloak discussion.

Glad it helped. Looks good. They look really good on the detail too. Excellent moulding dude.

 Camkierhi wrote:
Glad it helped. Looks good. They look really good on the detail too. Excellent moulding dude.

Thanks. I've not noticed any issues with the transfer of details so far. We'll see when I have a really close look once I've shaped the rear sides.

Sweet casts!

When can i purchase?

This is really neat

cormadepanda wrote:Sweet casts!
When can i purchase?

Thanks Comrade.
Relatively soon (just don't ask what it's relative to... )

AntomanElven wrote:This is really neat

Thanks Antoman and welcome to the (Mad) house.

No pictures today.
Camo' concepts are ongoing...
Today, I have mostly been poking plaster with mixed results.

They are indeed stronger than previous casts.
It is possible to carve them to shape
I did however break one while carving
and some of the detail appears to be being worn down with handling
The thicker ones didn't break, but quite a few corners did

Also had a thought about the thickness. In order for the plaster to be strong enough to not break they are at least twice as thick as the milliput ones I did for the previous box. This means that when I come to cast these I'm going to end up using more resin per box, and as I'm hoping to cast many boxes that's going to add up quicker than using some milliput for a single original.

So, I've got some milliput casts of this box and a toilet (in a newly made mould) in the moulds.
I'll have them to show tomorrow.

I will save the plaster for when I want to test moulds and for larger, less flimsy, applications in the future.

That's some good looking box right there DrH! job well done dude! the casts look excellent :-)

 nerdfest09 wrote:
That's some good looking box right there DrH! job well done dude! the casts look excellent :-)

Thanks NF. Good to know you like my Box...

And while I continue to play with my box, here's an update on the toilet situation...

On the right is the original sculpt.
P1, 2 and 3 are the plaster casts (all broken in one way or another).
M1 and 2 are the milliput casts.

These plaster toilets (made before the improvements with my plaster casting) are all very fragile, to the point that I could crush them between my fingers.

M1 needs some tidying of mould lines, etc...
M2 is strangely not quite the same shape as the original so I think I either didn't get the mould right when I made it or squeezed it in the wrong way when I made the cast.
Maybe next time I'll get the perfect cast...

Notice that I also made a milliput cast of the cistern. Not perfect either, but a little cleaning up and should be fine.

And and update on Guardian #9.
No camo' yet, but face and rifle.

So far, the red is done, the black is done and the white face is done.
There's still a few bits to finish on the gun, but you get the idea from this.

You've probably seen these, but some tuts on casting techniques - not sure if they may assist you?

http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/540862.page

http://www.hirstarts.com/moldmake/moldmaking.html

Thanks Ruglud. I'd only seen one of those.

Save the broken ones for me! They all look great!

 dsteingass wrote:
Save the broken ones for me! They all look great!

No worries Dave. I thought of you as each one broke... (there's another one for Dave) They actually look very close to the broken toilets you see in FO3.
I have an idea of how to strengthen these to a certain extent, I'll report back later.

Experiment away! You'll have no waste!

Resin powder in the plaster?

NY is a great source for pics. Got you a sig. For your future endeavors.

Ha Ha, thanks Theo.

dsteingass wrote:Experiment away! You'll have no waste!

I noticed before when experimenting with gluing plaster back together that the glue was partly absorbed by the plaster and the glued line was much stronger than the surrounding plaster.
So today's experiment was to see if absorbing glue into a plaster cast would strengthen it compared to it's bare self.
Superglue; does strengthen the plaster, but only a very thin layer at the surface. This makes it easier to sand rough edges, but does not make the whole thing less breakable.
Water and PVA mix; Doesn't.

shasolenzabi wrote:Resin powder in the plaster?

Sounds interesting. Expand? I don't have any resin power, but I'm intrigued.

So, here's an example of what I was talking about with the difference in thickness between plaster and putty.

Bare in mind the outside dimensions of the boxes are the same, you can see how much thinner the putty can be made.
Also note the multitude of chips in the plaster casts.

And with that, the casting master of box 3 is complete.

I would say that's big enough for an ark...

Looks great Dr.

I personally am not to worried about the thickness of the plaster. I know it would be good for you to get it just right though. Only other product i think maybe worth a go, other than resins, would be air drying clay maybe. But setting times are a real issue with that. I have used it before and it is great except it takes forever to cure, (or what ever it is) not sure.

Would something like the fibreglass filler (isopon) used for car repairs work, or is it to expensive/ sticky.

Just alternative thoughts.

Thanks Cam.

If it was just for myself, I wouldn't be bothered by the thickness (I'd cast a solid box out of plaster if it made it solid).

But as I'm making these with the intention of selling the final boxes (which will be casts of these masters), the saving in thickness at this stage means I'll be able to make twice as many boxes for the amount of resin I have. That means, I can sell more boxes and the customer gets a cheaper box, everybody wins.

Hey dr. H, how about making the box minus one side and then cast it up. You could use Lego to plug the empty hole and save on casting material. This would also allow you to hide loot underneath the boxes in game and then gangers could "loot" the boxes. Might cost more to shi like that instead of flat boxes, but could turn out better and easier to mold otherwise.

I don't think you want to mess with the plaster mix.

Thank you Theo. It's not a bad Idea, I'll save it for later when I have a spare cast of a box to play with to do more complex things with.
You could just leave one side off of you own box and use the spare end as a trapdoor or something...

Dave; No, probably not. But as a chemist I am both curious and qualified to mess about with mixtures and chemical reactions.

Today's word is "Camouflage".

Bare in mind that these are VERY roughly painted. It's just to give an idea of the colour combinations and patterns.
Also, I tried to paint in boxes of a similar size to the cloak to encourage me to paint to scale. This however, didn't really work.
You will have to imagine these patterns scaled down a little to match the miniature.
Also also, some of the patterns have a little shading added to give the range of shades that will be used on the cloak's folds.


Pattern 1: Green and Brown "stripes" with (but can be done without) black chips.
Pattern 2: Stippled markings, to give a rough or feathered edge to the colours.
Pattern 3: "Tiger" stripes in 3 flavours of green and a black. Two of the greens are a bit too close though.
Pattern 4: Brown and White "permafrost" scheme. With perhaps too many black chips...
Pattern 5: Desert scheme. Although maybe too much brown on show, the sand and mustard colours are too close and black.
Pattern 6: "Probably not what you were thinking, Cam" - Triangles. Probably should be much smaller. Or as an alternative, the triangles should interlock rather than overlap.
Pattern 7: 4 colour jungle.
Pattern 8: 2 colour jungle.
Pattern 9: The idea I had just before I uploaded the camo' earlier and decided to paint first and show you all together.
This is an attempt at the switching camo' effect. The bottom third is in camouflage with the surroundings (looking like my usual basing), then the middle third (which I ended up painting all the way up here) made up of still camo'd diamonds with switching coloured diamonds and plain cloak brown diamonds. The top third is just the cloak brown (not actually shown here).

The final version of 9:
Probably shouldn't show the lines.
Each diamond would receive shading like I have started doing to the individual armour plates of my guardians.
The colours will be planned out better than here.
Could always be used to switch between the other camo' schemes (I quite like this idea).
The diamonds should probably be slightly smaller...

Thoughts, ideas, suggestions?

I was thinking that as they made concrete more durable with water reacting resin powder in the mix, the same may be applicable to plaster, as that may act in similar fashion to the concrete?>

 shasolenzabi wrote:
I was thinking that as they made concrete more durable with water reacting resin powder in the mix, the same may be applicable to plaster, as that may act in similar fashion to the concrete?>

I see. That's probably similar to what I've tried with the PVA. I'll look into the reactions when I have a moment.

Just remember, this is advice or suggestions from a person who at a younger age of 13-14 was handed a chemistry set for teens and made something that burned a nearly invisible flame by mixing all sorts of chems w/o a guide at random. LOL!

I like 9 the best.

shasolenzabi wrote:Just remember, this is advice or suggestions from a person who at a younger age of 13-14 was handed a chemistry set for teens and made something that burned a nearly invisible flame by mixing all sorts of chems w/o a guide at random. LOL!

Yeah, the things that can be achieved with seemingly safe ingredients...the chemists secret...

A quick internet search has given me a few interesting options for strengthening plaster;
Adding paper (or some other fabric/fibres).
Adding lime (Calcium hydroxide) to the water.
Adding Gum Arabic to the water.
Adding wood glue to the water (like the PVA).
Brushing the finished plaster with an aqueous solution of Bicarbonate of Soda.

I shall continue to investigate.

Galorn wrote:I like 9 the best.

Thanks Galorn.

I really like the bottom bit on No.9. myself.

As to the triangles, I dont know what I mean either.

On the plaster front. Honestly I think I would follow Dave's advice. Dont mess too much. I would maybe try different dilution levels of the PVA mix. Upto actually no water. The alternatives are simply resin Or place around with the putty.

This stuff, is my (EXPENSIVE) go to for very fast setting, very strong putty, and it can be mixed with Milliput amd GS for different effects. It sets solid in 20-30 mins, and I mean solid. It may be worth a go.

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/CARGO-QUIKSTEEL-QUICKSTEEL-Steel-Reinforced-Epoxy-Putty-METAL-REPAIR-WELD-2oz-/170699425913?pt=UK_Car_Accessories_Car_Care_Cleaning&hash=item27be7a8879#ht_2393wt_1159

To create your masters, it would be perfect. But expensive. You will get maybe 3-4 boxes out of a tube. If you are lucky.

I like the number 3 camo Dr H. Is this going on the cloak of the eldar scout?