Saturday, 27 March 2010

The Gorewing - Making GS Press-Moulds

Whilst I wait to start on the cool stuff I'm working on the little side projects that will be part of much bigger projects. Vague? Sorry. Currently I'm building a right handed chainfist for Rogoth The Berzerker but I've also been making a press-mould of Khorne's skull-rune. So I thought I'd document how I did this for anybody that is interested.

To start out you'll need

Image
Green stuff
A base within which to make the mould. I used a 25mm circle base.
The item you wish to make a mould of (in this case the skull-rune from the chaos vehicle sprue)
I also have a second base and the square 40mm one but I'll explain them as we go along.

Mix enough green stuff to fill the recess of the base.

Image

Smooth this out when you're done. Then take the item you wish to make a mould of and give it a good coating in cooking oil or some such, this acts as a release agent for later on. Once it's oiled up place it on the green stuff.

Image

One of the key things to making a press mould is keeping everything straight when you press it in. To do this I used the flat side of another 25mm circle base (make sure to oil up this base too) pushed down by the flat of the 40mm base.

Image

Now you'll have to wait for the green stuff to cure.

Image

Once it has cured you should be able to remove the item. You might need a thin bladed knife or some such to carefully lever it out if it's a very flat object (as this was). Be careful as the knife can very easily slip as the item can sometimes be quite snug in the mould.
You should then have something that looks like this

Image

Now to make a copy of this item you first have to cover the mould in oil, again to act as a release agent and stop everything sticking together and getting wrecked.

Image

If you then roll out another ball of green stuff and you press this into the mould using the same method as you did with the item. Trying to keep it as flat and straight as possible. Make sure to use plenty of oil on anything that will touch the greenstuff to stop things sticking.

Image

Leave this to cure again. Lots of waiting for this!
Once it's cured you should be able to 'peel' away the green stuff from your mould and have a clone of your item.

Image

All you have to do then is cut away the excess green stuff with a sharp blade as I've mostly finished doing in the pic below.

Image

You can then repeat this as necessary.

Hope that was of some use!

5 comments:

Green Stuff Sculpting said...

Hail,

Nice little tutorial you have there, I've seen one similar, but I'd say yours is more user friendly.

Have you experimented with Vaseline, or do you find that cooking oil has enough release ability that there is no need?

-Green Stuff Sculpting

Elazar The Glorified said...

Thanks :)
I haven't actually tried vaseline. The cooking oil does everything I need it to but I might try vaseline to see if it's a little less messy to tidy up! :)

Max said...

Great tutorial- thanks!

Painting Pauper said...

Thats a great idea!

I've never thought of using a base as a mold. Thanks for the tip.

Uncle Puck said...

Great, I've been wondering about something like this. *places in his interent tips on modeling*

~ Pax Urbis Pax Imperi