The new demon armies provide gamers the opportunity to play one set of models for both 40K and WFB. The lava bases project is for a friend of mine who wanted a complete set of bases for an upcoming chaos army project. All that’s needed is either a pinning or magnet system to flip an army from one system to the other.
The bases are green stuff/procreate over plastic bases. Texture is applied with a concrete rock, then lava channels are added with a wire hook tool and a standard sculpting tool. Hardest part of the whole project was mixing up all the green stuff - the bases used up a 30 inch roll of GS. I spent more time mixing than sculpting. FYI - don’t let your green stuff lay around too long. The roll I used was stored in the freezer for 6 years, causing the yellow portion to develop a skin that mixed poorly with the blue portion.
The bike/cavalry bases are designed to go from square to round. The square cav base slots into the open space on the round bike base.
40K collection
25mm round - resin bases
WFB collection
25mm square
Using art clay to mold and manufacture scale Hex Nuts. Jedion357 threw down a challenge on TerraGenisis to create a DYI Hex Nut. Colonel Shofer suggested a latex mold using 2 part epoxy as the casting agent. Brain storming on the idea, I suggested using art clay as an alternitve mold material. The Colonel asked that I follow up with the project.
Hex Nut casting using 2 part epoxy and resin as casting materials. Resin on the left hand side, epoxy on the right. Impressions taken from a 4mm hex tool head and a 1/8 square plastic rod. The resin setup without bubbles and cleaned up from the clay with minor effort. The epoxy suffered a 50% failure rate from bubbles and still seemed a bit rubbery 24 hours after casting. The cleanup was a bit of a pain - the epoxy is clear & it is rather difficult to identify what material is the casting and what is flash. I would recomend resin as the prefered casting material for DYI Hex Nuts.
The Alien Drinking Hole is painted in a purple with red accept scheme. Base coat was first a spray of black paint, then a spray of purple paint. The rough ribbed base dry brushed easily, taking coats of paint with little effort. As usual, I had a bit of trouble with highlights. First efforts were done with purple mixed with bleach bone, but I was left with an underwhelming pasty color. At that point, I added red as an accent & pounded on the high lights to bring the eye up the body of the terrain. Final touch is a bit of two part water effect in the basin to add the “drinking” portion of the “hole.” The water effect is tinted with a bit of orange, but the ink effect is very minimal.
Sculpting for the alien drinking hole is complete. A standard one-piece mold was created to copy the base of the hole, but for the tusks - I was able to try out my first 2 part mold. Art clay worked like a charm to hold the master while the first layer of RTV was poured. I used Smooth-On’s Universal Mold Release to little effect, the RTV halves firmly bonded to each other. My only recourse was to cut the master out of the rubber. Fortunately, the RTV smoothly cut away from the master, giving me a functional mold. Four casts later & I have all the parts to complete the project.
Gear & Piston Basing Kit for use with 40K, WarMachine, AT43 and other miniature gaming figure bases. Each kit contains 12 resin cast-basing pieces, which are applied ad hoc to manufacture supplied bases. Now each figure can have a unique presentation, adding character and interest to individual bases.
Gears are an under used basing theme in 40K. Trying to find found objects with the large, stylized, cogs needed for hobby work is a tough challenge. In this project, I’ll see about making my own gears for use in an objective marker.
Time to fall back on my stand by: clay molding. Way back at the beginning of this blog Scott asked - “how much detail will the clay hold for the plaster?” 
The answer is, a whole lot. I set about making my gears using several diameters of PVC pipe to shape the main wheel and a 1/8 square of styrene to shape the cogs. The clay faithfully held all of my poking and prodding, even the square edge of the 1/8 shape. Scott asked if a skull shape could be used: unfortunately, the undercut from the roundness of the skull will be lost. The one thing clay can’t do is snap back into place to hold an under cut, only directly vertical strokes will be captured.
Resin is used to fill the impressions in the clay. If cast in plaster, the small sized 
pieces will not have the strength to survive the demold if cast in plaster. When cured, remove the shapes. The resin did not release cleanly from the clay (unlike the plaster) and I had to spend quite a bit of time cleaning the product. Over all, the process was too time consuming, although I did get a good feel for the shapes I wanted to create. In the future, I’ll cut rounds from the PVC using a pipe cutter & glue on cogs from styrene. The one item that did work well was the 60mm base. The impression was clean & I now have a raised tile pattern (which is not something you see every day.
End product: sealed with super glue, gaps filled with Apoxie sculpt and ready for the mold box.
Reynolds Advanced Materials acquired PSH Industries of La Grange, IL - or so says their advertising flier. ReynoldsAM carries Smooth-On products, as well as a variety of other casting materials.
Cool, a local distributor that I can drive to & pick up supplies. My last resin shipment cost me $14.00 S/H, and that’s only going to get worse as gas prices keep climbing. Even better, the on line catalog lists a full range of Gypsum products - excellent news, since my last supplier stopped selling Hydrostone.
Gave the place a call and it all went down hill from there. The business is still very much a work in progress. They do have Smooth On ready to sell, but not much else - no casting plaster. Office hours are 8:30am to 5:00pm M-F, with a show case opening some time in the next few months. Not the most convenient, but I could manage to drop in if I took of from work early.
Over all, a very disapointing impression after the very exciting web site/catalog & the expense of buying my name & address from smooth on. I’ll hang on for a few months and see if they get their act together.
The ruin/rune base project is nearly complete. The RTV mold is finished, below are pics of the first round of resin casting. All that remains is to get a batch painted up.
Ruin bases for 40K. When playing around with Apoxie sculpt, I found the epoxie both carved well and shattered into a natural rock like look. The plan is to carve an entire floor of ruins, then cut it into 10 1×1 sections and mount on bases.
Step 1: roll out a 5×2 sheet of Apoxie Sculpt to a thickness of 1/8 inch. I used a left over piece of half inch pvc as a rolling pin. Trim the sheet to the rectangular shape. The sheet is mounted on a piece of vinyl floor tile - smooth, flat and expendable if the Apoxie needs to be force-ably removed.
Step 2: Etch ruins using a scribing tool and an x-acto blade. A two level technique was used for the ruins - deep cut in the center, light cut around the edges.
Rackham has a new resin casting division: Fire Industries. The web site is rather basic and without much information beyond the displayed product, but in true Rackham fashion - what they do have listed is worth drooling over. Be sure to check out the Griffon Ruins, this piece has more detail than most figures.
I’ll need to keep an eye on this site in the hope that they will not only grow the product line, but add in painting/tutorial information.
Story lifted from Tabletop Gaming News.
