Blitz AFS Fireman Bust Sculpt ,1-10 scale

[Richard48]

Now thats a feast for the eye Neil.Really looks great in my opinion.Should be proud of this one indeed.I might need your help soon mate.Carry on sculpting and keeping us figure lot company.
Rich

[Guest]

Brilliant Neil. A lovely bit of work. Good luck with the casting.

[NickT]

" Awesome "

[Neil Merryweather]

Now thats a feast for the eye Neil.Really looks great in my opinion.Should be proud of this one indeed.I might need your help soon mate.Carry on sculpting and keeping us figure lot company.
Rich

Thanks a lot Richard,
As for the help-I'm intrigued but feel free

Brilliant Neil. A lovely bit of work. Good luck with the casting.

Thank you Peter, fingers crossed

" Awesome "

Cheers Nick, I'll take Awesome :thumb2:

[Neil Merryweather]

I need to report a slight delay in getting to the moulding process...
The photos showed up a weird profile of the Brodie helmet, so I decided to tweak it.

I tweaked the digital model and printed a new one- you can clearly see the build layers here which will have to be sanded away.

I've not only removed the bulge but I've sharpened the junction between the crown and the brim. I couldn't completely eliminate the flat on the top, so I had to resort to filler for that.
When I've sanded that down he will get a hefty coat of primer-filler and a rub-down. Then I will have to re-do the helmet veil attachment, but hopefully just the bit around the brim.
I used the failed helmet veil as a jig to position the helmet on the head correctly, so with luck I won't have to re-make that....
Fingers crossed again.
Such cliff-hangers, who'd have thought it in plastic modelling?
Thanks for looking
Neil

[Neil Merryweather]

I must apologise, gents, it’s been over a month since my last confession…..
But although I have not been reporting, there have been developments.
Firstly, as I was hoping to be able to sell the castings, I decided not to bother battling with the moulding myself but to go to a professional; and on advice from Richard Pearce I sent the bits to Richard Wharton of Oakwood Studios, who makes a range of fine wooden bases.


Richard advised me not to bother with the plinth to keep the cost down, since apparently many people prefer their own style(or indeed, one of Richard's)
I was originally planning to set up my own little ‘cottage industry’ selling my own sculpts, but the more I looked into it and thought about what would be required the less I liked the idea. I would have to be mostly a manufacturer and salesman, dealing with customers and running a website or whatever, which doesn’t appeal to me at all. All I really want to do is sculpt, so I shall just be trying to find someone to buy the master from now on, and if I can’t, so be it.
I still want to paint him myself and by the time I had this epiphany Richard already had the master for the moulding process, so I just limited the number of castings. Richard did an excellent job at a very reasonable rate, and I now have four sets of resin parts.
Unfortunately he was unable to get a successful mould of the helmet veil, so before I split it into two to facilitate his one-piece moulding process, in my arrogance I am having my own attempt at a two-piece mould.

I half-embedded it in Plasticene, inside a box made of Lego(other brands of building blocks are available).

I would like to point out that I didn’t steal the Lego from the grandkids, it was actually mine from back in the day and they have been allowed to play with it!

The dimples in the corners are for registration when I put the two halves together.
I last did this about twenty years ago so I’m not qualified to do a masterclass in mould-making, but I will be flagging up the pitfalls and mistakes I made as sort of ‘how not to do it’. Remember, Granny had to be reminded how to suck eggs in my RAF Pilot thread……
I did remember to wrap the Lego box in masking tape to prevent leaking ,which turned out to be wise.
So far, so good
When the rubber had cured I removed the base and the lower courses of bricks, and you can see where the rubber leaked between the bricks.

and then I removed the plasticene


IF there is a next time I will use a release agent on the Plasticene…..
It’s easy enough to clean away with white spirit on a cotton bud, but better not to have to do it, eh?
So then I painted all the silicon rubber with Vaseline –DO NOT FORGET TO DO THIS- and built up a couple of courses of bricks for the second part of the mould.
Lego is really brilliant for this



It is now full of rubber, and this is as far as I have got.

Thanks for looking

Neil

[JR]

Brave man Neil.
This casting lark is indeed a slippery art.

For being late to confession you must repeat to your self 100 times The Works of Sheperd Paine.

[rtfoe]

Oooh casting is a hit and miss for me too.

Cheers,
Richard

[Neil Merryweather]

Cheers John & Richard
With luck I might be able to break out the resin tomorrow
keep your fingers crossed!

[Tim Marlow]

Something I’ve never tried. Looks like you’re well on top of it though....

[Steve Brodie]

Lego has never gone out of fashion, looking very good - the resin that is, the Lego structure not so much - very simple :smiling2: :smiling2: :smiling2:

[Steven000]

Nice stuff Neil, very interesting :thumb2:

[Guest]

That's all looking very tidy indeed Neil. I don't blame you for not wanting to go commercial - as a retail veteran I can tell you that selling to the public is a complete pain in the posterior.

[Neil Merryweather]

Thanks, Chaps, as always for the encouragement.
Well, I AM an idiot.

I totally got the design of the mould wrong, and even more annoyingly I used the clear rubber when any bog-standard rubber (which I DO have) would have done. The point of the clear is so that you can cut through the rubber in exactly the right place, but I had already defined that by making a two-piece mould - DOH!
So here it is with the Lego removed, and you can just about see the dividing line between the two halves.

And here are the two parts-very much male (on the left ) and female…. Unfortunately the clear rubber makes it difficult to see in the pic.

Now, what I did wrong is that instead of creating what is effectively a cavity by building up around the piece I should have extended the U-shaped profile to the edges of the mould. This would have made the next step much simpler, which is to cut a pouring funnel and breather sprues in one piece of the mould.

So before I wrestle with that I will attempt to just fill up the female half with resin and just push the male part in. I cut a couple of breathers to let the excess come out.

And we will see how that goes

Thanks for looking and Merry Christmas one and all (off to be a bit sociable with SWMBO now )
Cheers
Neil

[JR]

Are other building block available ?
Neil, feel for you, very annoying to say the least.
Enjoy being sociable .