Titanicus

[Dave]

I have started making some more terrain for Titanicus. The first time round I think I rushed it in my excitement to get it on the table.

I’ve followed Simon’s advice this time and made a mold. I’m hoping to put a bit more effort into the paint job too.

After plenty of trial and error here is the test piece and its demolished brother (buildings can be destroyed in Titanicus so the plan is one will replace the other during the game).

Warhound is shown for scale and as you can see I have started small but it will provide some decent cover for Warhounds and Knights.

Hopefully painted this weekend.

[DaVinci's Cat]

Looking really good. The mouldings look really crisp, no visible bubbles etc.

Couple of questions for interest: Are you casting in resin? and have you gone for a two-part/multipart mould or managed to achieve what you wanted with a single part mould? (I can't quite tell from the bits in the background ).

[Dave]

I am using resin to cast.

I originally tried to make molds of the individual components but the resin was too thin and would bend upon removal. Plus with shrinkage trying to get the parts to fit flush was a nightmare so gave up on that pretty fast.

Now I’ve made a single piece mold from an already built building. My main problem in that I tend to over pour so end up with a not quite flat bottom, that is why I have mounted them on some 2mm plasticard and filled the gap with milliput.

The cast is pretty clean, quite happy with the result so far.

Cheers

[DaVinci's Cat]

My first assumption was that they were solid (which I'm still assuming) and then thought "B***** Hell, he's using a ton of resin in those!"

I then realised that these are a completely different scale to what I'm used to! Still not quite sure now big the Warhound is, but I'm assuming that the building isn't too large if you're going for a solid pour.

My main problem in that I tend to over pour so end up with a not quite flat bottom,

I have this problem as well, even with a bit of practice. It quite difficult to judge the amount of shrinkage to get it perfectly flat. When you make a mould in the future, it might be worth making it with an integrated baseboard the same size as the building and then just slightly underfill when casting. That way you only have to sand off the meniscus at the edges and with hopefully no loss of height of the building. If you look at a lot of the commercial castings, they tend to have sanded the bottom flat - normally with a belt sander or the link.

That said, your current solution looks like it's working just fine. Looking forward to seeing these painted.

[Dave]

It’s about 2” high by 2” wide, which is still a fair chunk of solid resin.

I thought about an integrated base but then I would have to make a wider Mold? Probably still worth it though.

I did have a bit of a disaster, I made some new molds and my mold box fell apart! Silicone everywhere and a nightmare to clean up! Lesson is to leave your box overnight to allow the glue to dry!

I painted the test piece and made some larger buildings.

[Mike]

Looking good. I would love to try casting but our garage is full of junk waiting to be sorted. No way allowed in the house.

[Dave]

Looking good. I would love to try casting but our garage is full of junk waiting to be sorted. No way allowed in the house.

Cost and time probably means you’d only really want to do it if you’re looking for loads of the same thing. In my example I’ve spent about £120 on silicone and resin, with that I’ve probably made the equivalent of about £250 worth of plastic kits. So worth it but that’s it, I’ve made all the buildings (15 resin and the 6 or so plastic ones I already had) I’ll ever need now.

[Ray]

Nice job. Looking forward to getting some more games of this in when we can.

[DaVinci's Cat]

It’s about 2” high by 2” wide, which is still a fair chunk of solid resin.

And depending on what resin you're using, it probably generates a fair bit of heat when curing. I was wondering whether or not you could suspend a block of silicon (a little smaller than the building) inside the mould so that effectively gives you a shell of a building?

I did have a bit of a disaster, I made some new molds and my mold box fell apart! Silicone everywhere and a nightmare to clean up! Lesson is to leave your box overnight to allow the glue to dry

I've always used hot glue to make the mould box - mainly because I'm quite impatient when doing this sort of thing. Rubber bands or small clamps might also have helped but at least you now know how to get uncured silicon cleaned up!

Buildings are looking even better with a lick of paint.

[Brad85]

looking good, are they quite weighty too as they're solid?