Monday, June 7, 2010

Tutorial: Easy Press Mold For Basing





I have been eyeing all kinds of resin bases made by any number of people or small companies online for a while now, and decided I would give resin casting a shot. If we ignore 5 days of horrible partially cured resin mess, then I think I have finally it on something that is easy to do, looks good, and is accessible to most gamers. Basically I have been sculpting parched desert bases for my Blood angels army for some time, but doing it one at a time was just horrible. With the BA release and my whole army being redone, I needed a quick way to get them based so I could get them on the table.

Materials:
  • Green Stuff or whatever sculpting material you use
  • plastic rod
  • water
STAGE 1: Making the mold
Step 1: cut the plastic rod into lots of little oddly sized pieces. You can see the design I came up with in the first image.

Step 2: Glue the rods into a negative image of the cracks you want to produce. It is not necessary to overfill the design, since you can press a base twice for more irregular designs.

STAGE 2: Pressing a base

Step 1: create an even layer of green stuff on the top of the base

Step 2: cover the top of the base with water

Step 3: Press the mold into the base and then remove it.

Step 4: If you want to get fancy, remove the mold and then repress the base. This will produce all kinds of intricate cracks.

Step 5: Wait until the green stuff is dry and then cut away the edge that overhangs the edge of the base. I got excited here and did not wait long enough, so I have some mushy looking bases.

Step 6: Sand the top of each base slightly

Using this technique I was able to make 35 bases in a couple of hours. The most tedious part of this was cutting off the green stuff overspill!




21 comments:

  1. This is devilishly clever. Thank you.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Absolutley Brilliant, I may have to copy this and try to make it happen for my new army ideas.

    ReplyDelete
  3. What a great idea.
    I imagine that if you make one with a 40 or a 60 mm base, not only would you be able to do larger bases, but also would add more variety to your 25mm bases.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Is the resin you used old? If not, then it's likely a case of poor mixing. I've gone over to mixing by weight, as it's less likely to screw up with a good scale.

    ReplyDelete
  5. That's pretty neat. Thanks.

    ReplyDelete
  6. Wow lots of comments on this one! I used new resin, but it never fully dried. It was also a pain, since the resin smelled kind of bad, and my condo does not have a balcony!

    I got carried away with this idea and just went with it. I think it would be fun to produce a whole set of these things. Another variation on this is to fill in some of the areas, so there are depressions in addition to cracks. I've now based everything I have painted. I should have taken a little more time painting the bases, but I was just having too much fun!

    ReplyDelete
  7. oh yea, where did you get the plastic rod from, i wanna use this for my crimson fists...

    ReplyDelete
  8. Nice and easy, good tutorial! +1 internet cookie.

    ReplyDelete
  9. I think I ordered all of my plastic from the war store. It is just a small generic plastic rod that came with a bunch of plastic rods of different sizes.

    I am really happy this is helping everyone out. I can't seem to stop myself from randomly basing old test miniatures at this point. Has anyone else tried this out yet? I would love to refine the post if it can be made more usable.

    ReplyDelete
  10. Impressive, since I mostly play in a desert table I think my next army (whenever I´ll build it) will be fully desert based in your clever-easy-cheap way.

    Oh, and I digged through the archives and I gotta say... Very good blog (I really love your tyranids) :D

    ReplyDelete
  11. Fantastic tutorial, really very useful, thank you!

    ReplyDelete
  12. a mold is such a simple idea, but every time i see it used effectively, it blows me away. great job.

    ReplyDelete
  13. Wow. This technique is SO good! I actually want to do bases just like this for my Salamanders army. I'm gonna do this. I hope you don't mind!

    ReplyDelete
  14. I'm a little late to the party here, but equally wowed by such a simplistically awesome idea.

    Thanks!

    ReplyDelete