Ship Number 2... in Lead

I freed ship number 2 from its RTV prison today and poured my first ever metal cast.  As you can see from the pictures, the mold is very rough-and-ready.  Although I've made dozens of molds using window caulk, this was the first mold I've made using gasket-making high temperature RTV silicone and it was hard to manipulate.

The cast is OK, but a bit underwhelming.  Even if I cleaned it up, there is still significant detail loss.  Since this was my first cast ever, I'm sure I did plenty wrong.  I used a lot of tips I've found over the internet, like warming up the mold by doing three practice casts.

I like the process, and I think I answered the question: yes, $5.00 gasket-making RTV does work for one-sided molds.  However, the level of detail lost combined with the inconvenience of exposing oneself to hot lead makes me think that I will avoid casting in lead for my fleets.  The only advantage is durability of the model, but since I'm a solo wargamer and don't travel with my minis, this point is invalid.  If I absolutely must have a copy of a scratchbuild, I will make a mold out of window caulk silicone and cast with water-putty.  Both methods have a 24 hour cure time but I find silicone caulk much easier to work with.

Oh, one more advantage to metal casting: ever buy a lot of miniatures for that one ship or figure you really wanted, but had to take some crappy ones along with the good one?  Well, with metal casting you can melt down the crappy miniatures and turn it into your own custom ships!

Ship Two and mold made from gasket-making RTV silicone

I'll stick to water-putty thanks