More Spaceship Drop-casts

Tonight I cast another spaceship; my original sculpt shown below.  Although I don't like this ship design as well as the first one I cast, the final product turned out better.  I learned a lot from that first casting experience, particularly in mold design, and by applying those lessons I got a much better miniature this second time around.  The only defects I can find in the metal copies are from errors in the water-putty master itself; no deformation or air bubbles on the metal miniatures, even on the first cast in a cold mold!  Pictured below is one of my metal casts next to a commercially available spaceship miniature.  I won't name the game company that produces this miniature, but it may be in my opinion the lamest miniature in the history of wargaming.  The commercial mini came as one of 24 ships in a set that cost me about US$80.00, or about US$3.33 a figure.  That's a reasonable price for well-sculpted, exciting miniatures with lots of detail (which there were in the aforementioned set), but for a simple cylinder with two tiny featureless engine pods?  No, I feel cheated.  So I decided to get my money's worth and threw the commercial miniature into my ladle.  It melted just fine but the liquid metal turned a funny purple color... I don't know if it reacted with the remnants of the metal I normally use (Dunken Company's Model Metal) or if I simply overheated it.  Either way I poured the melted commercial figure into my mold and got an extra copy of my scratchbuild, so it all worked out.  In all I cast three copies.  Now I'm off to trim flash and base, prime and paint.

Water-putty prototype sculpt

Top: cast of my scratchbuild; bottom: oooo, a cylinder, whoopee

SDS for my game War In Space