Alright! Last night I finished my final so except for clean-up on one lab, this semester is over. I can get back to gaming and posts about gaming without feeling guilty.
All week long I slowly built up a master for a new spaceship miniature design. I glued various sizes of spaghetti to some plastic coffee stirrers that were stuffed with Sculpey. In the future I will use plastic sprue versus the coffee stirrers.
Last night I pressed this master into two blocks of Sculpey, making the top and bottom hull impressions. I then detailed the impressions and poured in the water putty. I then removed the bottom hull from the polymer clay and joined it to the top hull. This morning I pulled the completed putty master out of the clay and trimmed it up. The pictures below show the top looking to the stern, looking to the bow, and also the bottom looking to the bow.
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| Top, ship bow close-up |
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| Top, ship stern close-up |
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| The bottom: just as detailed |
I tried something new this time, as shown in the second picture above. I put a piece of looped wire into the putty when I poured the bottom hull. This allowed me to suspend the completed putty master vertically inside a LEGO mold box, thus allowing me to pour the silicone rubber mold as one piece. I will cut the rubber in half when it cures; this will still be a traditional two-piece mold, but in half the curing time. I did screw up one thing though... I decided to leave the bottom of the mold box open and then I just set it on a piece of plastic. I sealed the edges with sulfur-free clay, but it has since leaked a bit. The picture below shows the mold box right after the rubber was poured in; the reader can see the rubber is about 5mm from the top. As I'm writing this, rubber has leaked out all around the base and the top of the silicone is now about 15mm from the top of the box. The putty master is not exposed however. I will simply let the rubber cure and in a few hours pour enough in to top it back up. In the future however I will just use more LEGOs to build a bottom to the box. Why I didn't think of that this time I don't know.
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| Interstellar shipyard |
That design looks sweet! Can't wait to see the Master becoming a painted final version.
ReplyDeleteThanks for the kind words! I'm really happy with this one because it has so far validated a few new techniques I'm using. The design itself however is not too inspiring to me... it's got a Jack Kirby feel to it with all the crazy details going on, but it kind of looks like a freight train rather than a sleek spaceship.
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