By Kirkd Its been a while since I gave an update on Cthulhu so here goes…
After my initial failure with making a mother/jacket mould I pressed on and made a test piece with the Easy Flow 120 I had. Mixing up a small batch I filled the rubber mould (after a constitutional whiskey for my nerves) and proceded to slush cast my first piece.
Good grief, it actually worked!
I was left with a really nice first casting. Its light in weight, has a rather nice translucent quality when help up to the light and, apart from one air bubble, came out perfectly. Buoyed up by my first success I waited a few days then tried a metal cast and this is where it went wrong. I had read that the best way to mix the resin and metal (bronze in my case) was to do a 1:1:1 ratio (easy flow part A + part B + powder) by mixing the part A and B together then add the powder. This is supposed to stop some form of reaction with the powder and the unmixed resin. I powdered the mould with metal powder and mixed the A and B together and could feel the warmth of the reaction. “Blimey!” thinks I “This is getting warm already, I’d better get the powder in and into the mould.” Now the thing with Bronze is that its a metal and metals are heavy (not all of them I grant you but on the whole they tend to be a but weighty) so what happens when a powdered form of metal is tipped into a very runny liquid? Yup, it sank. Right to the bottom. I mixed and mixed quickly and tipped it into the mould only to see (to my horror I should add) that there was a huge amount of powder still in the bottom of the mixing cup. Here comes my second mistake… I put the mould down briefly to try and mix the powder with the little dregs of resin in the cup.They didn’t mix well so I gave up and picked up the mould to carry on slushing but it was already nearly set. The mould had a huge dent in the head where it had been touching something. He also has a huge crack under his left eye, probably because I got a bit frustrated with the process and tried to take it out of the mould too soon.
AKA the Crack of Cthulhu.
Overall he leans over to the side, has a crack and a dent on his head. I’m not too happy with his colour as well, i’m assuming its because I didn’t mix all of the bronze in with the resin so it didn’t have the right ratio of resin to metal.
That was Friday (the 13th) night, Saturday morning was started with a trip to the local craft shop and while browsing the shelves I came across bags of stonecast powder. Stonecast is essentially that, stone you can cast. Its supposed to be quite easy to work with so I picked up a bag to trial along with a tub of burnt sienna powderpaint. I worked out how much I needed, added a big heap of paint to colour it and one more heap for good luck and added the water but heres where it went wrong. Water in a balloon does what?
The Chunk of Cthulhu.
Yup, without that mother mould to support the shape I ended up with a stretched out fathulhu. But I have to say, I love the texture and colour of the material, its got a real “terra-cotta” feel to it which is wonderful to touch. The sound it makes as you run your fingers over the surface is just like a real ceramic material and if it wasn’t for the warping of the mould, this would have been perfect. Because of the results of this I’ve started to make a new latex mould which I will reinforce properly with a solid mother mould. For the quick drying resin I can still use the first mould as the weight isn’t an issue, I can rub the mould to help remove air bubbles and shake it about but for big heavy castings I’m going to need a solid support. I also tried mixing some of the powder paint to the easy flow and doing a test piece, I’m not sure if its my imagination or not but it seems to expand a lot. It did colour up nicely though.
In the meantime I ordered a fresh stock of resin. I had ordered my first batch from Mouldlife based in Bury St Edmunds but my second batch came from 4D Modelshop (no connection to cinema 4d) as they had the easyflow (slightly more expensive but cheaper postage) and some extra goods I wanted to try (I bought two munnys as its about time I had a go at one). Along with the resin I got some black dye to trial and at £20 for a 2oz bottle I was hoping this stuff works. Fortunately it does, to a degree. The easyflow’s natural colour is white so anything mixed with it will go lighter than its colour, the clear seems to be harder to get so I’m being careful with what I have got left of the clear. Mixing some black dye with the white resin I tried a new casting and the result was interesting.
The Colour out of Cthulhu
It came out really well, the mould popped off cleanly. One air bubble under the eye but nothing major. The weird thing is the colour was black, but about 24 hours later it had gone a sort of dark purple colour. Maybe my lighting isn’t too good in the cellar but when I took it upstairs the next day it really did have a different hue about it. I’m not complaining too much as its still a nice colour, but I need to look into how to control the colour more besides dropping more dye into the mix.
The next steps then? Well i’ve been looking at different materials to trial in the resin. I’m not happy at losing £20’s worth of bronze and its too pricey to keep testing with only for it to fail so I’ve been finding alternatives. I’ve found Tiranti’s offer some good prices on their powders and they stock marble (yes marble oh I’ve just replaced bronze as my dream material), slate (I could make a Welsh Cthulhu boyo) and synthetic onyx (aluminum hydroxide which is used in toothpaste) and I can get 5kg of Iron filler for about half the price of the bronze. OK its not bronze but a cast iron effect could be good until I learn how to get the right mix of powder and resin.
“Powder and resin” thats not a good combination of words to use. I’ll have the drug squad after me.