Resin casting demo

from 17 January 2007 meeting

    Resin casting and mold making are one of those simple, but intimidating techniques that can enhance your model making, and allow you to recreate complex designs for multiple uses.  The attached article describes the products readily available, reviews them, and then gives the pluses and minuses.   Give it a try--its not too hard.

    I didn't go into detail on mold making since there are so many sites available with detailed instructions on proper mold design.  Also, many companies send a "how-to" sheet out with their product. 

    One caveat-- follow copyright laws.  As I understand the law, you can make copies of items you've purchased for your personal use, but cannot sell or give those copies to others.  Best advice I can give is to use resin casting to make multiple copies of items you've scratch built---then you can sell them or give them away as you please.

    Below are some images of a differential gear housing and housings for a Mark IV British tank project.  Detailed descriptions are in the captions of the photos. 

Original and two copies of gear housing in 1/35th for Mark IV

Differential Gear Housing for Mark IV tank in 1/35th.

These are covers for each sponson. Original part was wood, styrene and aluminum foil with grante line bolts for details. You can see the mold behind the original, and then two copies on the right.

The original differential gear housing was made of styrene strips, Milliput, grante line bolts and styrene rod. After getting a workable original (on the left) I cast these copies. The importance of proper mold release can be seen, or actually not seen here, since the rubber mold stuck so well to the resin part that the final copy had to be cut out, destroying the mold.

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Original and two copies of gear housing in 1/35th for Mark IV

These are covers for each sponson. Original part was wood, styrene and aluminum foil with grante line bolts for details. You can see the mold behind the original, and then two copies on the right.