Many thanks indeed to Kev, Phil, Al, Ian, Mr T, Mark and Paul!

I
am pleased with the first of the hollow castings (and also with the second one shown below!) I've been struggling along with trying to replicate the Lee Enfield at the moment, even though I don't get to that part until much later! It's finally coming together now thank goodness!
In designing the floppy jungle hat I considered a great many different methods of constructing the prototype including fashioning it from lead sheet or heat-softened plasticard. In the end however, I found the exact thing that I needed to make a perfectly good Chindit hat – out in the old aviary flight! Like many others, in my childhood I had an
Action Man (or two). One of the first uniform sets I bought was the
Australian Jungle Fighter, complete with flamethrower, machete and, the famous Aussi slouch hat! I came across some of my old Action Man kit a couple of years ago and remembered seeing the slouch hat among the items so I went back in for another look and Bingo! Found it first time, together with a silver plastic grenade, which might come in handy later. Unfortunately, the machete which would definitely have come in very useful, is long gone. Although many of the Chindits wore the same slouch hat in the Aussi style, I wanted to model mine under the more iconic ‘all round’ brim. This meant after about fifty years in pristine condition, apart from the cobwebs and mice droppings that is, the first thing I had to do was to pull the folded up ‘slouch’ side of the brim away from the tiny rivet holding it in place. Then, after removing the simple cloth ‘pugaree’ band and giving the hat a good scrub in soapy water I placed it into hot, almost boiling water for a few minutes to soften the plastic before placing it on the hollow resin head and gently folding the brim down around the face. Once the shape looked about right the head and attached hat were dunked into cold water, which instantly ‘froze’ the supple plastic into shape. The finished appearance is shown in
Photo 1 and placed back on the head in
Photo 2. You can see the metal rivet and the hole it once sat in on the side of the hat. The next task was to create the moulding box to make the first initial casting. First it would need a good thick plasticene base to sit on as shown in
Photo 3. As this was also going to be a hollow casting in
Roto Resin, the little raised ‘plinth’ under the brim was necessary to allow the liquid resin to run around the lip during the rotating mould technique (similar to the neck plug on the head). The main plasticene base layer was cut to fit the lego brick box as illustrated in
Photo 4 and the mixed silicone rubber and catalyst was then poured into the box which was removed after the rubber had cured leaving the first, basic mould shown in
Photo 5. I had to do a little trimming on the inside of the hat, I hadn’t expected the liquid rubber to be thin enough to penetrate the rivet hole in the side or the tiny crack in the top of the hat crown – but some of it did! Fortunately not too much and after stretching the excess rubber and slicing it away the hat original came out smoothly. The actual intention for this mould was to make a solid resin cast first to remove the imperfections (rivet and hole) and also to fashion the pugaree windings, I did however try a hollow casting first just to see what the pitfalls might be in an open ended hollow cast. It actually went quite well overall but did teach me that the weakest part of the casting is the right angle where the flat brim joins the vertical crown part. The liquid resin naturally flows away from the angle to settle on one or the other of the flat areas – still, it
was strong enough to remove from the mould which was good. The solid resin cast is shown in
Photo 6. The rivet and hole has been sanded smooth and filled with
Deluxe Perfect Plastic Putty, and then sanded smooth again once dried. The pugaree bands have been created with the
DecraLed strip, starting at the top band and working down, slightly overlapping each succeeding band.
Photo 7 shows the first trial hollow casting from the basic mould, as well as simply proving that the hollow form of the hat was possible to cast, I was also able to utilise this one to try out the trimming to size techniques. As you might be able to see on this trial, using just a craft knife resulted in an off angle cut at the edge of the brim. I found that a combination of knife work together with the micro-scissors gave the neatest border – (better to learn that on the ‘throwaway’ piece!)

Once the detailing was complete the resin cast was returned to the lego box and plasticene base. This time however, to cut back on the amount of silicone rubber required I cut four lengths of Upvc beading and placed one in each corner – that saved about 15% of the silicone as illustrated in
Photo 8.
Photo 9 shows the final hollow casting with the excess resin around the brim successfully cut back and sanded smooth. The six ventilation holes in the crown were also drilled out for a better effect. The last two photos,
Photo 10 and
11 show the finished hat casting on the head. These are actually two different heads – the first one was the trial casting, this had a couple of small holes which were filled in with an inner skin of standard beige coloured resin (just visible around the ear and chin). This head has had the top cut off which is why the hat is at the correct angle, the second head is the better casting with four layers of Roto resin (and no holes) and hasn’t yet been ‘scalped’ – that’s why the hat is slightly skewed over to one side!
With the head and hat complete, it’s now time to plan out the changes required to the action figure torso – more on that next time!
Until then, Happy Modelling to you All!
Robin.
Plymouth57 attached the following image(s):
First wooden ship:
The Grimsby 12 Gun 'Frigate' by Constructo Second:
Bounty DelPrado Part Works Third:
HMS Victory DelPrado Part Works 1/100 scale
Diorama of the Battle of the Brandywine from the American Revolutionary War Diorama of the Battle of New Falkland (unfinished sci-fi), Great War Centenary Diorama of the Messines Ridge Assault
Index for the Victory diary is on page 1