Some more really nice touches being shown Robin, all coming together beautifully.....

Regards

Alan

Thanks again to Alan and Mark!
Just a short update this time, I’ve had a major re-think on the torso construction! Originally I was going to have the head and torso as a single component with the arms as a separate section. After thinking about the shoulders however, I’ve decided to have the upper arms as a part of the torso mould with the forearms as the separate add-ons. The reasons for this are two fold – firstly it will make adding the epaulettes a lot easier as they would otherwise have extended just beyond where the shoulders presently end and secondly, as his forearms are bare with his shirtsleeves rolled up, that makes a logical joining position too.
I’ve also decided to try something a little different with the shirt as well. Having seen Godan’s Turok up close (and somewhat further along than his diary) I’m going to have a go at making the shirt creases in pva soaked tissue paper as Godan did with his ‘leathery wings’ (well, if you can’t nick good ideas off your friends …) It may all turn out to be a huge mistake but if so I’ll just scrape it all off and run sheepishly back to my Milliput! In any case, the preparation is the same so here we go…
Photo 1 shows the basic head and torso before the first layer of Milliput. Around his neck is a cord made out of a short length of Victory’s thicker rigging thread. This simulates the cord holding his two ID tags although very little of it will be visible once the shirt is moulded around the neck! The early ID tags were very similar to the First World War tags, made of either stamped fibre or leather. Later on these were made from pressed metal as the acidic jungle soil was found to degrade the older tags within a short time, making identification of hastily buried KIA’s difficult when later exhumed for proper burial.
Photo 2 is after the next step with the first layer of Milliput epoxy putty mixed, rolled out flat and then applied in about four pieces to the front and back of the torso. What I forgot to mention was that the entire torso was given a good sanding over with a medium grade wet and dry to remove the shine of the resin and give the Milliput something to key onto. As I mentioned, most of that neck cord has gone from view but just enough of it will still be seen around the inside of the collar to need it in there! Finally for this instalment, Photo 3 shows the result of a great deal of sanding down with a coarse grade foam sanding block – nothing special (or expensive) – a pack of three grades from the local Toolshop store. I’ll say one thing for Milliput, it may go on easy but it’s a right old job to sand it back down again! This task was done outside during good weather to avoid all the dust in the workroom. Not easily visible at this angle is the lowest part of the torso where the belt will be added later, this has been sanded down the most to create a slightly sunken strip to accentuate the tissue paper folds to be added once the upper arms are finished. As its going to take a little while to get the arms moulded and cast, in the next instalment I’ll skip over to another section of the build – making up the base and pedestal to hold the eventual bust.
Until then, Happy Modelling to you All!


Robin.

Looking good but what I'm really looking forward to is the clothing and the dreaded tissue technique

Progressing nicely Robin.

Nice work Robin.

Mark

Many thanks to Mark and Ian! Progress has been slow at the moment due to the heatwave up in the attic workroom, even with a skylight and fan the temperature has been almost unbearable with glues and paints going hard before I can even use them! This has also caused an unexpected problem with the resin and silicone as you'll see below but anyway, on we go (slowly)

In Photo 24 we have, no, not my micro diorama of a Type VII U-Boat, but the second half of the Burma Star Medal mould under way. The Plastruct styrene rod see protruding from the liquid silicone rubber has been card-glued to the rear as shown last time and once the rubber is set it will be pulled out of the mould leaving a hollow tube. When ready to cast the medal I will pour slightly more resin into the mould than required to fill the impression and when the second half is placed on top the excess resin will (or should) be forced up the tube to cure taking any large air bubble with it and forming the locating pin in the process. Photo 25 illustrates the first half of the Pedestal mould. I first poured in a small amount of the rubber and let that set, forming a thin base. Then a first pouring of the main mould-making silicone was dribbled in to about 5mm in depth before placing the pedestal original in on top with the bottom end up against the lego brick wall. The rest of the liquid rubber was then poured in, carefully avoiding the weights placed on top of the pedestal to keep it from floating up. As you can see here, the rubber comes up to the half way point on the pedestal. The following Photo 26 shows that first half fully cured and with locating cut outs sliced out of the solid rubber along the sides to allow the second half to fit tightly. This is where the problems started! Up till now I’ve been using the silicone rubber mixed with 3% catalyst. For this mould I decided to try dropping it down to 2% (which is perfectly acceptable according to the label on the bottle). The problem came when I tried to paint on the liquid wax to form the release layer, preventing the two halves of the mould bonding together. As you can make out in the blown up Photo 27, the wax didn’t spread across the rubber in an even layer or coat. Instead it went into beads as seen here. I gave it the three coats as usual and each time I had the same result. I had a nasty feeling this was going to be a problem but I went ahead and tried the second half of the rubber anyway. Note the three blobs of rubber added to the locating holes in the pedestal – this avoids getting any air bubbles trapped in there on the second pouring! As expected, instead of a two part mould I ended up with a solid one part! Fortunately, by some careful cutting and slicing with the snap off craft knife I was able to retrieve the original and still use the mould to trial the resin casting as shown in Photo 28. The pedestal was cast using the Roto Resin (the pour and rotate method) to end up with a hollow casting as seen here. This was a slightly different technique however consisting of five separate mixes of resin. The first was mixed, poured and ‘sloshed’ around, covering all the surfaces until the resin began to stiffen up and then the mould was stood on its end allowing the resin to collect at the top of the pedestal. The remaining four mixes were also spread around the inside, concentrating on the four sides and allowing the resin to finally collect with the mould on its side, depositing the last of the resin on each side in turn. This substantially increases the thickness of each side without having to add more and more layers! Considering the mould is a ‘reject’ the end result was pretty good, only the side with the ‘brick-cut’ was left with a marred surface as you can just make out on the left side of the casting. I have since discovered the cause of the wax problem, which I’ll explain later so I’ll be making a ‘proper’ two part mould to replace this one later on. And so for the results – Photos 29 – 31 shows the castings alongside their lower moulds. The only slight problem was the smaller ‘Burma’ plate where I got the two locating pegs about 0.25mm out of alignment, the result being they won’t both fit in the holes! There was a simple remedy though, cut one off and sand it smooth! ‘The Chindit’ plate fitted perfectly into its holes however and the Burma Star, having only one peg anyway also fitted well! Finally, in Photo 32 we have the trial set of castings all in place, the Burma plate holding on with its one peg, the Burma Star hanging in below and The Chindit located on the MDF base. I now have to make a simple one piece mould for the base itself so that it too can be hollow cast using the same method as the pedestal. More on that later!
As for that problem with the un-waxable silicone moulds, it turned out that it was nothing to do with the rubber mixture at all, it was the liquid wax itself. During a brief pause in this heatwave, the temperature in the attic reduced back to the mid seventies instead of the high nineties as it has been for a few weeks now. I managed to create the nameplate for the Endeavour cannon diorama by using a little pot of Poundshop Vaseline and rubbing that over the rubber by fingertip as the liquid wax was still beading up (it felt like trying to model ON the Barrier Reef at times up there)! With the temperature back down to more comfortable levels I tried the liquid wax on the first mould that gave me trouble and lo and behold it worked perfectly. The whole problem was caused by trying to paint the wax when it was over ninety degrees – presumably the silicone was also over ninety as well so that might contribute to it. It looks like I’ll have to make the second half of further moulds downstairs where its cooler, at least for the summer anyway!
In the next instalment, starting the right arm (as long as the ruddy Milliput hasn’t cooked itself solid that is!)
Until then, Happy Melting to you All!

Robin.

Stand looks very impressive Robin. well done

Back again after a long pause! The attic workroom has been like an oven during the heatwave but at long last its back to a more comfortable level (mind you, the heat was great for making the plasticene nice and soft for the mould bases!)

The right arm was a bit of a learning curve and I was doing so much learning I didn’t take as many photos as I should so I’ll try and fill in the gaps with the other arm later. Photo 1 shows the action figure arm laying in the first half of the silicon rubber mould. To get to this stage I had first worked out the pose of the arm after first removing the attached hand (by unscrewing the two screws in the forearm). With the pose decided on I then applied standard white silicon sealer of the type used in kitchen and bathrooms and filled in around the joints, this was to prevent the liquid silicon from flowing into the arm through the moveable bits on the elbow and shoulder. The silicon probably wouldn’t have gone into the shoulder as the joints were really tight but this way I could fill in the shoulder gaps to eventually fill with resin, strengthening the overall shoulder for attachment to the torso. The white silicon was given a couple of coats of wax release agent – the second arm will receive a thicker application though, that liquid rubber loves bonding to the white stuff! Photo 2 illustrates the completed two halves of the mould. The first half had its edges sliced down to produce a channel to form the locating lugs instead of the usual pegs and holes (no plasticene in this mould) and after the problems I had with using the liquid wax in 90 degree + temperatures, I smeared some Vaseline over the first half mould to be sure of separation when the other half had cured. This worked pretty well thankfully although on the initial mould on the left, you can see where the white silicon wasn’t so keen to be released! At the top of this photo you can see one of the set of paper punches I bought for the Sopwith Pup build last year. This was used to punch out a channel through the centre of the shoulder joint, shown larger in Photo 5 and would be the pouring hole for the resin casting later. The first casting is shown in Photo 3 alongside the original. To cast the arm I first poured the mixed resin into the initial mould (the one without the hole in it) and poked around the wrist with a cocktail stick ensuring the resin had gone into the air pocket. I could then quickly put the two halves of the mould together and stand it upright allowing the liquid resin to collect at the bottom or forearm. When the first pouring had cured I then mixed up another batch and poured that in through the punched hole to fill up the rest of the mould. Unfortunately I’m far more used to casting little tiny things than this great lump and it actually took three more mixes to fill the thing up, that’s no problem however – liquid resin will bond straight on to cured resin to produce a strong joint. The next step was to sand down the rough areas caused by the white silicon and then to mix up superfine white Milliput to re-model the elbow joint as seen in Photo 4. At the same time I also filled in around the shoulder to reduce the subsequent amount of Milliput required to blend the upper arm into the torso later. Notice the moulded screw hole in the upper arm, this could be left as it will be covered by the Milliput shirt sleeve later. Also the join line of the forearm/upper arm is now the guide line for sawing off the forearm which comes next.
The arm is shown after the Milliput had fully cured and was ready for the ‘amputation’ in Photo 6. The pencil mark indicated by the arrow was an attempt to ensure that the arm would be fitted back in the correct position later on, in the final casting the forearm/hand/machete will be a separate casting to the combined torso/upper arm. Photo 7 illustrates the cut off forearm with the centre drilled out to accept a length of brass tubing to form the locating peg. This however was changed later as I decided that the tube wasn’t either long enough or thick enough to do the job. Another change took place at the shoulder join too! Originally I intended to carve away the outer disk of resin which formed the inner part of the action figure moving joint, (kept in place by the two halves of the torso) leaving a thick peg of resin to be inserted into an equally wide hole drilled into the torso. I then decided that such a large hole might weaken the hollow resin torso and instead drilled a smaller hole in each shoulder joined by a protruding aluminium tube as seen in Photo 8, this shows the right hand side, a similar amount of tube also sticks out the other side. I then drilled out a corresponding sized hole in the upper arm into which the aluminium tube was epoxy glued. This time the registration marks were incised into the arm and shoulder with the razor saw as seen here in Photo 9. There is also a horrendous air bubble in the top of the arm but, as with the sawn lines this doesn’t matter as the whole area will be covered in Milliput soon! Remember that brass tube in the forearm, which I thought wasn’t big enough? By sheer coincidence the larger aluminium tube used in the shoulders slides tightly over the brass one so I simply cut a longer piece of that and epoxied it over the inner brass tube to create a stronger peg. Finally (as that Action Man ad leaps back into my head again) Photo 10 shows the glued on upper arm completed with its sculpted on skin of Milliput. This was taken after some extensive sanding back with coarse grade foam sanding blocks, this will be the base onto which I can PVA the tissue paper to create the folds and creases of the shirt. The intension is to model those folds and, whilst still wet or soft, to fit the DecraLed cross straps of the webbing and the waist belt so they appear to naturally ‘sit’ over the cloth shirt beneath – that’s the plan anyhow! In the next installment, I’ll be carrying on with the other arm to complete the basic torso ready for that ruddy tissue.
Until then, Happy Modelling to you All!

Robin.

Nice work Robin.

Mark