4/12/18

Triumph of Death II: First casts and the foibles therein

always exiting to see this!

 The Magic and Perils of Mold Making

Seeing a master old is like Christmas. There is always that chance that whatever was put in the mold will either melt, explode or get squished. My master molder is really good but even then, as this time, something happened.  Read on if you dare!

 Some shots of first casts.. looking grand so far...

The usual M.O. of my caster is to spin the mold a few times and send me those samples for review. Once I give the thumbs up on a piece it is ready to be cast enough times and then recleaned and put into a production mold.   Many of the pieces like the horse and Pestilence, and the weapons and shield were gang busters, but then I looked at the crossbow and pike. Hands... hands were the issue.



Here we can see in this image that the hands were not casting properly. Mold issue? Actually no! After showing these to my sculptor he figured quickly the issue. He used some super glue around the hand area of some of the masters. When super heated the glue expanded into a "foam" of sorts, which filled the hand areas. Bummer, but mystery solved.

So, masters have been checked and recleaned, and go back into a mold. It's both art and science, and a learning experience.
 I love getting these kind of things out of the way pre- Kickstarter. 



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