2014 Part Four - Mouldmaking and Casting

Hello all!  Time to get back to my little series about last year.  This time I'm concentrating on that oh-so-temperamental affair of mould-making and casting.

It was a pretty productive year in spite of some difficult challenges I've had to deal with.  I made a few new moulds including the first set for Night Heather and Moonlit Dale...

...then a second set for Night heather and Moonlit Dale after the first set broke after a thoroughly respectable number of casts.  Sadly these were destroyed by a disaster (keep reading...) and I am now mould-less until I remake them...

...a plethora of little moulds for my new rosette model (more on that later)....

...and a fresh mould for Albert and Victoria. This wasn't needed until that disaster hit, which you can read all about below:

Casting!  I cast quite a number of new models in 2014 (I've not shown all of them here but there are no repeats below, each image is a new set), including Albert and Victorias:

I've not included photos of the white copies, but I did cast a number of those along with some nice pigmented white copies that came out a rather fetching shade of lilac:

As you can see, I also cast another model in the pigmented resin.

I also experimented with Onyx - which is a pure black resin offered as an alternative to white.  It is tricky to work with as it is very viscous and thick, but I managed to get a few nice models cast.

I also cast a few new Inferno models, including this cool new two-tone one:

An experimental new formula brought these intriguing offerings (first two pics are of the same model, the third pic is another model):

...and I also had a lovely order for a cold cast bronze which I've started - this one isn't finished yet, it's had hours of polishing go into it though, Inferno is not the easiest model to polish thanks to all his little nooks and crannies!  I plan to use acid to patinate this model which should bring out the details.

I've been casting the Union Jack Minibust models alongside the other models, experimenting with colours I've not mastered before, like Pillarbox Red and split, two-tone casts.  My photos are always notorious bad when it comes to these little guys!  I know I'm missing some of these, but here's a selection of the ones I cast in 2014:

  

I also revisited a few older moulds, some successfully, like with these lovely Welsh Cob medallions:

...and some less successfully.

That mess was my bad, I wasn't paying attention and mixed the wrong resin.  Luckily the mould cleaned out ok and I went on to get a lovely cast of this old classic, called Romeo:

And of course, there have been a suitably satisfying number of Random Balls appearing from the studio too!  I don't take photos of those very often so these are all the pics I have, but I think I added around 20 or so new RB's to the studio in 2014!

I also did some more casting for Myla, this order was brought over from the 2013 edition I cast out for Myla Pearce and were the final pair I was to provide for her, these went to a UK collector and I'm pleased some stayed in this country.

One of the new moulds (well about 10 of them actually, but from one original) was of this little rosette I created for the Hullabaloo.  I have plans for this model that are currently developing, so watch this space for more on that soon!

Finally I have to mention Night Heather and Moonlit Dale.  They were my big new edition for 2014 and I cast around 200 copies of these cool little ponies.

It was not without challenges though!  In August, just before the Hullabaloo I started using some new resin.  The test pours came out fine (nothing unusual there) and I got casting, only to discover this when I opened the pressure tank up expecting nice new resins:

  

Resin leaking like that isn't an issue, it happens, but that sort of chalky, oily mix was not right, it was pretty obvious something had gone horribly wrong.  I wrestled the Sweet Lullaby out of her mould but could see straight away that there was a problem.  Freshly cast resin should not look like this:

I checked the mould for damage and couldn't see any at first, however, it had been completely dehydrated by the liquid residue from the resin and on the next cast fell apart.  Sweet Lullaby's second mould was destroyed, her edition is now retired as I can't afford to remake her mould, as her edition was limited to two moulds and this was the second, I could only use it for as many copies were left in this mould, so her edition is closed and she will be quite a rare model to have come from my studio now.

Unfortunately (yep, it gets worse!) I wasn't just casting a Sweet Lullaby in that pour, I was also casting a Night Heather and Moonlit Dale using their lovely new moulds.  It didn't look good:

On opening up the mould I discovered that poor Moonlit Dale had suffered a similar fate to Sweet Lullaby, this photo shows a good cast (left, in case you weren't sure) and the result from the mould.  I feel just heartbroken seeing a poor, un-salvageable cast like this.

So, after such a disaster I was straight on the phone to my supplier to find out what was wrong.  They felt it was bad resin (these things happen, thankfully quite rarely but sometimes you just get back luck) and told me they would replace the resin (a whole gallon kit!) and I should dispose of the stuff I'd used responsibly.  I was happy to go with that as sometimes you just have bad luck and a dodgy batch of resin or something, but sadly things didn't improve...

Some of you may have seen this documented previously but here's what happened.  I poured the bad resin into an old bucket (note the soil in the bucket, it was an important factor here and I was an idiot for not thinking about it sooner)...

Then I looked on in horror as the soil caused the resin to foam and overflow the bucket into the garden.  I dug a hole to the top left of this photo for the resin foam to fill as otherwise it would have been runing off down the garden!

Once cured it didn't look much better.  Then I realised that if you add a powder to a resin, it sometimes foams like this.  This would have been pretty horrible with normal resin, but add that chalky oily nastiness fo the bad resin and you get this.  Lesson learnt!

So, my nice new gallon of resin arrived but so did the Hullabaloo, by the time I got back into casting it was October.  I poured a test pour first to make sure there were no problems, there weren't, so I pulled out a couple of the moulds that I'd not killed with the previous resin; Inferno and Albert and Victoria:

I knew almost immediately that this was not going well, the resin in the pot did not cure properly, so I pulled out the two moulds from the pressure tank and saw this:

The story didn't improve after I'd heated the moulds in an attempt to make the resin cure enough to demould.  The casts had that same sweaty, oily, sad look as I'd had with the previous resin!

...and the moulds were toast :(

This is what happens with oulds destroyed by dehydration.  In the photo above the look fine, but the surface felt less like rubbery skin (bouncy) and more like paper (dry, brittle).  This is what happened when I poured some good resin into the moulds after they'd been ruined, you may need to click the photos for larger previews to see the problem:

So, angry at my loss of moulds that was most definitely NOT my fault this time, I got straight on to the manufacturer of the resin this time; Smooth On, Inc. over in America.  They asked me lots of questions about how I'd measured, poured, mixed and used the resin and we could not come to a conclusive answer as to why it was working first cast but not second.  They would not accept that the resin was the problem and so after much toing and froing I agreed to perform another set of casts, but I was darned if I was losing any more moulds to it!

I carried out a highly controlled pour using three pots - one to mix, then I poured some into a new pot and mixed again, then repeated into a third pot.  Each pot had around the same amount of resin which lo and behond, cured perfectly the first time (the casts in front with the sticks in - nice and shiny and perfect) but badly the second (still in the pots as it was too nasty to remove).  So that's pour 1=good, 2=bad, 3=good, 4=bad.  We checked everything from the temperature of the resin, the environment, the humidity, how long I shook the bottles for..... we couldn't find an answer and so were at stalemate.  I cannot afford to buy gallon kits of resin willy-nilly and cannot afford to lose moulds to unpredictable resin.

So I was, and still am, in a bit of a pickle.  I can't keep losing moulds at this rate - each one takes me days to make (up to a week for some two-part moulds!) and I can't afford to lose so much time not knowing when the next bad cast will come.  I am now in discussions with my UK supplier (who are SO much more helpful!) who require a final set of test pours but have then agreed to help me replenish my resin supplies.  The end is in sight!  I truly hope we can find out the problem though, if I lose more moulds it could be an end to my casting white models!

I need to say this: ALL EXISTING CASTS ARE GOOD - if you've bought a Night Heather or Moonlit Dale or any other model I have cast in 2014 or any other year, then it is from good resin.  The dodgy resin I've been dealing with has (thankfully) been contained and no casts from either batch of bad resin have been sold at any point.

In an attempt to at least get my existing orders completed, I took some faster-curing white resin that I had and used that to get a nice selection of good casts...  that was until I noticed that, as it was older resin, it had crystallised at the bottom of the bottle (no problem with that, sometimes happens).  This isn't usually an issue as you can just strain these tiny little crystals out and go ahead and cast, but I didn't notice this until I'd poured five sets of Albert and Victoria (from their nice new mould that I had re-made after the resin disaster) and five Infernos (he had two moulds so I am able to cast him still, though the edition size has shrunk by up to 50 copies now sadly).

As you can see, from my remaining "good" resin I only got three good sets of A&V and three good Infernos (the ones marked with green bands) as I cast them after I'd discovered the crystal issues.  You can't see the crystals unless you hold the model up to the light which is how I'd missed it - I only perform this test after a few casts as it is usually a formality, but it can potentially affect how paint adheres to it.  I plan to treat these models and then prep and prime them to see if the treatment works.  If it does they will be permanently marked as seconds and offered as painting practice models as I've had overwhelming requests to do this since posting about them on Facebook.  I'll be careful to mark them as seconds as, whilst I am keen to support those who would like low-cost models to practice on, I won't have them sold on as good copies as I can't guarantee they will accept paint long-term.  If the primer shows any signs of problems, sadly they will all be headed to the bin.

So, whilst 2014 was a really productive year, it was also one full of challenges.  In general I enjoy challenges, I like to solve problems and work out how to overcome them, but I really could have done without bad timing of the issues I've had especially as the first problems came just before the biggest Model Horse Event of the year, and because the second lot of problems has held up production of out-standing orders and new models.  I don't know how much this resin problem has cost me, I try not to think about it!  It's a horrible feeling knowing that someone out there is waiting on models from you and you can't cast them in good time.  Luckily, I've spoken with those affected and they have been incredibly supportive and understanding but until I get the issues sorted out and reassurance from Smooth-On that they will not happen again, I am uncertain of the future of my casting white models, which has implications for the cost of the models I sell.

So, that was pretty depressing!  I feel some eye-candy is needed next!!  Next up, my collection and all the new models that have come to me in 2014, I was pretty shocked when I saw how many there had been!