Vlog: How to Go from 0 Skills to Recaster

One Month of Recording!

For me, this marks one month of recording videos. Gone by so fast.

Today we’re doing something I’ve been putting off for years. Bought this Toad 3-4 years ago with big dreams of using it to start a YouTube channel. Never got around to it.

Also got two demon princes. Casting all of this without a single clue what we’re doing.

The Wax Trick

How to attach the toad to the bottom of the cup? Hot glue might melt the plastic. Couldn’t find it anyway.

Solution: Scoop wax from a candle, hit it on there quick, swoop it into the cup. First try, baby!

Smooth-On Moldstar 15 Slow

Eyeballing the height—the toad needs about 150ml of silicone. Made 300ml total.

Key lesson: Don’t pour one cup into another. The silicone clinging to the cup throws off your ratio. Dump both into a third cup.

Pour slowly and from high up. Don’t use an oscillating fan—it blows air bubbles into your stream.

The Hexagon Rock Experiment

Made a mold of a random rock I like. Thinking it’ll make cool basalt hexagon terrain. All is not lost with experiments!

8 Hours Later - The Demold

There’s got to be a better way to get the cup off. But the wax trick worked—popped the frog right out.

First Cast: Smooth Cast 305

Holy dang. Lost some feet—air bubbles formed where air couldn’t escape. Need to poke vent holes in the mold.

The result: Awesome for first try! Only the feet are messed up. A couple air bubbles on warts (looks intentional on a Chaos model). Once I get a vacuum chamber, this will be even better.

The Future

This is going to be the future of the hobby for me. If you haven’t tried casting—do it. I half-assed most of this and still got great results.

Now I need to learn to sculpt! Going to sell these toads for whatever they sell for once I refine the system. Just want more people to have them.

30 days of daily videos is crazy!

Transcript

For me, this marks one month of recording videos, which is insane to think about. It’s gone by so fast. I guess technically for y’all, tomorrow will be one month cuz I took a day to upload the first video. But today, we’re going to do something that I’ve been putting off for years. But I finally got the stuff to do.

And couple of years ago, I don’t even remember. I think probably three or four at this point. Uh, I bought this Toad and I had big dreams of using that Toad to start a YouTube channel to actually start like sharing my content out. Uh, and I just never got around to it, you know, like stuff happens. I forgot to mention I also got two demon princes.

So, we’re going to try casting all of this uh without having a single clue of what we’re doing. Um I’ve got night gloves. Uh I don’t know why, but you’re not supposed to use latex. Okay, so I was taking a second and just kind of thinking through everything uh and going through the steps of my head one more time. And I was thinking like, how can I attach this the the toad to the bottom of the cup?

And I was like, I could use a hot glue gun, but then I thought the hot glue might get too hot and melt the bottom of this. And I also couldn’t find it. So then I just grabbed a candle and I’ve had it going while I was thinking. So I’m going to go real fast. I’m going to scoop the wax out of the candle, hit it on here.

I might need to get it hot again, but I’m going to try to just swoop swoop and get it in the cup. And hopefully that’ll be enough to stick it down for our purposes. Look at that. First try, baby. Pretty sweet.

So, I just made sure uh there’s none that’s actually on the frog. Moldstar. I’m going to keep it on the screen so you can see it. Smooth on moldar 15. Slow.

That’s what’s underneath this sticker right here. I’m going to my plan is since these have the measurement on the side, I’m gonna try to like eyeball the height. So like the the toad the toad is and obviously this isn’t normally how volume works, but I’m just eyeballing it. The toad we’ll say like 250 is certainly above his head. We’re going to look to pour like one 150ish.

I probably need to make a little bit. I’m definitely I’m just going to make 300 milliliters and if it works, if it’s enough to cover this, it’s enough to cover it cuz even if it doesn’t cover it, I think it’ll still make cool terrain. Uh this is just a rock. Um I’m like not into crystals or anything. I just like rocks.

But I’ve always wanted to make like terrain out of this. So, uh we’re just going to try it. Bigger pore hole. That’s what she said. >> All right, let’s try that.

Let me dispose of this properly and safely. Just going to introduce as much air bubbles as I possibly can. Now that I’m thinking about it, doing it how I just did by pouring one cup into the other cup pretty much guarantees I’m going to have a mis a mix matched amount of each because of the amount that’s clinging into the blue cup. So next time going forward, I will definitely dump both of these cups into a third cup. My understanding is I don’t want to I actually don’t want any of the silicone to go on top of the figure.

And I want to pour this slowly and from high up. And my fan is blowing it. I didn’t think about that. Oh, I just saw an air bubble pop. Oh, the fan, man.

Why does my Oh, it’s oscillating. That’s why. All right. Note to self, move the fan away from the project next time. I just watched an air bubble go down the stream.

Oh, I guess with my math I was spot on with how much we were going to need for the frog, actually. All right, this is this was a silly. So, forget about this one. Forget I did that one, guys. I think, you know, now that I think about this, this might make a really cool like hexagon for like basalt mine mold, which is kind of what I wanted to do with this anyway.

So, all is not lost with this. I could still probably make some cool stuff with this. So, I’m glad I did that. I had regret, but no, I think that’s going to be cool. I honestly just would have been wasted anyway.

Uh, and it’s not like it’s going to hurt the actual rock. Okay, so I noticed there’s a bunch of air bubbles coming up. So I just like really started rustling it jimmies and a ton of air bubbles are coming out. So hopefully that’s a good thing, but it also has me concerned that it is a bad thing. All right, I’m back.

It’s been uh it’s been like 8 hours actually just because uh I had to go do some things and this is the first chance I’ve had to come back to it. All right. There’s definitely got to be a better way of getting the cup off. I’ll I’ll spend some time thinking about that. But it looks like our wax trick worked.

And hopefully we can just pop this guy on out of here. Hell yeah, baby. Um, I got a little bit crazy with the wax. We try to cast it, right? So, I guess we’ll do next.

Uh, casting smooth cast 305. Going to do what I said last time and I’m going to dump both into here. All right. I think I think it’s done. Uh I guess we’ll pop it out and see.

Holy Dang. We lost some fees. Uh, I didn’t think about that. We got air bubbles in the feces. Or there’s there was no way for the air to escape.

I guess out of the feet is a better Yeah, that makes sense. The bubbles going to form in there. I’ll have to put some vents in the feet. But man, this turned out so good. So, this is the this is the original.

Let me get this wax off. And here’s the one we just made. Uh, I would say this is awesome for our first try. The only thing we messed up on is the feet. And it makes total sense why the feet are messed up.

And I’ll be able to just poke some holes in the mold there on that. So, there’s a couple air bubbles here and there, which obviously I think we can fix once we get it vacuum chamber, but I am so excited. This is fantastic. Uh, if you’re curious about how this worked out, um, not bad. Uh, I think I will save this for when I make more, but I’ll probably just cut cut this up and use it for chunks to make future molds.

So happy with how this turned out. Like I said, the feet are messed up, but that’s okay. I’ll just I’ll round these out and make it look intentional for mine. And then I’ll just poke vent holes. I’ll just poke vent holes over here so the resin actually can go in and push the air up out.

Okay. So, I am very happy and very excited. Um the the feet are messed up, but that’s okay. Like that’ll be that’s an easy thing to fix for me for my like first cast. I’m going to keep this one.

Um, I’m going to get a vacuum chamber. So, just so I can get like make sure I get a better graph gr. I don’t know why the lighting is so weird right now, like especially on my face. But, uh, there’s very little. There’s like two air bubbles on like little warts on his back, which it looks fine.

Uh, just cuz of like he’s supposed to be chaosy and warty. Uh, and the feet are messed up. I’m going to poke some vent holes in the mold and that’ll fix that problem. And uh I’m excited. I I’m going to wait until I get the vacuum chamber so I can just I want to get as close to the originals as I can and then I’ll start uh selling them.

I mean, I’m not trying to make money, but I’m just going to sell them for whatever they sell for. I know other people have them, too. I don’t want to undercut anybody. So, whatever they sell for, I will sell them just so more people can get them. Um, and I’m going to make as many as I can.

It’s kind of I was seeing if I can see through it. This is awesome. I’ve never done this before. Now I got to learn how to sculpt because this is this is going to be the future of the hobby for me. I think um this is if you haven’t done it, do it.

Like I didn’t know what I was doing. Uh I halfassed most of that as you can tell from the video and I still got a great result. So, I think um I could probably still halfass it with a vacuum pot and it always turn out not always, like there’s always going to be things, but have it turn out even better. So, that’s going to be the next step. I’ll probably sell some more sell some more Warhammer stuff uh to get the money for a vacuum pot.

But, uh very excited. Thanks for watching these videos with me. 30 days is crazy. Um I wanted to do like a recap of the stuff that I painted and how far I’ve done. We’ve got the transfer state stuff over here that I’m looking at that you can’t see.

Uh the boards, the the two MLY crew dudes. I’m working on the goblin army that’s over here. I’m going to prime that tomorrow finally. Uh I’m going to try to live stream that. I don’t know when or how.

I do know how, but it might have to just be a video because tomorrow is also crazy, which is part of why I can’t go to call to arms. But uh after tomorrow, everything for the goblins is going to be primed and it’ll just be pure gas for that cuz every day it’ll be actually be me be painting stuff. No more of the boring boring tedious stuff. I guess that’s lines. Must be from I did have a mask on at some point, but the the boring tedious stuff is over and it’s going to be back to painting.

try to do some cool stuff with that and get back to getting a brush on stuff. I realized I’ve been doing a ton of hobby stuff, but I haven’t really been painting, which kind of feels bad. So, I’ve going to figure out a way even after the ORC project to where no matter what, I’ll always have something that I can paint, even if it’s only like 15 or 20 minutes a day while I’m working on other hobby projects. So, that way I’m still always painting. Uh, so thanks again.

Very excited. Stay tuned. I’m going to turn out a bunch of these, as many as I can, once I get the system a little bit more refined.