Vlog: How to go from 0 skills to Recaster.

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 because 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 it.

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

So, we’re going to try casting all of this without having a single clue of what we’re doing. I’ve got nitrile gloves. 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 and going through the steps in my head one more time. And I was thinking like, how can I attach 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 there’s none that’s actually on the frog.

Smooth-On Mold Star 15 Slow. That’s what’s underneath this sticker right here. My plan is since these have the measurement on the side, I’m gonna try to like eyeball the height. So like the Toad—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 150-ish. I probably need to make a little bit more. 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. Because even if it doesn’t cover it, I think it’ll still make cool terrain. This is just a rock. 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, we’re just going to try it.

Bigger pour 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 mismatched 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 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 was 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 terrain 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. It honestly just would have been wasted anyway. 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 its 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 like 8 hours actually just because 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 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. I got a little bit crazy with the wax. Let’s try to cast it, right?

So, I guess we’ll do next—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 it’s done. I guess we’ll pop it out and see.

Holy—dang. We lost some feet. I didn’t think about that. We got air bubbles in the feet. Or there was no way for the air to escape. I guess out of the feet is a better way to think about it.

Yeah, that makes sense. The bubbles are 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 original. Let me get this wax off. And here’s the one we just made. 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 a vacuum chamber.

But I am so excited. This is fantastic. If you’re curious about how this worked out—not bad. I think I will save this for when I make more, but I’ll probably just 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 round these out and make it look intentional for mine. And then 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. The feet are messed up, but that’s okay. Like that’ll be—that’s an easy thing to fix for me. For my first cast, I’m going to keep this one.

I’m going to get a vacuum chamber. Just so I can make sure I get a better result. I don’t know why the lighting is so weird right now, especially on my face. But there’s very little. There’s like two air bubbles on like little warts on his back, which it looks fine just because he’s supposed to be Chaosy and warty. And the feet are messed up. I’m going to poke some vent holes in the mold and that’ll fix that problem.

And I’m excited. 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 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. 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 going to be the future of the hobby for me. I think if you haven’t done it, do it. Like I didn’t know what I was doing. I half-assed most of that as you can tell from the video and I still got a great result. So, I think I could probably still half-ass it with a vacuum pot and have it turn out even better. So, that’s going to be the next step. I’ll probably sell some more Warhammer stuff to get the money for a vacuum pot.

But very excited. Thanks for watching these videos with me. 30 days is crazy. I wanted to do like a recap of the stuff that I painted and how far I’ve come. We’ve got the Transfer State stuff over here that I’m looking at that you can’t see. The boards, the two Malifaux crew dudes. I’m working on the goblin army that’s over here. I’m going to prime that tomorrow finally. 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 after tomorrow, everything for the goblins is going to be primed and it’ll just be pure gas for that because every day it’ll actually be me painting stuff. No more of the boring tedious stuff. I guess that’s lines. Must be from—I did have a mask on at some point. But the boring tedious stuff is over and it’s going to be back to painting.

I’m going to 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’m 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.

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.