All of Your Bases

... belong to me bitch!
Heh, I always wanted to say that, don't know why.
Anyway I have started on my way making custom resin bases, for my Cadian Imperial Guard.

This project resurfaced a couple of months ago when reading on the 40KHobbyBlog about making your own resin bases. Since then, I've been going strong to create some resin. Add to my hobby projects Adepticon 2011 Team Tournament and wanting to have unified bases for our team, this seemed like the perfect thing to do.  One of the best places to learn about this is Tap Plastics.  Their tutorial videos are excellent.  Until my tutorial is posted (probably a few weeks), look at the Tap videos over and over again!
First things first, a test on the Cadians. I picked up a kit from Alumiite (available at my local train store) for about $60 total. The Silicone is 'Quick Set' and the resin is 'Regular'. Though next time I will try to order from Tap Plastics directly.


Taking some bases created for the test run, I ran the kit and created a pretty nice silicone mold.
The result- some bases I love! My guard army is a bit of hack together of learning new techniques and playing around. These bases won't break that trend anytime soon.

After doing a couple of resin molds, here is what popped out. The bases held their shape very well and the detail that came out was great. As each cast was done, the sand and defects were 'removed' from the mold.
The paint scheme is supposed to represent a "Mars" theme planet that the Black Jacks have been fighting on for some time. I'm not so sure about the colors at the moment because the GW Baal Red seems to have too much yellow/orange color for my taste. We shall see after a few of the guard get plopped on the bases.

However, here are a few things I learned during the test process:

• Make sure you have read all the instructions and have all of your material well before hand. This didn't bother me during this run, but is good advise all the same.
• I used sand on the bases and gave them a copule of coats of 'white' glue and varnish- however, while the sand stuck to itself it didn't stick to the base. The result was when I pulled the bases from the mold, part of the base stayed behind.  It took awhile to clean he mold up and when I did, some of the detail was lost. 
• Make sure you add a filler to the bases before doing the mold or make sure you have them well glued to the casting surface. I had some of the mold sneak under the bases leaving a lot of trimming of the mold and eventually each base. It would be so much easter just to put some putty or green stuff and 'fill' the bottom of the bases. 
• Don't spread out the bases so much on the mold, and don't pour so much. Despite being as scientific as possible, I greatly overestimated how much mold I'd need- wasting about half a jar of the stuff (CYA $15!).  There is a better plan for next time!
• Be sure to 'scrape' the top of the mold before it sets so that that bottom of the bases don't 'bellow' out. It just adds time to the clean up process. 
• DO THIS!  This was fun, exciting, nerve racking, but still fun. You should try it. :)
• A full tutorial to follow....