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It's a question, not a response. When dealing with pieces that occupies more than one square, like the dev, how do you create the piece, a normal piece or a big one? Thanks.
You're welcome. I invented this method by trial and error and long, frustrating effort, then came to find out, much later, that the basic principle of the process has been known and used for about ten thousand years. If you want to try it and get stuck at some point, feel free to ask me; I've already made most of the mistakes.:-) Good luck.
Hi James: I will need to give your silicon method a try. Thanks for elaborating on the steps involved. In regard to Sculpy, I prefer not to use molds (i.e., use free-hand modeling) ... but if one wants nearly identical pawns, etc., then molds will save a lot of work and time.
Hi, Gary: If you say it works, I'll take your word for it; I've seen some of your artwork, and am not surprised that you get professional type results with little sculptures:-) Sometimes hard molds are all you need, and if you can do hand-finishing, well, okay. I usually use a pourable silicon rubber for most molds, a rather pricy specialized stuff, but the window-caulk works fine for a semi-stiff, tough flexible mold, the advantage of which is the ability to make tricky undercuts and highly detailed surfaces, and ease of removal when demolding. For a 2-piece mold: 1. Lay the pattern on its side on a small, clean work-board, and build a vertical plastalene wall which covers the bottom of the pattern and creates a flat area all the way around it for at least an inch. 2. Use Klean-Klay (sulfur-free, commonly available oil-based plastalene clay, never dries or hardens) to build an area of 'land' around the pattern, using a small knife to dress the edge up to the side of the pattern at a clean right angle where you want the parting line to be. 3. Use a blunt tool to make a 'ditch' in the area of 'land' around the pattern, or push a few shallow holes into it; these will register the two halves of the mold into alignment. 4. Brush-apply the silicon all over the pattern and the land; let dry and repeat until at least 1/8-in. thick all over. 5. When dry, mix a small amount of plaster and make a 'mother' mold on top of the rubber; mix it thick enough to not be runny, but be quick laying it on, maybe a half-inch thick. 6. When the plaster piece is set, flip the whole rig over and carefully remove the plastalene clay, revealing the pattern, now buried halfway in the rubber, and clean the area well with a small knife. 7. With a small brush, very lightly coat the exposed rubber with vaseline, then do the other half of the rubber, just like the first half 8. When dry, make another plaster, right on top of the rubber; you now have a sandwich of plaster, rubber, (pattern), rubber, plaster. 9. Remove plaster housings and gently peel the two rubber pieces apart, completely or only down one side, if you like, and remove the original pattern. Now you have a mold that you can cast almost anything into, many times. Reassemble for pouring and rubber band around to hold it together as you pour into the exposed hole made in step 1.
To get a good mold line-up - do this, assume we are making a pawn mold for this example. 1) Have 2 slabs of soft Sculpy ready (for 2 mold halves). 2) Use some type of post (such as 4 nails) to act as line-up pins (Push these through bottom of mold slab) one at each corner 3) Add talcum powder to lower mold to minimize piece sticking. 4) Push pawn half-way into lower mold 5) put wax-paper around non-piece area of mold 6) add talcum powder to top of piece 7) press top slab down, then remove (you may need to practice with wax-paper and talcum powder)to prevent halves from sticking 8) Remove pawn and wax-paper. Leave the guide posts(nails) in place 9) bake mold halfs (apart) per sculpy instructions the nails and molds will be hot, so allow sufficient cool down. 10) Later: when you use the molds, apply talcum powder (light dusting) to both mold halves; then add the soft sculpy. The alignment nails should give you a good alignment. 11) when you remove the pawn, trim away flash and smooth out the mold-lines so they cannot be seen. 12) After all pawns are made-- heat them per instructions. Note: for large items I put aluminum foil at the center of the piece to a) minimize sculpy use and b) allow a better hardening In regard to photos - I have not taken any. Also note that I have mostly made characters from sculpy, also a dog, elf, strange guys, pumpkins, a cow, ghost.... I do have a box with a partial Sculpy chess set somewhere... perhaps lost in the garage.
Gary, I've used sculpy too, but how do you make sure you get a smooth and even split when making the 2 mold halves? It's a nice and simple idea. As you mentioned, the colors are very nice and come in a large variety. Do you have pictures? Thanks.
James Spratt wrote [in the last DragonChess comment] that you can make heat-free rubber molds ...out of simple clear silicon window-caulking (see his complete comment for details). Another method is to use Sculpy which is a registered trademark name for an elastic polymer (like clay) which you can add great detail to exacting shapes. Sculpy comes in various colors and can be bought in stone textures (great if you want pieces to look like stone). After you make a piece (one of each type you need) bake them iin a standard kitchen oven per instructions. Once cooled, the hardened pieces can be pressed into sculpy to make molds. The 2 mold halves must be baked for hardening. Once you have all your molds it is easy to make uniform sets of pieces. You can read a lot about Sculpy on the internet. I have made quite a few things from it myself... some of which people didn't even belive that I made (they appear to be of store quality). Note: you can also paint Sculpy, but I prefer to use the exisiting colors so I can avoid painting.
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