| Brood Brother |
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Joined: Thu Feb 13, 2003 3:18 pm
Posts: 40
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| Quote (Canucks Fan @ 10 2005 Mar.,05:07) | The dental instrument looks like an endodontic spreader. ?Any dentist would have lots of these. ?BTW, asking your dentist for old, broken instruments is a great way to build your collection. ?I've given these old intruments to several of my patients who do jewelery, pottery etc...
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Strange, when I asked my dentist he said his instruments hardly ever break or wear enough to warrant replacement, since they were made from stainless steel.
That spreader was the only thing he could find...
| Quote (Canucks Fan @ 10 2005 Mar.,05:07) |
I'd give you an instrument anyday ?
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Well, you could commission a piece of work and pay me in tools...
| Quote (Canucks Fan @ 10 2005 Mar.,05:07) |
? Next time you are at the dentist, ask for an old explorer and a plastic instrument. ?These have nice curves which are great for sculpting rounded edges.
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Hopefully that won't be too soon, but when the time come si will try that.
| Quote (Warmaster Nice @ 10 2005 Mar.,10:33) |
I was wondering if we could use your post and pics for an article for "Incoming!" ? Either by copying and pasting directly or, if you prefer to make some adjustments, if you'd consider writing up a couple of pages and submit.
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Sure you can use it. I dont mind my work being shown anywhere on the web (in fact I am flattered by it), as long as I :
a) am notified beforehand, which you just did  , and
b) am credited for it (which I have no doubt you will do).
In fact I already gave Dysartes permission to edit this to make it into an article for his website, so perhaps you/we might get together on this.
If there are some changes you want to make before publishing it, you'd better do it yourself and show me if it is just due to the different format (i.e. proper article versus forum post), but ?if it is content related please don't hesitate to ask me to clarify it. Honestly, if there are any parts you feel are not *really* quite clear enough, just tell me. I am glad to explain more, but it is always hard to judge when a step by step/in depth explanation is required and when it makes the reader think you consider him a moron ;-).
Also if there are any other particular questions you (any of you, that is) have which I did not think of myself to incorporate, just ask! Perhaps I have come across them sometime.
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OK, now let's move on to...
Part two: Sculpting Materials
In this part I will present the materials that I commonly use,
and relate some of my experiences with them.
The major part will deal with putties, though I there is also some other stuff ?I think deserves some words, such as glues and plastic pieces.
1) Putty
I have used 4 types of putty in sculpting; these are Green Stuff, 2 types of Milliput (Standard and Superfine White) and finally FIMO.
The first three ones are different types of 2-part epoxy putty,while the latter is a type of polymer clay. For those of you who might not be familiar with that kind of material:
It does not cure by chemical reacton, but when exposed to heat which causes a solvent to dissipate.
On the positive side that means there is, excepting of course limitations due to shelf life, no limit as to how long the material is workable, unlike with epoxy putties, where you work during the initial stages of curing.
I don't want to just turn this into a description of the general qualities of those putties, since there are more than enough places to find information on them (such as the *excellent* FAQ of the yahoo group "1ListSculpting"), and I would effectively just be plagiarizing those in most places.
However you find rather little on this subject with respect to Epic scale specifically, and thus I want to relate some of my personal experience in that area (though quite naturally much of this reflects general statements).
First of all, while each of the putties mentioned above has *some* use in our scale, the only ones truly worthwhile for the real sculpting work (as opposed to "auxiliary" uses , such as bulking out a miniature) are Green Stuff and Milliput Superfine White.
(There are, by the way, two more types of Milliput I have not yet used,but neither has a finer texture than that Superfine White).
FIMO's use is severely restricted by a number of factors, most notably the fact that you have to bake it to cure it, which can turn out to be a problem if you include plastic pieces
(which I at least find almost indispensable in this scale, but more on that later).
Secondly it does not stick very well to plastic and metal, a problem which is especially noticeable at small scale.
Finally it is rather brittle when cured and tears/flakes /breaks more easily than epoxy putty, Green Stuff in particular.
[I ought to mention at this point, that I ?only have working experience with three colours of FIMO (out of several dozen I think), namely white, grey and black, and there are supposed to be some minor differences in workability between colors, but I seriously doubt any of this would make, say FIMO "Mandarin Orange", an much more adequate choice for sculpting epic minis...]
Nevertheless, FIMO is in my experience useful for three things:
1) If you are building something bigger (vehicles, scenery, buildings, huge creatures, whatever) it is a cheap way to bulk out the basic shape of the miniature, then bake it, and work on from there using better putty for real sculpting.
I'm not quite sure about the price, since I have not bought any for a long time, and anyway it might be different where you live, but I am almost willing to bet that you will never pay more than half the price of a comparable amount of Green Stuff. And if your only source for that is GW, then make that somewhere between a third and a quarter ;-).
[Or even more than that. The first batch of FIMO I bought cost me one sixth (!) of a blister of Green Stuff at that time, and I think it contains about as much. The various Milliputs are somewhere inbetween those extremes, with the finer variants being more expensive]
However, it just occured to me that maybe simple clay might even be used for this if the mini is just big enough (superheavy tank size ?) and you have an oven hot enough to bake clay (I don't know how much that takes, just that we had a special oven at school for that). I'm pretty certain this is even cheaper than FIMO, by orders of magnitude probably...
However, on the other hand I recall the batches being rather *big* so in the end this might not be economical after all, because you won't use even one 10th of it unless you're a professional...
2)Sometimes you will find FIMO useful not directly for sculpting, but for purposes of holding something.
Two examples from recent memory:
-When I took pictures of the SoB using my flatbed scanner, I placed a piece of paper ( so as not to sully the machine) with a strip of FIMO on it along the side of the scanner's glass and just stuck the pieces of plastic attached to the pieces into it to keep them fixed.
-When I re-glued the small Tau gun drone to a plastic "handle" for further sculpting after taking the pictures I showed you, I found that it was useful to keep the whole thing at a certain angle while the glue was drying so as not to have it slip off while it was still fresh, and a wad of FIMO was just perfect for that.
3)Finally, FIMO has its use in casting, when making a mold out of RTV rubber, since you have to first cover one half of the miniature in rubber, and then the other, and the FIMO serves as a placeholder for that second half until the rubber has set.
Oddly the fact that it hardly sticks to anything else, one of FIMO's main disadvantages, is of great value here ;-)
So much for personal experience. I also read that it can be mixed with Green Stuff (and probably other epoxy putties as well) in a ratio of up to 50 % of the total. This is supposed to provide a material that does not need to be heat cured, but still can be made harder and less flexible by doing so, and that also can be sanded/filed/carved rather well.
However, I mixed this up once, and I felt that it was notably less sticky than GS, which rendered it useless for my purpose at the time, and I didn't pursue this any further since I have come to find a GS-Milliput mix excellent for any hard sculpting.
Milliput Standard is the other putty that is not very useful for our purposes.
Compared to FIMO it *would* indeed make a better modelling putty for our purposes, since it sticks better, is self curing and just has a better "feel" to me (FIMO is somewhat "waxy"), but then again it is outperformed in every single category but price by some other epoxy putty, and if you need cheap stuff to bulk out an armature then FIMO is most likey better value for the money (or possibly clay if you have some other use for the remaining 95 %).
So basically stay away from this unless something better really isn't available. I bought it once to try it out, and I think I still have 3/4 of the batch lying around somewhere unused [and by now probably unusable anyway].
Now for the two that are important to us:
There are some significant differences between GS and Milliput (Superfine White, hereafter just "Milliput"). The former is part of the group of "elastic putties", thus named for their tendency to give some "feedback" to your sculpting actions, that is to slightly snap back into its "undisturbed" state. This can be useful, for example when sculpting clothes, particularly when it is half cured already, or it can be frustrating, for example when you try to create hard edges (of a weapon for example), which is next to impossible (at least in the scale we are talking about).
Milliput on the other hand is more claylike. It will generally retain any impression you make, thus also holds edges better, it can be "thinned" with water (which can be used to get smoother surfaces , by a combination of burnishing it and scraping off excess), and , most useful of all, it can be properly sanded and filed and otherwise processed when cured, which with pure Green Stuff is nearly impossible.
When doing infantry-sized minis in Epic scale I have found that a mix of those two generallyworks best for most parts, since it is fairly sticky, has a fine texture (a quality both of them share), is fairly strong (i.e. doesn't chip as easily as mIlliput, which could potentially be a major nuisance)
and can be worked on effectively as well as pure Milliput when dry (Which can hardly be said of pure Green Stuff, unless you use *very* fine sandpaper. On the culpting list they say it can be done with 2000 grit, but the most I can even *get* here is 1000, which *can* be used, but the effect is really not as rewarding as with the mix).
The exact ration of the mix can vary, depending on the needs at hand, but I mostly use 2 parts Green Stuff to one part Milliput.
As for using pure Milliput, I would categorically advise against it on infantry and smaller vehicle parts , since IMO the slightly better workability when cured is not worth the increased hassle with its claylike properties when soft, meaning it won't stick as well and is more "flaky" (I know that something of tht consistency cannot really be "flaky", but for want of a more fitting word I am forced to use this. What I mean is that you can't stretch it as far without it tearing apart/splitting. I hope you get my meaning, otherwise just try it out and you will see :-)), as well as the slightly increased risk of breakage when cured.
The matter is somewhat different with pure Green Stuff, which has its uses in some fields. Drapery is one of them, though I usually still mix in Milliput, just less than usual, that's all.
But whenever flexibility is needed GS might be the way to go.
For a recent example look at my SoB mini. It is hard to make out on the pictures, since the colour is somewhat off (into sepia tones), but you might see that the skull on her rebreather is adifferent colour than its surroundings. That is Green Stuff in its pure form, the only piece on the entire mini,
since the rounded shapes of the skull somehow just didn't really work out with the mix, which, mostly lacking the "shape memory" of pure Green Stuff was too sensitive, so that I kept ruining it, mostly around the eyes, which didn't turn out round enough.
So much for putty.
Besides putty I make heavy use of plastic parts in my sculpts.
there are several different soureces for diferent kinds of plastic.
First off, you might be lucky enough (unlike me ^^) to live in a place with decent modelling stores that stock sheets of plasticard and other plastic in other shapes. In that case I would recommend going there and have a look at what they offer, before resorting to the alternative sources I am going to talk about.
I can't really give much advice regarding proper plasticard since I have nebver had the privilege of even seeing any firsthand...however one word of warning: from what I gather there are (at least) two distinct kinds of plastics available, and one of them can not be glued using plastic cement !
Now since this is in my opinion one of the things that make plastic great for conversion, especially in our scale, where regular glueing can be either a quite messy process or yield a very weak bond due to small surface area at the joint.
I find these problems are almost nonexistent with plastic glue, which works by melting the plastic together, not by adding a sticky substance.
Now with that said, and having again ranted to my hearts content (well, not quite, but this is an imperfect world...) about my global situation compared to the modelling supplies paradise that is (seemingly) the USA, let's get back to something positive, shall we?
I have basically two sources for plastic.
One is, not very surprisingly, from old sprues. I only have experience with the GW kind of plastic in this regard, but once my supply of old infantry sprues is used up I will probably try a kit by revel or some other company. I don't think it is any worse, but who knows.
I also get a different kind of plastic from the bottoms of throwaway cups (you know, the white ones, very thin - you probably won't even have to buy any, just take a walk in a nearby forest and you should find some  ).
So far I have used two different kinds of cups, and they each had slightly different qualities. I
t probably makes no sense to try and describe them in detail, since chances are that there exist several ten thousand different kinds of plastic cups in this world and yours will again be different from mine.
The important thing is that they have generally different applications from the GW plastic.
First of all they have the advantage of being flat(er)/thin(er) already, so you will not have to do as much scraping to get them down to a suitable thickness for weapons and other small pieces that are rather longer and wider than they are thick. I used this for the Bolter and the crucifix on the Sister of Battle, as well as a few small parts on the and for the armature beneath the feet.
I still had to do some shaping other than just cutting out a piece, but it was not that much effort.
They also have a different "feel" when working on them;
In particular small cuts are easier to make(I think the material is softer).Possibly owing to the fact that they seem to be rather pressed than cast, they also have greater horizontal stability, by which I mean that they do not bend or warp quite as easily, and the displacement effect caused by a knife blade is not so bad here.
By the way, for cutting out the finer details of those generally rather fiddly small shapes I can just advise the modified razorblade #10. Very useful when cutting small corners/undercuts.
Fine sandpaper can also be useful to get smoother angles and lines.
Scraping with an exacto blade or a razor is useful to further reduce the thickness of the plastic.
This is also more or less the main way of getting the GW plastic from the raw form into a usable form.
(I assume that form is some kind of rod-like shape of whatever thickness you desire, since that is what *I* mostly need it for, to make armatures out of. Otherwise just carve/cut/file it as you see fit for your purposes)
First cut a few centimeters from the sprue. Think about two centimeters at most to work on (that is: to turn into something usable) and between one two more to hold on to.
Much more of the former will a)make it harder to get a uniform thickness and b) incerase the risk of bending/breaking.
Much less of the latter will make work more tiresome and difficult, since you won't be able to grip it as well.
Then first do some rough cutting/carving to get rid of about half the thickness *in one dimension*. Do not remove plastic from more than one side. This is waste of material (see below) and leaves you without any external straight lines for orientation.
Now use a sharp knife to scrape it until you get to the thickness you need ( i.e. the diameter of the rods you want to make) and then some sandpaper and the knife to make it more even. Then cut it lengthwise into as many parts as your
heart desires.
Your heart will usually be prudent enough not to desire more than four, since then the individual strips will get quite thin by then (I'm assuming there is nothing any thicker than the outermost rim parts of the sprues, though if there is, you can go for more strips.) and you risk snapping them off at their base while cutting them. This is because the insertion of the blade will cause a displacement of material to the sides.
This can be minimized (but never quite fully eliminated) in 3 ways:
-use as thin a blade as possible
-do not make a full cut straight away, but first cut in small steps, gently and not fully through the material, so as to create a kind of "perforation" before actually cutting
-don't cut straight down, but make a wedge shaped cut. This is most effective, but also takes more time.
[Don't yet remove the strips from the grip part, you will still need that. So you will have to cut that too.]
Now you will be left with strips, not yet proper rods. What's left to do is cut/file/carve/sand etc them into as round and regular a shape as possible (and as is necessary for the job. This will be a pain in the-place-were-the-sun-never-shines when I try to do some of those Necron rods, which ought to look as regular as possoble... on the other hand an armature will be covered anyway, so it doesn't have to meet nearly those standards).
Just another tip: In order to keep the rods from breaking once you get them down to really small diameters, it is good hold the piece with you thumb and index, and move the middle finger of the holding hand along with the movement of the blade to provide counter-pressure.
Finally I am sure there *must* be some machine application which can do all that which I just described with a minimum of effort, results of better and more constant quality and with longer rods, but I am not very knowledgeable in that field, unfortunately.
So much for plastic, I will say a little more on some of it's application, most noatbly armatures in the ?third and final part of this little essay.
Now I mentioned glue somewhere up above, didn't I?
Now probably there is not all that much tosay , since as modellers/converters you likely know at least as much or more about that then I do as (mainly) a sculptor.
Still, it is an essential aspect of al miniature building, so a few words on it would be in order I believe.
I use three different kinds of glue:
1)Revel plastic cement with a needle for precision application.
Now first of all, forget that needle, you need much more precision here, usually. I usually spill some of it on a piece of paper or whatever is at hand (except for plastic, d'oh ;-)) and then pick some of it up with a needle or a toothpick and apply it to the spot where it is needed, OR, whenever possible, I dip one of the parts that are to be glued slightly into it ("into" really means "just barely breaking the surface").
I try to make it so that whenever something has to be glued it's made of plastic if that's possible, since (see above and below) it's by far the easiest method. The less surface are on the joint the more this applies.
2) UHU epoxy glue: comes in two parts in two separate tubes, quite small and relatively cheap.
Has to be mixed before use, which is a little tricky as the hardener and filler are the same colour (i.e. transparent) which means you can not be quite sure when they are fully mixed, but that's really a minor annoyance.
There are at least three different types of this glue, which differ in their working time and time it takes them to fully cure.
The one I bought the last time has 5 minutes of working time, the one I used before has 2. I'm rather in favour of the latter, since even though you will waste more glue (because it cures beyond usability quite quickly, so glueing several differentparts in succession is hardly possible).
The advantage over the 5 minute version is that parts joined by the latter have a tendency to slip or get otherwise separated from each other in the first ten miuntes or so.
(That's where I used the FIMO (see above), to prevent slipping away of one part by placing the halves of the joint horizontally to each other).
3)Finally I use White glue (at least that's what I believe it's called in english. It's a kind of glue intended for use on wood pieces (hence it's German name "Holzleim", "Holz" meaning wood and "Leim" being a kind of ,usually rather thick, glue), but it can be used on almost anything, with varying results.
It's not much good in epic scale, but since we have it at home anyway, I sometimes use it on (relatively speaking)larger pieces it is a) cheaper and b) doesn't need to be mixed first, which also means that c) there is no(tmuch) waste).
Phew, that's it. Got rather more than I intended. Well, I think I will retire now ;-) (to bed that is, not into a nursery home...)
Cheers,
Drasannar
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"...and they taught me terror. How to use it and how to face it."
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) sculpting point of view, its always interesting to see what others use & hear their approaches, especially in small scales. Great stuff!
. 
I'm not sculptor, nor a potter (Harry or otherwise), and I only know some of this stuff from the theoretical side, having to give lectures on the structures of ceramic materials.