Here are some photos of the figures I made yesterday.

Artillery I'll probably just buy off-the-shelf, since it's not all that expensive. I'm also going to have to figure out a way to do horses out of rice- probably use green stuff for the horses w/ rice riders. By that time I should have a few thousand more figures cast and painted up. I'll try to get some pictures up later on tomorrow or Monday. But you'll have to paint the things before you put the epoxy on. After the epoxy dries you can coat it with whatever cleat-coat you want. Anyways, after you paint the rice take some two part epoxy and trace a line around the feet of the figures on both sides (note- if you want to make a master of these make the epoxy line very small), and then run a line on top of their 'heads.' The epoxy will fall down between the rice. Now that I have molds I won't be doing that again, but if I did I'd use the same technique. I put 1400 pieces of rice together like that in a day or so. If you use the texture-paint-tacky-glue combo the grit and the viscosity of the glue will hold the rice in place very comfortably. I put them in three rows, flat side forward from one side of the base to the other. Then I take some super-tacky glue from Walmart and slathered two medium-sized ribbons across the middle. First I slathered some medium texture paint on my 60x 20mm bases so that I had a good coverage. Although I destroyed the master in these two cases the molds I made came out as good at the others.Īndrew Walters- I used three adhesives in concert that made them really tough. I ended up screwing up one or two of my 18 'masters' by forgetting to spray them with a release agent (PAM spray) before putting the silicone on and then had to dig them out of the mold. I made six molds using tube silicon, first with a thin straight layer, then with two or three thick layers of silicon-paint mix.

So as far as creating a good copy it worked as advertised. After painting them up and mixing them I can't even tell the difference, and throughout the day I kept picking up copies thinking they were masters. In short the Durham's is tough enough to hold up to handling, sets fast enough and picks up the detail of the rice-files well, even getting down in-between them. Well, after only three or four failed attempts I was able to get exactly the effect I wanted. Sorry about the length of this but I'm new to this but want to give it a try! If it came down to it could I reinforce the Durham's by 'painting' it with epoxy resin or some other high-strength clear resin before spray-painting it? I applied it around the front feet, rear feet, and very thickly over the top of the figs heads so that it settled down in-between them, creating basically a clear block of epoxy with the figs inside. I've already found it necessary to strengthen up my rice figs with some epoxy resin, as the things have cracks in them that can snap off. I figure that I'd have to be more gentle with the things than with metal figs, but how fragile would they really be? My intention is to cast not only the figures but the thick (vice the thin) Litko bases they're glued to. I do have a question or two.īasically, my concern is whether or not it will be strong enough for gaming use. According to their website the stuff can be used to cast molds, and it seems like it picks up detail pretty well. I saw a bunch of good reviews for a thing called Durham's Water Putty, which is both cheap and available at Home Depot and Lowes. However, the stuff is sort of expensive and Id have to pay double for shipping here in Phoenix. I looked around the net and saw Merlin's magic and some other dental stones that seemed like they might work. I really don't want to bother with melting down metal, and so I thought that maybe I could cast them from another material. That way I could make as many as I want for a reasonably low price- and rapidly get up the the numbers i'd like to field in games, potentially even run some HMGS convention events. However, since I created the suckers I figured I could cast them myself. However by the time I was done my right pointer finger was spasming rather violently, and I can't really imagine doing this process again, at least not at such length. I ended up with 1400 figs in four battalions or so, which is probably accurate for battalions in the field. I spent a few hours whipping up four battalions of French infantry on 60mm x 20mm bases with 70 'figs' per base, and like I said they came out really nice. Also, it allows me to indulge in my most megalomaniacal schemes for huge 1:1 armies. Believe it or not they look just as good, even better, than many 2mm figs I've seen out there on the market. The other day I got a crazy idea and put together some bases of rice-based Napoleonic infantry.

Durham rock putty