Tuesday, May 24, 2011

Project 365: Day 100 - Oyumaru!

I was about to write another rant but ah, screw that. Let's just get back to fun stuff.

We'll be casting stuff using Oyumaru. Yosh!

I got a packet of Oyumaru from Junex at a pretty good price. Oyumaru is the japanese equivalent of Instamold and from what I can make out from the packet its primarily used for sculpting itself rather than casting. I could be wrong though. There are a lot of youtube videos showing folks how to use instamold so I didnt have to worry about the japanese instructions.

I apologize for the crappy pics. I was taking pics as I went along and I didn't have time to set up a tripod and better lighting.
The festive packet held 7 sticks of material. Seems like a better deal than Instamold in that regard...
You can see that the sticks came in different colors and I decided to use the sparkly one. I promise to keep the Twilight jokes in check.
Oyumaru and Instamold are softened by putting them in hot water for a few minutes...
While the Oyumaru is steeping I went on and prepped the model I was going to cast with talcum powder. In this case, its a Cygnar Cyclone Heavy warjack. Oyumaru supposedly doesn't need a release agent but I didnt want to take chances since this is a painted fig and the fig isn't mine :D
The stuff kneaded easily while hot. You can feel it get cool real quick though...
... so I had to work fast and start pressing it against the part I wanted to cast. I made sure to push the Oyumaru into every nook and cranny well.
After I was satisfied with my mold placement, I cooled the mold with an ice cube so I can pop it off.
I was able to pop the Oyumaru off. I decided a couple minutes on the ice cube should let it set real well.
And here's my mold. You can see the detail that was retained.
I prepped a blob of milliput using talc on my hands to keep it from sticking.
Now this is the part I should've spent more time with in hindsight. I pressed the milliput  into the mold in little pieces to minimize the air bubbles.
The mold flexes a bit but goes back to the shape it had when cooled. I tried to push the milliput in all the crevices as best as I could.
After an hour I was able to pop off the Oyumaru from the milliput. The milliput is still soft at this point but stiff  enough to hold it's shape.

I think my first mold went pretty well. If you look at the last picture closely you'll see some creases and air pockets that I missed. For my purposes though this is perfect. The milliput hardens up really nicely after 24 hours. It's pretty strong but still easily workable. i tried to snap off the smokestacks but I couldnt. Neat!

I'll trim some of the excess milliput off which is easy with a sharp blade and drill holes into the smokestacks.

So what will I be using the finished piece for? Well, the last post should give you a clue ;)

4 comments:

  1. so papalambutin lang sa mainit na tubig? reusable ba?

    ReplyDelete
  2. reusable daw. havent tried. subukan ko later

    ReplyDelete
  3. So is this going to be wreck marker? Or are you casting a whole warjack?

    ReplyDelete