Many thanks for that Godan! Stop Press Update! Just made the first resin casting of the left hand (and what he's holding in it), now I have to work on that casting to remodel the wrist and item before making a second final mould, but now I know the casting procedure will work as intended. That just leaves the right hand/arm and some straps to be part of the final torso mould (oh, and I've gone back and re-modeled an earlier part for a much improved look - more on that later!)

Before starting the creation of the Basic Pouches, Photo 6 illustrates the new source of self-adhesive lead sheet that I discovered on Ebay. The 35 year old DecraLed strip is seen above with the slightly thicker wide lead sheet on the left. The glue on the DecraLed is as good today as it was when new!
The first job was to measure the dimensions of the actual Pouch and multiply them by 0.16 to reduce the dimensions down to 1/6th scale. These were then used to mark out a template in thin card as shown in Photo 7. Then I took the whole of the stainless steel mesh sheet that I’d previously cut off the thin strip from for embossing the DecraLed and, using the metal roller, embossed a big enough area of the wide sheet lead to cover the template. The template was placed over this and the edges scribed into the lead with a stylus (actually a blunted knife blade) before using a ‘proper’ knife to cut out the shape as seen on the right in the photo. I also cut and sanded a wooden block as seen above which would be used as a solid former to press and shape the lead around. Before starting the shaping, I also scribed the bend lines into the front face of the embossed sheet and also from behind to simulate the heavy stitched borders that appear all around the webbing sections. The basic box shape is shown being folded up in Photo 8 and you can make out the pre-scored fold lines up the side. With the two sides and bottom folded up into place I then had to very carefully solder the sides to the bottom, trying to again simulate the sewn edges with the solder. This is shown in Photo 9 before the excess solder was filed back a little. This had to be done with as little heat as possible – just enough to melt the solder and run it along the join, not enough to suddenly melt the whole darned thing! Once the sides and bottom were secured I then had to remove a strip of the brown backing paper from the two halves of the back panel to enable a scrap piece of lead to fix them together as illustrated in Photo 10. I did then try to solder the rear join – the less said about that attempt the better! I learnt from that however and on the second Pouch I removed all the backing paper from the inside rear and applied a full width inner strip instead. I was going to ditch the first one (now with a sizeable hole in the back) but managed to salvage it in the end by fitting a ‘patch’ over the hole and giving the second one a matching section to compensate.
The final task with the wooden block still inside was to add the front bottom re-enforcing panel as shown in Photo 11 along with the remainder of that embossed strip waiting to go on the number two Pouch. You’ll also notice the rubber strip pushed down into the hollow Pouch. This was a scrap piece cut off a larger mould whilst making the locating lugs for its second half and with a little trimming was a nice tight fit inside the Pouch. Having made the nice smart ‘box’ it was of course far too neat and tidy for an ‘in use’ example. With the rubber pushed down inside to support the lead box I reached for the little Jeweller’s Hammer and proceeded to beat the merry hell out of it until the sides, bottom and front were all misshapen to varying degrees. This is more evident in Photo 12 where the next step is under way. The Pouches will fit on to the figure by way of a hole in the back and a locating peg on the torso. In order to drill the holes I’d need a solid Pouch so in this photo both of the hammered Pouches are filled with resin and waiting for it to cure. Whilst that was happening I carried on with the top opening lids of the Pouches. Basically the same procedure with a card template used to produce the embossed lead sheet as shown in Photo 13 followed by carefully soldering the joints again as seen in Photo 14. Once the joints were fixed I removed all the backing paper from the inside, placed the lid over the Pouch body and bent down the rear flap to stick the lid in place as shown in Photo 15.
Before finally securing top to bottom with super glue, the lids also received a bit of abuse from the hammer to match up with the body.
As mentioned earlier, these Pouch lids are secured with a brass snap fastener and just to mark the two pouches apart I thought I’d do one secured and the other loose as shown in Photo 16. The same lead sheet provided the two straps with stitching added with a sewing needle (the lines of stitching on the rest of the Pouch was with a Pounce Wheel set made by Trumpeter). The brass snap fasteners were a pair of large headed brass pin nails tapped down into pre-drilled holes and the fixed ‘eye’ or whatever its called was made by tapping one of my smaller paper/leather punches from the set I bought building the Pup. A close up of the un-fastened strap and eye is shown in Photo 17.
The pair of Pouches is seen attached to the main body in Photo 18. Each Pouch is secured (sort of) with a locating peg and hole. A hole was drilled through the lead belt and right through the resin torso directly in line with the brace running down the chest. Into this was glued a 2.5mm styrene rod which protrudes about 5mm out from the belt. A corresponding 2.7mm hole was drilled into the rear of the Pouch into which the peg fits. Why not a 2.5mm hole? I tried that! It seems the resin tends to compress around the drill bit, even though at this stage it’s completely rigid, and then expands back once the bit is removed. A 2.5mm hole should accept a 2.5mm rod – but it doesn’t! A 2.7mm hole will just accept the rod (but it’s still a bit tight for the first few fittings). It does eventually loosen off a bit though. Now back to the real Pouch, Photo 19 is a close up of that flap and buckle on the rear. The buckle is a three-barred device (see Photo 22) and is attached to the rear flap by the centre bar. The brace strap passes down through the open ended bar, passes over the Pouch strap and exits through the bottom section as shown in Photo 19. Now since I’m trying to create this whole thing in resin, I didn’t want to waste Richard Elbourne’s beautiful etched brass buckles so I looked for a way to replicate them in resin first. I did try a silicone mould but completely messed the thing up by forgetting which way round the mould had to be – I ended up with a nice set of silicone buckles – not the mould to cast them with!
By a happy accident I discovered the easiest way to cast the buckles was also the simplest – I just pressed the PE set down into a flat bed of soft plasticene, carefully lifted the brass out and then mixed up a little of the resin. This was poured over the entire block and using a wooden mixing stick I simply scraped off the excess resin until just the shapes were filled with the thinnest of skins over the rest of the block as illustrated in Photo 20. Once the resin cured I was left with the standalone casting shown in Photo 21. The plasticene block is in such a good condition that I could probably do another one if I wanted without making another mould – these are more than I need for this model though! The first buckle I require for the Pouch is outlined in Photo 21 and shown in close up in Photo 22.
In the next instalment the buckles are cut out and prepared and the braces adapted to create the second location point for the Pouches which now also need to be made in resin of course.
Until then, Happy Modelling to you All!

Robin.

Will do! I had a feeling that one should have been split up too!

Robin

looking stunning Robin.

Many thanks as ever to Ian and Mark! Things are progressing well other than a couple of re-moulds as the first ones were probably too ambitious (tried to cast too much in a single go!) The next week should see the final moulds and castings and then the fun starts with the construction and painting!
So to finish the Basic Pouches...

Diagram 30 illustrates the usual way of casting the resin in a simple two-part mould. The deeper mould is filled up with resin until it is just overflowing the top of the mould and the upper mould is placed on top. Unfortunately this results in any air bubbles contained in the resin from the mixing joining together and rising to the top of the mould as shown in Diagram 31, leading to the result shown in Photo 32. Instead of trying to remove the problem entirely, my solution involved literally turning the problem on its head! The first operation involves partly filling the deep mould, at the same time probing around the details with the cocktail stick to remove any tiny air bubbles as before, shown in Diagram 33. This first pouring is then allowed to cure completely before then filling the rest of the mould up to the top as in Diagram 34, again, just to the point of overflowing before adding the top of the mould on. Now came the sneaky part – the entire mould is then inverted upside down. Any air bubbles (and there’s bound to be some) will still rise to the surface, but now the surface is actually the rear of the previously cured resin so any bubbles will be safely contained within the casting, not on the outside face of it as shown in Diagram 35. I haven’t found this method described anywhere else so I’ve proudly named it as Robin’s Hydrodynamic Inversion Casting Technique!
The results are shown in Photo 36 which, despite a couple of tiny bubbles in the front of the Pouches caused by not cocktail sticking carefully enough, are much better than the first attempts. Finally, Photo 37 shows the two finished Basic Pouches attached to the torso. Once again, they are just held there by the two pegs and the top attachments – no glue required yet!
In the next instalment, the piece I am so far most pleased with – the scratch built Pattern ’37 Water Bottle!

Until then, Happy Modelling to you All!

Robin

Coming together nicely but getting awfully close to that deadline with so much to do but looking great.

Nice work Robin, looking very good.

Mark

Very nice work Robin. Love the water bottle effect!

Regards,
Phil W.

Love the detail, wonderful work....

Regards

Alan

Grateful thanks to Kev the Modeller and Mark as always! As to being a Master at this resin lark, I'll be happy being 'experienced' once I can cast perfect copies more often than 'not so perfect' ones! At the moment its about 50/50 BUT, I'm getting quite good at cutting the bad bits off and replacing them with good bits off another bad one!

To complete the left hand assembly the first task was to wind a length of my thinnest solder around the cast resin branch as shown in Photo 11. This is because the Chindit isn’t grasping a big wooden branch, he’s holding onto a thick bamboo cane! I have an old bamboo cane, which I varnished donkey’s years ago of about the same diameter. The rings on that one are spaced every eight inches so I converted that into the 1/6th scale measurement and marked the resin branch accordingly. Photo 12 shows the solder rings being applied in pairs on the pencilled marks and secured in place with drops of liquid super glue. After that it was time for the messy Milliput again, moulding the ‘moving’ joints of the cast hand into a proper wrist and applying the Milliput up to the solder rings to create the bamboo cane effect. After it was all completed and set hard I discovered that the wrist just didn’t look right. Despite the fact that the hand fitted into the arm just like the original action figure would have, and was exactly the same size, it looked too long and ‘gangly’ somehow. The solution was to carefully razor saw off a couple of mm off the end of the wrist and then saw off the locating peg to super glue back on the ‘stump’. The resultant pieces of the assembly are shown in Photo 13 just before I glued the peg back on. This was a little dicey as I inserted the peg into the arm, sanded the end flush and then offered up the hand with a drop of super glue on the wrist. It worked well but any seepage could have permanently glued the hand to the arm! Unfortunately I forgot to take a photo of the completed arm/hand/bamboo and as the torso is currently sitting in a deep bath of liquid silicone at the moment I can’t take one now, so Photo 14 illustrates the basic pose showing the original cast arm with the un-bamboo’d stick and the articulated wrist, (you can see the solder ring location marks for the bamboo rings though!)
In the next instalment, doing the same thing with the right arm!

Until then, Happy Modelling to you All!

Robin.