I saw Blue Stuff on the interwebby and bought some, with a packet of Green Stuff.
Blue Stuff.
A re-useable cold mold making material. You can make a mold and when you have finished with that mold, just put it in some hot water and remake another mold.
I bought it here Here
I thought it might be useful for small conversion jobs such as making different hats, weapons or scatter material such as barrels, wheels etc. For example, I used British Marine heads on my Victrix French early Infantry set to make Spanish Militia units – now the heads are no longer available, I could perhaps use this to make some so I can make more militia.
So how do you use it?
First up you get 8 sticks in a packet – I took 3 and cut them with scissors into small pieces.
Boiling up some tap water, I put some in a jug and placed the pieces in it for about 3 minutes.
Swirling it about you can see it starts to soften off and stick together, creating one mass.
Once it had gone soft I took it out of the water (carefully) and flattened it out a bit
I took the thing I was going to make a mold of – a small bell I needed a few more of for my Spanish Church. I pressed it into the Blue Stuff, ensuring the stuff was tight in to the bell. I also put three register lugs in with the end of a pen. Once this was done I waited for the Blue Stuff to harden off – about 20 minutes, and for added certainty I put it in the fridge for 10 minutes.
I then did the same thing for the other side. When I came to putting the second half of the Blue Stuff mold over this half – I wet the surface slightly to ensure the two sides did not heat up and meld together.
Once the mold is hardened off and cooled down I pulled the two parts apart and took the bell out. It had made an impression on both halves of the mold. The Blue Stuff mold was quite flexible, but still quite hard.
I then made up some Green Stuff and put it into the two halves of the mold. Putting a little wipe of water on the mold I closed them together, making sure the registration lugs were in the right place.
After waiting at least 5-6 hours for the Green Stuff to harden and cure, I removed the bell from the Blue Stuff mold. The mold came apart quite easily, and the flexibility of the Blue Stuff allowed me to get the bell out of the mold.
As you can see in this Photo, and the next one it isn’t perfect. In fact it’s a bit rubbish, to be polite.
So, what do I think?
Well for a first attempt it was not that rubbish I guess. I think I should have done something easier – a barrel or wheel etc – so I could just concentrate on the timings, and how to make the mold halves work and things.
I will try it again because if I can make this work it will make modelling and conversion work so much easier!
It works well with Greenstuff, I tried milliput too, it worked, but made a right mess of the moulds.
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Ah thanks for that tip – using milliput was my next move – I’ll carry on using Green Stuff
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I think I might have some pics somewhere, but my milliput left a residue that got into the moulding material over time. Mine is the clear version so it was very obvious.
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That’s interesting, I was very aware when I was doing this very small mold that the area really needs to be clinical clean to stop muck getting into the Blue Stuff and ruining it. The clear verison sounds good – I might get some of that
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As a caster of metal, I found this interesting. The key would be to have casting material that either had enough pressure or low enough viscosity to fill out your mold. Given that the mold you have would never withstand molten metal, I would experiment with hot glues or even cold glues like PVA. and when making two piece molds, try using hand lotion or cold cream to separate the halves as you cast the other half. Not sure if you want to get into resin, but that is another option too. Good luck!
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Hmm, I understand what you are saying – I might try hot glue – as the end result, when it cools is hard, so makes it better for the wargames terrain.
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Key to that would be 2 things – the temperature of the mold (if it is too cold the hot glue would harden immediately) and the ability to get the glue to flow and displace any air as it flows on the surface of the mold.
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Indeed. I am going to try this over the weekend – I am worried the hot glue might be too hot and distort the mold, which after all softens with heat – but we will see. I’ll post up what happens.
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