The waiting

Ultimately my goal is to have at least a blog post every Sunday and a video of a tutorial and highlights every other week. Since I do all my own filming, editing and uploading it is a bit much (for now) to get a video up every week. The whole reason I'm doing this is to practice with my skills and improve on them so that means I'm not going to just slap together some jumpy clips and bad transitions just to upload something.

With that insightful tid-bit we can venture forth into the work at hand.

So I'm still waiting for a respirator to use when I'm painting since I won't do any more spray painting without one. It might sound a bit extreme of me but I've had some crazy lung problems over the past couple months and I think it is related to spray painting. As the school quarter started I was in a rush to finish restoring my bicycle and even though I was coming down with a cold I went ahead and painted. Seemed like no big thing and yet I got a lung infection, followed by bronchitis, and finally a sinus infection. I don't think the being around spray paint out in the open air caused any of that but I am suspicious that breathing in the fumes at all might have weakened my respiratory system and allowed the virus to get a really good hold in me. So from now on and forever I shall be wearing a respirator when I do any spray painting or work with anything that has fumes for extended periods.

In the meantime I haven't been idle. I did some serious restructuring and organizing of my work area, finished a nice box for rolling dice, built a heating plate, made a replacement part for a vintage board game, started repairing the hot-end on our 3D printer, repaired two laptops ( I might turn one into a cocktail table style MAME arcade) and celebrated our son's birthday. There was a bunch of other stuff but that will come later. Today we'll start small and go big which means first up will be a look at the super quick hot plate, making replacement parts, and then a nifty dice box.

I have had this game, Key to the Kingdom, since the dawn of time (released back in the 90's).
Sadly at some point in the years I lost one piece. One of those little black squares which are used to build a bridge by placing them in the appropriate slots. So I decided to make a new one to replace it with which prompted my building a hot plate to keep hot water handy and making a mold and casting the new piece.
The hot plate was simple. I had an old mediocre steam iron that we were going to get rid of. It was a simple matter to pull it apart by removing a few screws. Once the outer casing was off I made use of the existing screws and mounts to attach some metal bits I picked up at the local hardware store. Good to note is that the metal used in these parts is not bendable as they snapped when I bent them to shape.

The surface of an iron is coated with a heat resistant low friction material. Basically if something is put on it it would slide off; great properties for ironing fabric but not for heating objects and containers full of liquids. Just take some handy sandpaper (80 or 100 grit will make things faster) and scrape away until some of the metal shows through. Just that little bit is enough so on a mostly level surface things stay put. To finish it off I attached the brackets to a couple pieces of wood and the hot plate was complete.


Now with a convenient and non-flame source for heating the water it was on to using the instant mold and making a new part for the game. I like to use JB weld for a lot of my replacement and small parts casting. If you've never heard of any of this stuff you should get some especially since it is so cheap and handy.

Instant Mold From Cool Mini or Not

Instant Mold From Miniature Market

 To use the mold you simply cut an amount that you think will cover the piece, put it in hot water until it is soft and malleable, and the press it onto the object you want to duplicate.

To do a two part mold I prefer to put the instant mold onto my cutting mat and press the object into it trying not to wiggle the part, that can stretch and give an uneven mold, just be firm and hold it for a moment. Then I push the second mold piece on top of the piece still in the bottom mold. This creates a nice two part mold with a unique shape to aid alignment and with a flat bottom so it will stay put.

When I got into mold making and casting I was often doing larger pieces so buying a gallon of resin would be reasonable and I would make quick work of it. Now that I work on small, individual, and master copies I rarely need a lot of resin and in small volumes that type product is expensive. People often use green stuff for this or some other putty type but I found that a lot of detail, even if the mold captured it pretty well, was still lost. In order to avoid that frustration I wanted something that I could pour, manipulate, and would fill in all the spaces it could. I thought and thought, "think, think, think,...", and then realized I had the answer in my tool box. I've used it many times to create many things and why not as replacement parts? Thus JB Weld became a constant material of use for me.

JB Weld mixes up quickly in a 1:1 ratio of the steel (black) and hardener (grey) and stays fluid (like molasses) for about a minute. I recommend mixing up a batch on something disposable as it is very difficult to remove. Even dry you cannot mix up a new batch on top of the uneven surface. The drying time varies depending upon temperature, sunlight, and how perfectly the ratio of the two came out. After the first minute it becomes too tacky to work well so I usually make many small batches if I need to fill a large cavity. I have many stories and tips so feel free to drop me a message for more info about this process.

The part is left to sit out over night and de-molded in the morning. Sadly I got my ratio a bit wrong as the piece was a bit rubbery and flexible. Be careful if it doesn't seem rigid as it is possible to stretch and warp them. Basically it just meant that there was more drying time needed and it was done by the time I got home that evening.


I cleaned off the flashing from the process and voilà a slightly different colored bridge piece. Might this method you might notice there are some small air bubbles but those are easily repaired with green stuff.

I hope that was interesting because with that over I'd like to talk briefly about the dice box I "built". I go into greater detail in the video so here will just be some highlights on the project. The box was originally a wooden shut-the-box game with worn green felt inside. We used it as a dice rolling box after the kids out grew any enjoyment of flipping the numbers up and down.

At one point I was thinking about making a felted card table (mostly inspired by TableTop) until my brilliant wife asked me a question: Why? Why felt a card table? I still don't know why people felt card tables for, she rightly pointed out, our hardwood tables look much nicer and the cards slide very well across their surface. So to sate my desire to felt something I decided to refurbish our nifty dice rolling box.

 I took the game apart and pried a few pieces of wood out so only the box frame was left. Getting the old felt out was a pain but eventually it fielded to razor blades, rubbing alcohol and repetitions of scrubbing when my fingers stopped aching from holding the box and blade.

I ran over to the hardware store and picked up a bit of trim that would fit nicely. If you have a straight edge with a 45 angle then cutting the lengths and mitering the ends is fairly simple. I used a hobby knife to shave them down to a perfect fit. All that was left was to stain the pieces and box and glue in the felt then trim.

Apparently after years of use and abuse the box had warped so I added some rubber feet. These I cut from a 1/4 inch sheet into small pieces and then shaved each one to give me the desired stability. I used a standard waterproof silicone adhesive to attach them. It think the results are rather pleasing.

Thank you for joining me again this week and look for the video on my YouTube Channel soon. It will have some highlights of the process for everything discussed here. Though not of the cleaning, sorry.

Next time we'll have a look at the 3D printer, hopefully back in action, some more casting and a lot of work with green stuff on the cathedral.

Until next time I wish you happy creating.