Random Resin Recasts – Part 1

I enjoy experimenting with making molds and resin castings of random figures picked from either my collection shelves or (more often) the bits bin where I keep my customization fodder, so much so that I’m launching an ongoing series detailing my experiments in seeing which items I can successfully cast and which ones end up being total duds. This will be presented in a style similar to the test pieces shown in my DIY mold making article.

The first subject is this 3” figure from what I’m told is a line of Medieval fantasy toys by Chap Mei, a company that is largely known today for their generic soldiers, vehicles, and those weird dinosaur/animal playsets you might stumble across on Amazon. I believe this figure is from the early 2000’s and I have no idea when I got it or where I got it from (most likely a garage sale, thrift store, or random Ebay assortment like most of the things you’ll see featured here). In any event, here it is in the mold. I used the Gelatin-Glycerin mold compound to make this one.

Just like the pieces I select for my recasts, the color of resin dye I use is also random. Here I used a purple red, though you probably can’t see the purple (I know I couldn’t). I thought the casting came out really well, particularly the hands. Even though I took a bit of time adding the air vents, it’s still not a guarantee as you’ll see shortly…

I was pleased enough with how the red guy came out that I made two more castings from the same mold. The transparent blue one was the second one I made and for some reason that I don’t fully remember, his left hand didn’t turn out as well as my first and third efforts. I’m thinking maybe either not enough resin flowed in that partiuclar area on that particular pour or more than likely, it broke off when I was demolding it. The green guy’s hands casted as well as the first and had the added bonus of being the only one of the three where the original figure’s spiked shoulder pads came through, though unfortunately a slow leak in the mold robbed him of his feet. I filled them up when I was doing another casting, but for some reason, his ankles ended up being hollow (hence why his feet from the second pouring don’t quite fit).

If I end up doing anything with these, I’ll leave the red guy as-is and probably swap some hands or feet between the green and blue guy. Onto the next victim…

I had so much fun making resin duplicates of my Robot Heroes Mirage figure that I decided to try my hand at recasting my G1 Sunstreaker from that same toyline. Once again, I went with the DIY molding compound here because I just prefer it over Composimold when it comes to making quick, overly simplistic cut-molds (but fear not, you’ll be seeing Composimold make an appearance a bit later on). It’s easier to cut, its more transparent so I can see the resin filling up, and it doesn’t get as hot as Composimold, and thus, I don’t have to wait as long for it to cool off after melting it in the microwave before pouring it into a cup where a figure is secured to the bottom with hot glue (in my experience, Composimold has a tendency to melt hot glue, causing the figures to float freely, ruining the mold).

As you can probably tell from the color, this used the same batch of epoxy resin as the first knight guy. While there were some air bubbles that I didn’t account for when I was making my air vents for the mold (namely the sides of his head and under his arms), this one also came out well enough for me to want to do something with later. Since there aren’t as many fun variants and repaints of Sunstreaker as say, Mirage or Starscream or Optimus Prime, my ideas for how I want to customize this recast are limited to his two Diaclone variants: the red one (Spin-Out) and the police car one (Cordon). I’ll probably go with the Cordon motif and make him a lightbar that goes across his chest. Should be a fun quickie project (famous last words, I know). I would have tried casting another one, but the mold split in half along the seam and like I mentioned before, it’s not worth trying to tape back together because no matter how hard I try to seal it up or what I use, a one-piece mold that’s split into two will just leak on you and make for an incredibly frustrating resin pouring experience. So I melted it back down and moved on to the next thing.

As for the casting, I cleaned off most of the flashing with a hobby knife and snapped a side-by-side pic with the original Robot Heroes Sunstreaker figure. I would later use some Vallejo plastic putty that I bought recently to fill in some of the air bubbles.

We’re not done yet! Up next are some luchador erasers that were an ebay impulse buy a while back. I just thought they were incredibly well-sculpted for regular old erasers, so much so that it would be a shame not to at least try to recast them in a more permanent medium than eraser rubber. I figured I would test the water by just molding one of them for now and while I would like to eventually duplicate the fat one and possibly the guy doing the warrior (namaste and all that), I would ultimately go with the orange guy sans his cape.

Due to the complexity of his pose, I decided that a “clay-up” mold using non-sulfur, non-hardening modelling clay and Composimold might be the best option here. And since I still have some deli containers (the very same ones that I used to cast the bootleg He-Man figure previously), I decided to try and make this mold following the same general steps from a video that I saw on the official Composimold youtube channel.

I covered the back half of the figure in a bed of modelling clay, put it in a deli container with a “window” cut out to pour the Composimold, applied some mold release and bubble buster, secured the lid with some tape and poured in the molten Composimold. And just like the youtube video, I didn’t add any air vents because I was genuinely curious to see if I’d get similar results by doing what they did in the company’s video. I let the Composimold solidify a little bit at room temperature before popping it in the freezer.

After leaving it for an hour or two, I took it out of the freezer, carefully removed it from the deli container for later reuse, and removed the clay from bottom of the mold. With the back side now facing up, I put the mold back into the deli container, applied more mold release and bubble buster (going especially heavy on the mold release this time so the two haves could separate). I resealed the lid, poured on the second layer of Composimold, and put the mold back in the freezer.

And here’s the finished mold, the luchador eraser now freed to go back into his box. The mold looked good, but the real test would be finding out how the figure turns out once the resin is cast. Like with all my molds, I hold it together with rubber bands and then wrap it all around with packaging tape to prevent any potential leaks before pouring in the resin (again allowing the cup containing the fully mixed resin to float for 3-5 minutes in a mug of hot water to make the resin easier to pour in thin streams as well as to get rid of some of the air bubbles).

My first attempt at casting this figure (the dark brown one) was an abject failure. The hands came out find, far better than I would have expected given the complete lack of air vents, but the face was a total disaster and the finish (even though its hard to tell from the picture) was covered in unsightly bumps and lumps, which I’m thinking results from Composimold’s bubble buster spray and, no matter how much I try to smooth it out with a brush, always clumps together in these tiny little pustules that completely ruins the surface of whatever you’re trying to cast. I tried casting it a second time where I didn’t use bubble buster. The result was generally better, even though the left hand didn’t come out as well. I dyed the resin Rose Red (which came out looking like pink lemonade) but since this wasn’t the only thing I was casting at the time, I ran out of resin before it fully filled up his feet (hence why they’re a different color, because I topped the mold up later on).

Like with the knight guys, if I decide to customize this luchador, I’ll probably take the left hand from the dark brown guy and glue it on the pink guy before doing a full repaint.

And you know I can’t end this without trying my hand at molding something big. The bootleg He-Man figure from last time turned out well, so I decided to up the ante a bit and try recasting a 6” Optimus Prime from the Titan Warriors line of non-transforming, limited articulation Transformers figures from around 2013-2014. According to the tfwiki, there were only four G1 style Titan Warriors in total from that series, of which I only have the Optimus and Starscream (the other two were Megatron and Soundwave, though before seeing the wiki page, I would have sworn there was a Bumblebee too). While it would have made a lot more sense to do a two-part mold or another clay-up mold with Composimold, I wanted to keep pushing the limits of my DIY molding compound like I did when I duplicated the bootleg He-Man figure.

And like the bootleg He-Man figure, I used yet another deli container, gluing Prime’s feet and to the bottom along with the air vents I glued to his hands. I wrapped several layers of thick plastic packaging tape around the upper lip of the container because it wasn’t tall enough to account for his head and I didn’t want to take the figure out after I glued it down and go through the trouble of finding another (more appropriately sized) mold box. It took all of my DIY molding compound to cover the entire figure (all two batches worth) and I was really nervous carrying it to the fridge. But thankfully, I made it without any major spillage. Here’s the finished mold with Optimus still trapped inside. You can very easily tell where the deli container ends and my improvisation with the tape begins.

His right arm had some minor issues due to its close proximity to the walls of the mold box (causing the mold around that area to be incredibly thin) but I was expecting that. All in all, the casting came out great. For the first recast, I used the same batch of resin as the second attempt attempt at casting the luchador eraser, hence why Optimus is the same rose red color.

I was so happy with how my initial Optimus Prime recast came out that I made another one. I wanted to dye the resin a translucent black for a potential “ghostly” Nemesis Prime custom but unfortunately I only had a drop of the black resin dye left so I just mixed in some white dye instead. My second casting turned out just as good as the first one. I either got really lucky with this one or the simple design of the figure worked out in my favor. Either way, I’m pretty thrilled with it and once I get some more epoxy resin (I have a whole gallon coming in the mail any day now), I want to try my hand at casting some Titan Warriors Starscreams as well. There’s a lot of fun customization potential there (Jungle Attack Starscream, anyone?).

I would have probably made a third one just because, but I only had a little bit of epoxy resin left and there was still a few smaller things I wanted to cast (namely a Snake Mountain fridge magnet and some more duplicated action figure stands). Here’s a final shot of the Optimus Prime mold (I split it in half after the fact to get a good picture) for posterity.

And that’s the first of what I hope to be many Random Resin Recasts in the bag because I have lots more cool stuff that should be fun to duplicate and customize.