Projects Log 5/18/22: Head Castings, Resurfacing, More Paint Tests

 This should hopefully be a quicker read than my previous projects log as I don’t have as much to discuss, but I’ve been making some progress while I continue to wait for the materials that I ordered, which I’m hoping will help solve my paint adhesion problem.

Before I begin my next (and hopefully last) round of sanding, I’m hitting all the parts with another round of Mr. Surfacer. I used the last of my Mr. Surfacer 500 spray on these torsos, arms, and heads pictured above, so I switched to Mr. Surfacer 1000. I still have an entire pot of the brush-on version of Mr. Surfacer 500 and I’ll strategically apply that to any lingering pinholes on the surface that might have survived the overall coverage. There are still some of the deeper air bubbles in the fingertips and legs (curiously in the spots where I had air vents attached) that I need to fill in with milliput. I’ve been sanding these with a pack of sanding sticks I bought from amazon in combination with a sanding sponge for the wider areas, I’m thinking I’ll have to use the dremel for the more stubborn mold-lines on the legs and a few of the arms. I’ve been holding off using a dremel on my castings up until this point because I’m worried about taking too much material off, but I should be fine if I take my time and keep the speed on low-to-medium settings.

So far, surfacing and sanding my parts to fill in the air bubble pinholes on the surface has easily been the most time consuming part of the figure making process and I don’t even feel like I’m halfway done yet. I knew it would be a pain because Flex-It 90 resin is, as the manufacturer states, extremely abrasion-resistant. Every coat of surfacer and round of sanding edges me closer to breaking down and buying that pressure pot and air compressor, which I will eventually. It’s only a question of when.

I did manage to make molds of and cast my customized heads. These are the alternate Mr. Boneface heads that have a bandanna. The picture is tough to see because of the default color of the Flex-It 90 resin, but you’ll see the full details soon enough.

I also did the initial clean-out castings for my Death Master head, as well as the Rambo/Adventure Man head featuring the bandanna that I sculpted on. Since these particular castings were my first from the silicone molds (hence why they’re clean-out castings), they’re obviously not the best looking and their surfaces are full of more defects that usual, but subsequent castings will be much better. I just wanted to test-fit them on my prototype figure bodies as a bit of a preview. I took this opportunity to test out the new flesh-colored resin colorant that I got from Specialty Resin (the manufacturers of Flex-It 90) and I really like the way it looks.

I used the same flesh-colored resin colorants when I cast my surprisingly good-looking (for initial castings) custom barbarian heads. The one with the headband/circlet, I stuck to the body of my paint test Skelly seen in the previous entry.

I made my clean-out casts for my new Baltard molds as well. Since I knew these first parts would be junk-castings, I didn’t really bother cleaning up the flashing but again, my subsequent castings will be a lot better now that the junk has been flushed out of the silicone molds and I have a slightly better idea of how much resin to mix for the arms mold, the head mold, and the body/leg mold.

I have some Flex-It 90 resin left and I'm on the fence about whether to make more Baltards or save those for later and use the rest to make more of my larger, slightly more articulated figures (Mr. Boneface, Death Master, etc) beyond the initial batch of nine.

And while I wait for my methyl ethyl ketone to arrive (I did receive my 2K clearcoat and butyl gloves the other day), I decided to do another paint test experiment on flexible resin. These two luchador figures were cast in Flex-It 90 and Smoothcast 45D flexible resins and I wanted to see if I would have better luck getting Angelus acrylic leather paint to adhere to the figures, since these paints are designed to be flexible and are often used on rubber shoe soles as well as leather. After washing them both with acetone, I painted one black and the other white before giving them the full 24 hours to cure like it says on the bottle.

The results for the black one were encouraging as the paint didn’t appear to crack when I bent the limbs at odd angles, even to the point where the arms and legs snapped off. The black paint didn’t quite hold up to the fingernail scratch test, but I wasn’t able to scratch all the way to the unpainted surface. I might try this again on another cast-off piece cast in flexible resin, only this time applying the 2K clearcoat to see if that helps.

The white one was a total failure. Not only did the white paint not cover well at all, taking several coats, it flaked off quite easily when subjected to the fingernail scratch test though I didn’t notice much cracking in the paint when I bent the limbs. I suspect that some of this is down to the fact that the white took several coats to cover and it’s possible that they weren’t all fully cured yet, but I did get the overall sense that the white paint just wasn’t as good as the black.

As for the luchador figure series proper (which used the same silicone mold as the two example pieces above), I decided to shelve those indefinitely in favor of other projects. Like I mentioned in my previous log, the castings in hard epoxy resin weren’t the best and the painting process proved disappointing and overall, I just wasn’t vibing with that particular project. For small ticket items that I plan to put up on my etsy store alongside my bootleg action figures, I have another lucha libre themed idea that I think will go a lot smoother, be more fun to work on, and look exponentially better. But that’s all I’ll say on it for now.