Lead Adventure Forum
Miniatures Adventure => Pulp => Topic started by: tabletop on 26 April 2007, 12:21:35 AM
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I've been looking for cheap crates for some time, but recently gave up and created my own because modelling time is cheap, and the resources required to master and mold 28mm crates amounts to less than the shipping on anything I could buy on the web! I also wrote a mold making tutorial (http://www.tabletop-terrain.com/archives/2006/08/26/656/) a while back that may interest anybody that wants to try this themselves.
The white ones are mine, mastered from balsa and foam card scraps and cast in resin. The half painted ones are from Ebob Miniatures for scale comparison. I made mine a little larger because I wanted them for cover etc.
(http://www.tabletop-terrain.com/stu/archives/2007/pulpCrates.JPG)
I'm looking forward to painting them, because I want to try 'stenciling' a few white DAK palm tree symbols on several boxes and of course now I have a few I want to build larger crate stacks and fill a dusty warehouse with them...
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Very nice work! Did you use RTV silicone for the mold? If so, congratulations on a cheap supplier... all my suppliers here charge prices that would make a mold, unless made from leftovers, so expensive that it only paid after casting some dozen boxes...
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Nice work!
BTW - this is a bit OT, but what colour did you use for the greenish jacket on your Afrika Korps soldier (the right one)?
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Excellent crates and very nicely painted figures as well :)
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Nice work!
BTW - this is a bit OT, but what colour did you use for the greenish jacket on your Afrika Korps soldier (the right one)?
I'm interested about jacket colour too .
And about pants colour ?
Thanks
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Very handy, Stu! Thanks!
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wow, what can i say, everything about the photo is wow! the crates are nicely done, the figures beautifully painted, even the building is frantastic! Beautiful stuff
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Thanks all! Dang I wish I'd painted them before I put them up now :)
First, use I used RTV rubber for the mold. It's expensive locally too (in New Zealand), but it's invaluable for creating original stuff. I offset the cost by selling various 15mm terrain pieces from my blog site (http://www.tabletopterrain.com/index.php/quality-terrain-products/). I favor 15mm scale because the cost of molding and casting 28mm scale pieces is prohibitive. Hence I tend to create small scale 28mm pieces like these crates.
Regarding painting those DAK gentlemen, the colour choices were made based on an Osprey (I believe) DAK Uniform guide. See here: http://www.diggerhistory.info/pages-uniforms/afrika_korps.htm
The paints used were good old Games Workshop/Citadel. But of course they have no real military colour matches so I'm afraid to say the colours were custom blended on a palette while painting each figure. I like to work this way because it also tends to lend a natural variation to each figure. The GW original colours used you can probably guess: Commando Khaki, Desert Yellow, Graveyard Earth, Catachan Green and Bleached Bone.
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Why not sell the crates too, if I may ask?
Johan
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Local prices for polyurethane resin mean it's not really cost effective for me to do that unfortunately. Plus there's already a lot of 28mm scale manufacturers making crates/barrel etc. pieces like this (Armorcast in the US and Pardulon (http://pardulon.com/catalog/index.php?cPath=33_38&osCsid=68df336fbe93655a0e4e4b9ef3c2a867) in Europe for example).
I'd buy pieces like this myself, but shipping costs too New Zealand make it too expensive for me at this end! A bit catch-22 really. Hence creating small terrain pieces was one of the prime motivators for teaching myself to mold/cast etc.
Just because I'm a "garage" caster doesn't mean I can't produce quality terrain, it does however make it hard to do it in volume, or earn any real profit. The 15mm terrain I do sell basically covers my own hobby purchases. Still that at least means I don't have to explain hobby purchases to my lovely wife :)
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Very Nice looking Crates. Really want to get into moulding.
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Great job Stu. I originally had planned to sell some small resin terrain pieces, but like Stu said, it is very time consuming. I still sometimes do something for myself, but that's about it.
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I am thinking you need to sell these so we don't have to make molds. :)
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Ah well, here's an interesting question then:
How much would you be willing to pay in US$ for a pack of six resin crates - 2 copies of each crate in other words.
I have a rough guesstimate of price in my head to actually make it worth my while so I'd seriously be interested to hear your replies.
I see Armorcast have actually discontinued their crates and crate stacks. Pity because they were very nice!
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Well, the reason I asked was because the crates are rather small compared to the 28mm models, which would make them perfect for my 20mm models.
I have a dozen or so crates from Armousfast and they are a tad over the top for my 20's, though they do work quite well as filler.
Pricewise I can't really go over 50 cents per crate, so that would be 3 dollars per pack. Above that and I'm suddenly not so lazy when it comes to even more scratchbuilding. But I guess my price is too low to make it worth your time, I have been looking into casting myself so I know of the costs involved.
Hope that helps,
Johan
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Well we're not that far apart price wise. I was thinking around 80c for the resin casts.
However I've since molded up three crate stacks and they cast just fine in Ultracal 30. So I might consider selling them in the future, once I've built up a suitable pile of them and painted some examples.
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I've got around to painting some of my Pulp crates. I tried painting a DAK stencil or two onto them, but it turns out their surface is a little too textured to give me enough area to represent the DAK palm tree nicely.
Ah well, does anybody know where I can get some cheap 28mm 1:45th scale DAK palm tree transfers perchance?
(http://www.tabletop-terrain.com/stu/archives/2007/pulpCratesPainted.JPG)
I've also mastered some crate stacks and cast them in Ultracal 30 for quicker casting of a large number of crates.
(http://www.tabletop-terrain.com/stu/archives/2007/pulpCratesStacked.JPG)
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I've got around to painting some of the crate stacks I mastered and molded after I discovered how tedious painting invididual crates was!
There's three distinct casts in the above photo. You can see the obvious gaps between the pieces if you look.
(http://www.tabletop-terrain.com/stu/archives/2007/pulpCrateStacks1.JPG)
They're cast in Ultracal 30 (a hard plaster) rather than resin and separated they look like this:
(http://www.tabletop-terrain.com/stu/archives/2007/pulpCrateStacks2_thumb.JPG)
I've cast plenty of each variety, so now I've got to paint them all up for Pulp gaming! My gaming friends reckon I should create some barrels as well, put frankly they seem more like fantasy terrain than Pulp.
Did people still use barrels in the 1930's for transporting liquids about? Or were they using 40 gallon drums by then. Or are metal drums a post war invention? Hmm...might have to do some web searching!
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I think they used barrels to transport/smuggle liquor during the Prohibition era.
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Decent British beer is still transported in wooden barrels now.
Your location might decide whether they are still common.
Scots whisky was (still is ?) matured in large oak casks, smaller casks were used for fish (especially herrings - still available in wooden casks in Norway only a few years ago).
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I-94 decal pack GR-110 WW2 Afrika Lorps
They are not 28mm, but meant for 15-20mm, but they should do nicely.
(I think so anyway.) I'll do a test today with a few crates to see how well it works, and post it here ok?
Johan
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Sounds good! I'd love some suitable decals I can apply to these painted crates.
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My aploagies for the delay, my gloss varnish refused to dry on command.
(http://i76.photobucket.com/albums/j17/wayswatcher/20mm%20WW2/Geheimproject%2051/Afrikadecals.jpg)
I think these are Armourfast crates, or copies of them, dunno really. Anyway, on darker wood they will shop up a bit better but I like it like this, looks faded
Hope this helps,
Johan
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Hey thanks Johan! That's very useful and interesting too.
Here's a link to the I-94 company too btw: http://www.i-94enterprises.com/
I'll definitely be picking up some of their decals in the future. They look great on your lightly coloured crates, so as you say they should really stand out on my slightly darker paint job.
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they look fantastic painted up! nicely done!