Casting

The tools of the trade...

It's time to report in and let you know how I've been going. After a couple of false starts, I've gotten to the point of being able to cast some gun barrels. Earlier I'd gotten over ambitious and made a giant mould that included many elements. That was OK rto a point, except that when i was making it, I used baby oil as a seperation agent for the two halves of the mould. I foolishly did not realise that the warm weather had further reduced the already low-viscosity oil to the point that when i made the second pour of rubber compound, it was pushed aside by the dense, heavy, viscous liquid rubber.

Result?

One solid block of rubber with my master locked inside and ten savage minutes with a stanley knife to extract them.

Lesson learned - don't overreach when you don't know what you are doing! Use vaseline as a seperation medium!

I'm moulding the gun wheels and carriage at the moment and will do the slide over the next day and a half. More repotys as we go on.

80 Pounder - progress shot

As you can see, I'm, getting close to finishing off the slide.
I've placed most of the bolt-heads which I've made from cut off pin heads. Doing the forward rollers on the carriage was - er - "fun"!
I've cut the foot plates and just need to bend up some paper clips to approximate their mounting brackets. I'll probably not cast these latter, but merely provide them with the kit.

The final task will be to construct some wheels for the slide and we'll be done.

I'm very pleased with how this project has gone. It's really captured the look and "sit" of the original and taught me some lessons that will be of a lot of use in the future.

80 Pounder RML

UPDATE: Started work on the slides after I finished off the woodwork of the carriage this morning. Purely by co-incidence, the gun in the photo is about the right "scale" for 28mm figures, so guess what i'm using for a template?
Phew, ok, well it's taken a few days, but I think we are beginning to see results here. For those of you who've not been privy to various off-screen discussions, I've deciced to master a small range of off-beat artillery. This first effort is as the post title elegantly suggests, the barrel for an 80-pr RML, 25 of wich were purchased by Sir George Vernon in 1866 for fortres use in Victoria. It's been constructed much like the real thing; several layers of greenstuff have been built up over a plastic tube.

The sailor is for scale comparison. I think I've got it about right!
The carriage. All balsa, a little more work and detailing need to be added to finish it up.
I will not be assembling this to the point where I am sticking things together, as they need to be in a state where they can be broken sown for mould-making.
Dry run assembly. I will be finishing off the carriage today and hopefully making a start on the slide tonight.

The beauty of this mounting is that it can also be used unaltered with my next project, a 68-pounder sbml.