ShadowLight's Adventures in Hirst Arts

Like most of you, I've seen (and drooled over) tons of Hirst Arts terrain around on the web and at conventions. Well, I finally went over the edge and ordered my first Hirst Arts molds! (ok, actually my wife bought them for me for GM's Day!)

I'm sure there are others out there teetering on the edge, so I decided to chronicle my learning curve with Hirst Arts so you can see if it's something you can do or if it's even worth it.

So, here goes!!


On Sunday night, my wife ordered molds #70 (Fieldston Wall) and #260 (1" Flagstone Floor Tile). The cost was $34 for #70 and $29 for #260, and $7 for shipping and handling. Total: $70

Monday morning around noon, Bruce Hirst sent me an email/invoice saying that the molds ha already been sent! AWESOME!


By Tuesday, I couldn't stand the wait, I decided to make a pound board - a board that you can pound on to help get the bubbles out of the plaster. To do this, I glued (using Aleene's Tacky Glue) two kitchen sponges to the bottom of a 1/4" thick piece of MDF. Here are the results:


More to come...

Since my molds didn't arrive yesterday (of course), I tried to pick up all the rest of my materials today. My awesome wife spent some time at the local craft store and picked up some Permastone. There's a pretty good review of how the stuff works on the Hirst Arts website.

Now, Bruce Hirst recommends some dental plaster called Excalibur. The stuff costs $40 (plus $7 shipping) for a 50 lb bag from ClintSales (email cindy@clintsales.com if you want to order some) - so about $1 / lb. The permastone that my shockingly gorgeous wife picked up was about $7 for a 28 oz tube (shown below), or about $4 / lb. So it's definitely more expensive, but I'm still trying to get my Excalibur ordered and I cant just let those molds collect dust!!!

Well, when I got home from work this evening, there was a lovely package in my mailbox! Yep, I ordered them on Sunday night and they were in my mailbox on Wednesday evening!! You wrok Bruce!!

Here's a picture of the molds:

How cool are those?!!


Here's my tube of Permastone:

My First CAST!!!

To prepare my supa-swank table for casting, I cut a garbage bag in half, opened it up and taped it to the table. Like so:



The mixing instruction on the Permastone says to use 3 parts Permastone to 1 part water. I poured some water and Permastone in 9oz plastic cups to get ready:



As a total guess, I used 1/2 cup water. I ended up putting in only 1.25 cups of permastone (rather than the recommended 1.5 cups) because the water seemed to stop absorbing the powder (this is Bruce's method for mixing). I mixed it up and it looked something like this:



I put the first mold on the my gnarly pound board and slowly poured the mix in while pounding the crud out of the pound board. Tons of bubbles came up so I hope it helped!



I was supposed to wait about 5 minutes before scraping the excess off the top of the molds. I didn't get my timer until a little too late, and ended up scraping after about 8 minutes.

To scrape I used my MASSIVE 12" putty knife (you're supposed to use a 4" knife for better control) and ran it along the top of the mold at a 45° angle. The bottoms of the bricks had set up a bit and the scrape kind of hosed the bottoms. I went back over the bottoms again, but next time I'll definitely wait less time before scraping.

After scraping I set my timer for 30 minutes and started typing up my first post as I waited!


That's all for tonight, I'll post my first cast results tomorrow!

Very cool, thanks for sharing. I just sighned up for a class on doing this stuff at a gaming convention in April. I figured, it was a good way to get exposure to it, learn some tips and decide if I am ready to jump in and start building.

KnowTheToe said:

Very cool, thanks for sharing. I just sighned up for a class on doing this stuff at a gaming convention in April. I figured, it was a good way to get exposure to it, learn some tips and decide if I am ready to jump in and start building.

Click to expand...

It's a lot easier than I expected! I thought there would be more to it somehow.

The casts are turning out great, I'll post my results later tonight (weird, it looks like my pictures aren't showing up...)

Continuing where I left off...

I waited about an hour before I removed the casts (just to be safe). The pieces came out of the molds VERY easily:


Even the taller wall pieces came right out! Here are two picts of the final results:



As you can see, there were a few bubbles in this batch and the bottoms of the pieces are a little convex. The convexity should be fixed with a little sanding. Also, on the next cast I scraped a little more firmly and the pieces came out much more level. They seem to fit together better now.

For the bubbles, I tried using the Wet Water method (a little Jet Dry mixed with water sprayed onto the molds before casting) and the results seem to be better.

So now I'm casting as fast as I can (I've done about four of each mold now) so I can amass enough pieces to make my first modular dungeon room!

Next time I'll post my painting tests!

If you have any comments or suggestions, feel free to chime in. I'm still a n00b at this after all

Well, it was a long night of casting, but I ended up getting out 4 casts of each mold in about 3.5 hours! I have enough parts now to make my first piece.

Good job. Looks far easier than I had imagined as well.

Can't wait to see your results.

Mourngrymn Dasha'r said:

Good job. Looks far easier than I had imagined as well.

Can't wait to see your results.

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The results are even better than I'd hoped for! I've finished a 5 x 5 room and a bunch of modular dungeon pieces (by Saturday night). I'll post some picts as soon as I can.

Great Thread- Keep it up!

Shadowlight-

Thanks for sharing your experience with the casting, especially with the photos! I have wondered about the casting process- this is helpful. (I am also interested in the painting process for cast pieces, so photos step-by-step on that would be cool, too!)

Thanks again!