"Making miniatures with a hot glue gun." Topic

Somewhere I read that you could make a miniature out of hot glue. Has anyone tried this? Does it work? What glue do you use? Are the miniatures durable or brittle? Will the miniatures paint up OK? If you tried this please describe the technique.

I am considering this for 1/600 aircraft but dont want to invest in the glue gun, etc. if it wont work.

Thanks,

Ak

It was an April Fool's joke – though it wouldn't be unfeasible.

The resulting miniatures would be a lot like other bendy miniatures like those from Hero Clix. Without a rigid mold and considerable pressure – the detail would be rather soft as well.

You could do it – I think most glue guns run at 150 to 250 so you could feasibly do it to make a mold using the "lost wax method" too.

Not a great idea unless you're making gelatinous aliens or water demons. But you should have a glue gun. They are not expensive (just got a small one for $5 USD) and a handy tool to have with a lot of applications.

I knew a guy that did this about 12 years ago. He made an Imperial Guard force out of hot glue and wire. They sort of looked like Green Army Men.

He was an engineer. He worked at a toy factory and used broken parts from the factory dumpster to build things like working guns.
He forged his own swords from scrap metal.

He was that kind of guy.

nope not an april foul joke .

but the few examples I heard of were using old alluminium plastic injection molds .

so as it is some of the most expansive investment in casting a new line of plastic minis , I guess it's somewhat more difficult to get into from scratch.

maybe the RTV alluminium molds could do the job ( a machinist selling semi-automatic injection benchwork machines did offer those as a good alternative if not going on hudge scale production) .

once cooled some glue results are suposed to keep fine details and some do even harden better then common thought would guess.

Ages ago there was a hobby article circulating around the web regarding the use of an industrial hot resin gun (a hot glue gun's steroid fueled big brother) to simulate the injection molding process. The article was actually intended for jewelers but I know I saw at least one version that claimed it could be used for miniatures…likely without it ever having been tried. Unless you had an extra hot resin gun sitting about collecting dust it wouldn't be cost effective. It would also be very hard on most molds. The articles I read used properly vulcanized organic rubber molds, of the sort used in induction or "lost wax" casting.

it is possible, but not particularly cost effective as the results are poor unless you have a PVC based glue supply and a Hot (not a hot) glue gun – the Industrial ones are usually not good enough!

Its cheap (well cheapish) to go the whole hog and buy a single pump injector for plastic casting, and cast into resin (aluminum resin) but getting your mould half Perfect and the pump weight and volumes, plus the temprature and the gates etc. – it could take a book. There are some books on the subject, some good! research!

Styrene rod and sheeting is better.

It can be cut, sanded, and scribed easier than hot glue too, in order to get the proper shape.

Buying 1/600th minis is way more economical than making them though, if you count in your time, tools, and materials costs.

Well, looks like I wont be trying this.

@Mako11 – I wouldnt be making my own if one of the 1/600 makers offered what I want. Just looking for a way to add some planes not available or available as models I really dont like.

Thanks to all who responded.

Al

Yea, I know.

Some much coveted A/C are still MIA.

I think styrene is the way forward in most of those cases.

I've done it to produce conversion parts, and it worked pretty well. I was making copies of heads and arms for some 15mm figures. It was years ago, I think I used flexible Sculpy or some other modeling compound to make a reusable mold. Then just injected hot glue into the mold, pulled out once it cooled, and trimmed any flash or excess glue with fingernail clippers. I may have brushed vegetable or olive oil on the molds as a release agent. The resulting pieces are of course flexible, but they took paint very well. In fact, I've had NO issues with paint flaking or wearing off. You can see the results here, where I added genestealer heads and arms to make 15mm hybrids: link

And I just used regular hot glue. Probably high temp would work best, but I can't remember what I used now.

Hello,

Reviving this thread with some Hot glue gun experiments of my own…

This is a 54mm generic powersuit man I sculpted and then made a silicone mould of. Injected some with glue (the High Temp kind) and some with Polymorph. Flashing is an issue.
Experimenting with gating and firmer silicone to get cleaner casts.

The one on the far right on las pics is metal.
Thoughts welcome!