Update time! Sorry for the wall of text, but this is the one we've all been waitin' for!
Hope you all (that celebrate it) had a great Thanksgiving. I managed to get me some turkey and potatoes at least.
I took a day off work yesterday to visit the foundry, buy more supplies for the ingots, vaccinate the cat and put winter tires on the car (
not listed in the order of importance, lol).
The foundry had two samples for me and here are the takeaways.
- Real metal ingots are AWESOME. The loud, clear "clink" sound when you set one down on the other.....!
- I was surprised to see some light/shallow pitting on the surface - the guy at the foundry said it's impossible to get rid of completely because the thickness of the castings causes gases to be released from the metal when it hits the mold and cools. They also said that they could polish off some more, as long as they don't take off too much material, and I guess we can't change the laws of (material) physics! Besides, episode 3, and the images posted by propcollector above, clearly showed some major pitting in the closeups of some of the real props, and you can even make out spots in at least one of the wide shots too if you look real close. So I would still maintain that it's an accurate detail, if unexpected.
- Which brings us to: They managed to replicate the Imperial Stamp PERFECTLY. I was not expecting it to be copied so precisely to the master print, but there it is! Even the uneven edges have been preserved!
- The Imperial bars on the back are nice and sharp.
- The weight is nice- about 200 grams (around 7 oz?) each.
- They polished up the samples almost to a chrome mirror shine. It's almost too shiny... so I'm considering dulling it down just a tad. (Unless y'all want them super-bright?)
- I have spent all day tweaking and adding the wavy layer pattern, running lots of tests with color intensity, until I reached a point where I am happy with the "baseline minimum". The SIDES now have the pattern as well- that detail was TBD from the start since I didn't know if I could do it nicely, but a lot of trial and error got it sorted.
- Some bad news (for me, mainly) is that with the sides added, each ingot takes a fair amount of more time to finish than I had initially counted on, as there are several steps, spread out over several hours, to finish them up. But no worries... I'm just glad to have such good results with the pattern.
- Another piece of bad news is what I was kinda expecting... the foundry grumbled at the amount of hand-polishing they have to do and wanted a lot more money than their initial quote (like... double), but after talking with them a bit and agreeing to provide them with more master prints so they could cast them quicker, it looks like we're gonna land on $145, plus 15 for shipping. They're sturdy enough that I can send them in padded envelopes! (I'm also going to make maxim use of all the finishing materials and not be carelessly wasteful with them, so I don't have to buy even more.)
Here are some photos showing how reflective they are. Consider these the final prototypes. (
Again, polished aluminum is awesome.) NOTE: The pattern is UPSIDE DOWN on one of the ingots... I was in such a hurry to try and get it on there that I spotted it too late. But now that I have the method pretty refined I will probably strip them down again and redo both, just to get in some practice! Another good thing about metal- infinite redos if you mess something up!
All in all, I hope y'all agree that these blow the spray-painted resin prototypes I did out of the water!
What's next:
On Monday, I'm supposed to get the custom hydro-dip supplies I ordered. My intent is to see if dipping gives a better result than my current method. If not, I'll stick with what I'm currently doing. (I actually expect dipping to
not look as good.)
The foundry will also be getting at least one more master print early in the week, so they can go-ahead and start full production. Once I give the go-ahead, I think that's when the list will be locked. (I'll also be collecting the rest of the payment soon- just as an FYI, the deposits do not even come close to covering the actual costs of making these.)
There's still time to get onboard if anyone else wants in before the lock, but time is running out. (I'm still undecided on how many extras I do. I'll need a a couple for backup, but any extras for sale will cost more.)
Timeline:
I don't have a final deliverable ETA from the foundry yet, but I HOPE they will heave them ready for me to work on during the Christmas break- I should have time to finish quite a few (if not all) then provided I have all the supplies I need.
Someone also asked me in PM about getting one for Christmas... I can send out the two sample casts (on a first-asked-basis) to those that REALLY,
REALLY need them as gifts,
as long as everyone else is OK with it? There's no guarantee they will arrive on time with the slow postal service this time of year, but it might be worth a shot.
It's now 3AM here and I've been chugging at this since around 9 yesterday morning! Gotta get some Zs so I can continue in the morning.
G'night folks!
