Blue Stuff - Wonder Stuff!!

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 I have known of Blue Stuff for a while, but it almost seems implausible.  Here is a material that can cold cast a number of modelling mediums, basically anything not reliant on high heat to cast, can easily be shaped and worked with, and can completely be reused.

It all seemed too good to be true.

Still I eventually got hold of some.

Boy was I impressed!

Now bearing in mind I've never used this stuff before, it was incredibly easy to use.  Simply soften a strip of the stuff in hot water until malleable, and then either press the parts you wish to mould into the material wholesale, or for more complicated parts create a two part mould.  I was attempting to make tall hats for my Canadian militia, so used these as a test subject.  The first attempts used a mix of one piece and two piece moulds with hats converted from Victrix French Shakos as a test.

First attempt

 I tried both methods of moulding first, and then filled the moulds with Green Stuff, though for particularly complex moulds a cold-cure pouring resin would be much better.  Nevertheless the results came out well, it was just that the French shako based hats, were huge!

Inevitably, I scrapped the hats, but the Blu stuff went into hot water and was soon ready for a second try.

For the next version I switched to prototypes based on Belgic shakos, trimmed of all details.  I made six of these, but then made a pair of simple push moulds so I could mass produce them.  Thus I was able to make 12 hats in in one swift go.

Mark II in mass production

 Some I removed from the mould after about 4 hours, at which point they were basically firm, but the brims could be folded up.  The rest had some 24 hours in the moulds by which point they were solid.  Some trimming of excess green left me with more than a dozen usable hats.  As we can see below:

So overall, an incredibly useful product.  You can pick it up for a few £/$/€ on ebay, or via this fine store:

http://www.greenstuffworld.com/en/reusable-blue-stuff/8-blue-stuff-mold-8-bars.html

Lastly, if you want to know more, this incredible modeler (who I subscribe to on YouTube) clued me up on the product with this neat little video; showing how it's done:

True, you may balk at wholesale cloning of parts, but the potential is there to be exploited or not, depending on what you do with it...

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