Experiments with XTC

[jereywolf]

Awesome! I think I'll pick up some gun metal and silver for props. Thanks for sharing!

[Bratag]

How much did you add? Is there a recommended amount, or did you just eyeball it?

Pretty much just eyeballed it. On a mix of 10ml A and 5 ml B I added a little less that a 3rd of a teaspoon. I could probably have added less but I was worried about covering the lime green. If you were going for a couple of coats I could see adding much less per coat.

[Yodajammies]

In traditional cold casting applications you can mix your metal powders up as high as a 1:1:1 ratio. I doubt that would be as effective here but as long as your epoxy isn't being stretched too thin as a binding agent you can basically metal clad these parts and then buff the crap out of them.

Also, check out some of the "cast-magic" powders from smooth-on. The powders are much finer than actual metallic grains and the colors are quite vibrant. They are a little more sparkly than you'd see from a traditional cast piece but if you're weathering the part, they even out rather nicely.

[Bratag]

Those look great. I will check out the powders from smooth-on but I have to say I was pleasantly surprised with the grain size of the Alumilite stuff. Definitely a powder not a filings situation.

The advantage traditional cast has over mixing with the epoxy is the ability to post treat the part. While you can sand/polish the XTC version - its a lot more labor intensive than being able to weather the part with a wash etc, simply because you have to get through the outer layer of the epoxy to expose the metal itself.

That being said I could see this being very cool as a base on which to build as XTC does take paint very well with only a little bit of sanding.

[Bratag]

Got some other powders in and did a bit of a superhero theme. These are all as is no post treatment. I am looking for suggestions on how to age/blacken the copper and maybe the silver.

All in all I think they came out very well