The weekend was full on research. I think I overdid it in regards to time spent staring at a screen arranging work but I did achive porgress so I guess it was worth it.

Today went well. I decided to gamble at producing a full coloured letter/metalised cast of the badge. I began by mixing polyester resin and pigment till i was happy with the colour then using a broken lolly pop stick i carefully sread the resin into the letters getting an even coating.

Whilst the letters were curing slowly (very!) I used some 'Antique Black' metal powder that was in the resin pigments cupboard to pour a sample segment in fast cast. It came out pretty well (see pic below) and buffed up nicely despite making a mess of the mould which I'll have to scrubb thoroughly before i can use again. With that in mind if I end up doing a full badge cast I will wait till I've done all of the others I inteded to do first!

When the letters on the main mould started to go tacky I signed out the aluminum powder from the office to cast on top of them. I dusted the mould and made sure I had a good coating across the details without any excess buildup. I then used fast cast for the bulk of the mould soas not to give the chance of the metal powder getting into the polyester letters below should they still be sticky enough to absorb.

They I left the cast to cure over dinner meaning the letter segments had been poured for nearly 3.5 hours and they still hadnt cured properly!

Despite an accidental smudge on the corner of one of the letters (which I will try to buff out when they are 150% cured!) the cast turned out really well:

I also primed my plain fast cast piece to experiment on getting a metal pain finish later this week. 4 days to go!