Resin ice effects

[JKC27]

I know AK Interactive makes a resin ice kit and it is rather expensive, so not sure if I want to spend the money just to experiment with so I figured I'd throw this on here and see what you all think.

 

Here is what I am contemplating doing....   I scratch build steel hull ships that sail the great lakes, and are generally built at 1/200 or 1/192 scale.  I mount them on a wood base, slightly raised off the wood of course using 1/4" square lifts (I guess you could call them).  Thinking how I can up my game, I was thinking how cool it would be to surround my ship model with ice, as it would be if sailing at this time of year (January) on the lakes.  I would use a styrofoam base for this and do the ice effect on top.

 

Has anyone on here used this, or a similar product?  What are your thoughts on it, or any other suggestions????

 

Here is the look I am going for:

 

 

[Dr PR]

My first thoughts are to experiment with poring melted paraffin onto acrylic (Plexiglas) sheets. You could paint the plastic dark blue-grey on the bottom side to represent the water under the ice.

 

You probably can chip away the edges of the "ice" sheets to get the broken ice effect.

 

CAUTION: I haven't tried this so it is just a half baked idea!

 

 

[Thukydides]

You could look into crackle medium, I am not sure if it would work at your scale, but it is a way to get that sort of look for ice.

 

The other option I can think of is to create a sort of tray for the base. Then paint the bottom of the tray to look like deep water, followed by covering it with resin. While the resin is partially cured (you will have to experiment with this to figure out the right time), place plastic (or resin) shards representing the ice pans on top. The below video shows the idea used on a miniature figure base. Note he is doing it for a much larger scale so you will need to adjust accordingly.

 

Edited Wednesday at 12:09 PM by Thukydides

[DocRob]

I have no experience with ice dios, but have one planned for a future project, similar to the one in the linked article. It´s 1/32, but the technique might be adaptable. I have the article, but as it´s not a free one, I can´t share it.

AIR52 - Bandit at Five - AFV modeller

Cheers Rob

[wefalck]

I am using a similar technique for ice as for water that I developed back in the early 1980s or so, albeit with somewhat different materials available then.

 

Basically I glue a sheet of acrylic (perhaps 2 or 3 mm thick) onto a wooden base. There is a cut-out for the (waterline-)model, which has to extend beneath the waterline by the thickness of the acrylic glass.. This wooden base has been painted appropriately to represent the water under the ice-sheet. The acrylic glass is then given a coat of acrylic gel-medium to represent the somewhat irregular water/ice surface. Snow on the ice can be represented by glueing 'micro-balloons', crushed glass (can be bought in hobby stores I think - my supply still comes from my teenage railway model days), or crystalline sugar(!) onto it. This is a good strategy for closed ice-sheets or what is called 'pancake' ice. If you want larger ice-floes, you have to glue with acrylic gel-medium very thin pieces of broken glass (use gloves and pliers and goggles) or acrylic glass before covering everything in the gel-medium.

 

Below is a scene of a Zuiderzee-botter frozen-in that I created some ten years ago:

Unfortunately, I don't seem to have taken pictures of the actual process.

The scene was based on this picture that I took in Enkhuizen in 2009:

It is, indeed, important to study photographs of the situation you want to create.

[JKC27]

@wefalck  Nice!  Well done.

[Capt. Kelso]

Impressive!