Hello everyone!

Following my latest Diorama entitled "Where's the ladder?" I received quite a few questions on how to achieve a realistic water effect so here a little tutorial. Obviously I was not planning to do a tutorial so i do not have the step by step pictures but we will work something that everyone can understand properly!

First I would like to take a few words to thank two good friend of mine whos input during the process were of great help: Jeff Wilhem and Manuel Sanchez.

So what will you need? First, the resin. I personally use an epoxy resin from Environmental Technologies Inc called "Easy Cast Clear Casting Resin"


You can easily find it in most artcraft store such as Mickeals in the United States or Omer Deserres in Canada.

There are other products out there obviously but each resin reacts differently. Some of the although being labelled as "clear" have a really yellowy hardener ruining your piece. After that you have urethane, epoxy, polyester and polymer resin. You are looking for an unrethane or epoxy resin. The two other ones are mostly for clear coating counter top or to make glass type object. Furthermore their heat ratios is way through the roof as we will explain later.

After that you need a few plastic cups and popsicle stick to mix properly the resin. Try to get those cups which are lined. This way you can easily obtain equal quantity of the resin and the hardener.

Lastly you'll need to get something to make a mold. If you are only doing a little base simple scotch tape may do the trick but it will be hard to get perfect angles. For anything bigger you'll need to build a box.

The first step is to actually paint the mini and it`s scene because as you know, or at least I hope you realise, once the resin is poured and cured there is nothing you can change underneath it. Now you need to figure if you want your water to be colored. The resin can be tainted with acrylic paint or ink. Remember though that a little touch of paint goes a long way in your resin. If you`ve put too much color throw it away and do a new batch.

For something like my diorama, a big bock of water to look through, you do not want to taint the water. You want it as clear as possible in order to see every details. So what you can do is simply apply a veil of a blueish or greenish color that intensify itself more and more toward the bottow as done here:


If you are pouring a smaller amount, like a river bottom you will want to taint your resin directly as did here:


The other effect you can try to achieve is to vary the taint from one layer to the other one. For this you'll want to pour as many layers as possible to get a smooth transition. As usual you'll go from the darkest to the lightest on top.

Now how to build your box? As said if the amount of resin is small scoth tape will do. Make sure that it is well stuck to the surface. For anything bigger you'll need a box. So far I've used styrene sheets to build my boxes but never got a perfect results. The plastic sheet stick to the resin making the demolding quite difficult and you'll need to work pretty hard to come back to the glossy and shiny look. From discussion with other modelers a high gloss finish material seems to be the key such ad the plastic of blisters and so on. Obviously for large scale project they are not optimal but... I still need to explore various options. You can also used a release agent on your mold to help the process. There are release agent for every type of resin... but guess what? On my latest project it did not work at all so...

Here is the box:


So as you see you want something sturdy. The angles are reinforcedwith square rods to make sure they are strong. You want to top of your mold to finish where your resin will top. If you poured resin in a mold with sides higher than the level you need you'll end up with a concave top. Each corners, side and bottom, are sealed with hot glue. Furthermore you might want to use an oil base clay to make sure everything is properly sealed.

Mixing Resin: ALWAYS READ PROPERLY THE INSTRUCTION OF YOUR PRODUCT FROM START TO FINISH!!!

I cannot stress that enough. No resin work the same. Make sure to read properly the instruction so that you do not forget anything. Another important thing to look for is the maximum amount you can mix. With the product cited above it is 6 ounces. When resin cures it produces heat. The more resin you have the more heat it's produce. This is exponential to the quantity you'll be using. If you go with more than 6 ounces with the product I recommended it will boil!!! So you can forget your clear and bubble free finish and guess what will happen to your nice plastic scene in such warmth?!? If you are using a new product always do a test batch first.

Never play with the 1:1 ratio unless stated in the instruction. Not enough hardener your resin will remain sticky and never completely cured. Too much hardener and your resin will be cloudy.

When you poured your resin make sure to go slowly. You might want to use a ramp. The slower you go the less extra bubbles you'll create. Technically most resin as they cure raise the bubbles toward to top until they pop. It is recommended to use a heat source to accelerate the process and make sure there is no bubbles. A blow dryer on low is perfect. Make sure of not being too close. Obviously if it is your last layer avoid the blow dryer as you don't want to push the resin outside the mold. A lighter or something of that sort might be better for that step.

If you have multiple layers to poured always make sure that your previous layers is totally cured before pouring the following one which is usually 24 hours. Even if your layer is solid, if your resin has not cured totally yet it will still be lightly warm which gonna create a difference in temperature between the various part of your mold and that your resin does not like. When such things happen the resin retract itself to compensate for the temperature difference so you end up with8 rounded corners... and it's not good.

Now how to avoid lines between layers like this:


Obviously the above picture is not radical but if you look at the right angle you can clearly see the layers. You have two choices. 1- pour 1000 layers so there is so many lines that you can't really see them put it`s gonna take a few weeks ;)  2- pour it in one shot but as said previously with big project you can't because of the overheat. Or you can always assume seeing the lines as I did since I was last minute which is a really bad idea when you work with resin!

If you did everything right you should be able to break the mold easily and get clear and glossy panels... But since it is resin it never goes according to plan so you end up with something like this:


In this case the styrene sheet sticked to the resin although I had used a release agent. The whole thing was broke appart using a wood chisel... Furthermore you see the big bubbles in the corners... Yep I was too eager to poured getting that retraction effect...

So now begins the lenghty process of getting that clear and gloss effect which will be achieved by sanding. The big bubles will disappear by creating a wavy feeling on the angle by using file and an exacto blade. To sand this I started at 220 and went all the way up to 2000. It is impossible to achieve a clear finish by sanding or using a compound on epoxy resin. So to get the final result a coat of Future was applied with an airbrush to achieve this:



So there you go! You can always add element in suspension between your layers such as fishes and other things. So now do not hesitate to test and play around with various techniques!