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Resin for dioramas


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Hello,

 

I am starting to build HMS Campbeltown for use in a diorama of it wedged on the lock gate at St Nazaire with the rear half underwater. 

I want to have the underwater bits visible and as such I think the way to do it is to use resin for the water effects.

I have heard that resins can get very hot whilt curing and was keen to know if there are any that people on here have had success with?

 

Thank you,

 

Joel

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Heat is generated in the exothermic curing reaction of the resin. How hot it actually gets is a bit like microwaving cold food in reverse. It will be hottest at the centre of the mass of resin curing. A sphere, if you could pour a sphere, would be much hotter in the middle than if you poured the same volume of resin in a thin layer over a large area. It's all about surface area. If your "water" is shallow, the heat build-up will be relatively modest. If you pour a fairly deep block it's going to get hot in there...

 

Using polyester resin with the minimum proportion of catalyst applied for the slowest, coolest cure, the perspex mould sides of a 500ml pour that measured out approx 13in long x 3in wide by 1in deep got very warm to the touch on the sides of the mould. I'm not sure I'd recommend polyester resin after my experiences with it.

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Thank you both, I will have a think and do some experimentation. 

 

I am not the biggest fan of varnishes for deep water, i have always had cracking unless applied in very thin layers. I think for a normal seascape that is exactly what I would use, but I want this to be pretty clear all the way to the seabed. 

 

Jamie's point about the temperature being related to the volume/surface area is a good one. For this diorama, the water only needs to be 15-20mm deep and I don't mind doing that in ~3 separate pours, 1mm at a time would drive me insane though. 

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Perhaps also worth bearing in mind that if the water in St Nazaire was clear all the way to the sea bed, then it’s the only harbour like that on the planet; the water in most harbours is filthy

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18 hours ago, Ex-FAAWAFU said:

Perhaps also worth bearing in mind that if the water in St Nazaire was clear all the way to the sea bed, then it’s the only harbour like that on the planet; the water in most harbours is filthy

Kota Kinabalu in Malaysian Borneo.  Absolutely crystal clear from the surface down to the seabed which was about 15-18m at our berth.

 

But other than the very rare, obscure Far East Asian, ports, i'd totally agree with that!

 

I remember an excellent diorama of this using a heavily modified Airfix CAMPBELTOWN that was in an Airfix magazine or modelling special back in the 70s.  That used a resin so that you could see down to the deepest part of the quarterdeck - probably about 5-6 feet under - but no more. In 1/700 scale that's only about 3 mm

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