2. The Mini
No, not a real one. As much as it would be nice to have another one, it’s too expensive to buy one that doesn’t need work, and I don’t have anywhere to store and work on one that does.
So we come to the Mini in the picture – it’s a standard Corgi model which is in poor shape. It’s the same as the ones that I’ve got a few of already, but I want to try a resin casting project and didn’t want to sacrifice one of my existing ones.
I know as a rule I’m not very forthcoming with project details before they start – but considering very few people will read this, it’s a good place to pop my personal notes on it.
The model needs work – especially that front grill. It just needs one that is in place visually, it doesn’t have to fix in like a proper model one, so I’m going to create a mould from one of my existing models and cast a new one in resin. It’ll need the paint stripped off and repainted, then I’ve still got some waterslide decal paper hanging around somewhere to made the bonnet stripes and turn it into an Italian Job Mini.
The gaps around the wheels will be filled in, probably with UV resin (resin which hardens under UV light) just to make it airtight / watertight.
Using a small pop bottle I’ll cast some black resin around the outside of it to make the inside of a tube (can you see where I’m going with this yet? 🙂 ). A smaller stream of blue resin will be cast on the inside of the bottle. With the bottle removed, the outer pipe will be on its side, with the stream place in the bottom.
The Mini will then be on an angle coming out of the water (with a few UV resin splashes, hopefully) and then filled with clear resin around it (probably using the inside of another pop bottle).
This can then be turned to clean it up and polished to recreate the famous Italian Job escape scene.