Seven were forged.
Behold! Summon the Horde Rune necklaces, modeled in Fusion360 and 3d printed, then sanded, molded and cast in pewter.
I’m so proud of this. I’m not a sculptor. I took a clay sculpting class in college and I was the worst one in the class. My fingers just don’t work like that, or I don’t have the patience, or something. Perhaps I just need an “undo” button and clay sculpting doesn’t come with that.
I’ve been learning Fusion360, an online 3d modeling program, and have been able to finally get close to what I want to do with 3d printing. I can tweak on the design for weeks, without worrying about clay drying out or accidentally screwing everything up with one ill-advised stroke.
However, 3d printed stuff comes out of the printer in colorful but somewhat disappointing plastic. It just doesn’t feel like jewelry.
There are services that will 3d print your design in metal
, but it’s EXPENSIVE. Last time I checked, one of these would run you around $30-$50 — not a bad price for a necklace, but far too expensive to give to all your barbarian horde sisters.
I started with a sketch by our Horde Mistress, Rachel. The rune is our Horde logo, more or less.
I opened it in photoshop and made a path of the outline, then saved as an .svg so it could be imported into Fusion360. Next, I spent some time modeling the pendant.
I printed it out on my 3d Printer, and it came out … nice, but in plastic, and with lots of print “artifacts.” 3d prints have kind of a grain to them, just because of the way the print lays down material. I went to work sanding those out to try and make it smooth like a stone.
It feels nice and smooth, even though it still looks rough. It’s printed in PLA so I’m sure it’s possible to get it smoother but.. I sort of like a little bit of texture. Also the hole at the top for hanging was a little too small, so I drilled it out a bit so I could fit a necklace cord through.
I used Easy Mold Putty to make a mold of the rune. This stuff is pretty easy to use.. just mix it together and press it over the design. 25 minutes later it’s cured and ready to cast.
Here’s the final one in pewter! It took me a good number of tries to get it right since I’m still new at this, but ooohhh it’s so pretty! And the Easy Mold putty rubber held up really well through all my castings and mistakes.
It’s so fun to melt down the mistakes. That’s the neat thing about metal casting — there’s next to no waste.
I love it!! It’s a perfect addition to my Horde costume and I love that I can make lots of them using the same mold.
Perhaps I’ll do a step by step tutorial for something like this.. let me know in the comments if there’s interest!
