Editing Casting (section)

==Mold [[Rip and Tear|Wear and Tear]]==
Due to the nature of the the casting procedure, a mold often cannot be used forever. For multiple reasons (going from costs to ease of making to having a mold with enough detail) the mold is forged from an alloy that is designed to withstand the temperature at which the liquid plastic/pewter/... is injected but not much higher. If a delicate balance is not maintained while casting/molding the miniatures, the mold will warp, crack, or generally [[THIN YOUR PAINTS|lose detail]] (Something known formally as "thermo-mechanical fatigue" for anyone who'd like more info). Even when all possible care is taken, molds just don't last forever (nobody has yet told Airfix this). Model makers use several tactics for working around this:

The first and most straightforward is simply recasting the mold. More often than not, the "parent model" will be put in reverent storage and won't be melted away like in so-called "investment casting". The parent can be used to make more molds as needed. Sometimes, however, the parent is considered too precious, so a first-generation "daughter" model will be cast in the toughest stuff the model makers could possibly use (sometimes at the expense of the original mold) in order to make a very durable model which can be used to cast molds over and over without warping.

The second tactic is making a stronger mold that can withstand much higher temperatures. Sometimes the mold will get a mold made of it, and then ''that'' mold will be used to cast stronger molds which the models can be forged in without warping the mold. This method quickly becomes a lot more expensive, though.

This was the excuse for [[Man O' War]] being destroyed by GW.