Silesti Makes

Build

This was always going to be a 3D printed job so I got hold of an STL an whacked it to print on the big printer. Interestingly I got layer shifts in the same place on both prints.. the source STL looked OK so there may have been a glitch in the generated gcode. I reckoned the shifts weren’t too severe and I could sand and fill to resolve.

The general prep was done with a palm sander to knock down the layers and then the usual fill-sand-fill-sand-fill-sand grind until I had a surface I was happy with. then a couple of layers of filler-primer and we were ready for paint!

Finish

As you can see form the gallery above, I started with a coat of gloss black, then metallic gold over the whole piece as a base. I used red oxide primer over the outside of the cup and knocked this back to reveal the gold layer using wet wire wool. I used a spray primer, but a red acrylic prushed on would give a different effect as Van Oaks did and might be an option.

Although using the wire wool was a bit time consuming, the results were exactly what I wanted and the surface had a lovely polished feel to it too!

When I was happy that I’d taken enough of the red off it was time for dust… this was white spray paint misted of the surface from a decent distance. after a few minutes I wiped down the surface which removed the ‘dusting’ which hadn’t stuck.

Finally was the ‘gold’ leaf. Of course it isn’t gold but it looks the part! this was my first go a leafing anything and of course I had to pick the inside of a cup… BUT with a little trial and error the leaf stuck and I got the look and texture I felt was pretty close to the film!