Here's my latest progress on sculpting and casting home-made bases.
Custom Homemade "Clockworkpunk" Bases - Work in Progress
I've been working on making some custom "clockworkpunk" bases, starting with War Cast Studios "blank" 30mm resin bases, Magic Sculpt two-part resin epoxy putty, and pieces of scrap plastic. (The green stuff is from a grocery-store strawberry container that Digital_Rampage gave me.)
In the picture are the 5 30mm bases I have mostly done so far, though I'm still trying to touch up gaps and figure out the best way to handle rivets. I've used Instant Mold to make temporary press-molds (and copies with Magic Sculpt), so that I can get a better idea of what final casts would look like. It allowed me to see what I couldn't quite make out on the originals: "super glue" has THICKNESS when it dries, and my problem with some of my rivets was that it was creating a raised area around where I'd glued the rivets down, or even that runoff was filling in some gaps such as between finely-spaced gear teeth.
I'm still working a few things out here. The two leftmost bases in the front row are examples of where I've tried a different route to making "rivets." Instead of taking crumbs of putty and gluing them on, letting it cure and then filing the tops down flat, I've tried applying a "strip" of putty for a frame piece, then smaller "crumbs" of putty as rivets -- then using a flat tool to mash the edges of the "rivet" down into the strip area around it, trying for a small, round rivet, and avoiding the necessity for super glue to hold it in place. (Also, I think the smaller rivets look and paint up better.)
25mm and 40mm Clockworkpunk Base Work-in-Progress
I've also been working on a 40mm base (using another War Cast Studios "blank" base as a starting point), and a 25mm "cogwheel" base (using pieces of plastic sprue to make the "teeth"). The cogwheel is still a long way off, since I have to Dremel the whole thing flat on top, and figure out how to do the interior -- but it's 25mm across, and I figure that it could act as a round 25mm base on its own.
Painted Prototype Castings
I went ahead and painted some of my "prototype casts" made with temporary Instant Molds and Magic Sculpt press-casting. Here's a picture of some initial painting (much more washing and drybrushing and touch-up has been applied since then) of some of the casts. The top/rear base is meant to be an "Egyptian ruins" themed base that I started working on for a Soda Pop Miniatures "Egyptian Cat Girl" type mini that Digital_Rampage has. (I intend to make another base for the pet cat mini that comes with the set.)
Reaper "#59009 Mad Scientist (Female)" miniature (Savage Worlds / Deadlands) with Clockworkpunk Prototype Base
Here's an application of one of the "clockworkpunk" bases, with a Deadlands miniature I painted up to put on it.
I need to take a few more pictures of the figure before I can start on a mini-diorama for it. Right now, I just posed it on a piece of resin scenery I painted up for the Armadillo Game Shoppe (and will take back to the shop once it opens its doors again).