Hnefatafl Pieces

I have sculpted the 3 original playing pieces for the board I made previously.  The attackers will be the mighty Vikings and the defenders are the French of the same time period.  The King is loosely based on Louise VI or "Louise the Fat" as he is known now.

Rules on how to play Hnefatafl are on another page.

I am using a polymer bakable clay called "Super Sculpey" to make the original designs, then I will mold and cast those originals using Smooth-On products (Smooth-On OoMoo 30® for making the molds and Smooth-On Smooth-Cast 325® for the casting material).

You can see a piece in its very beginning stages on the left (this will become the King).  The French defender in the center is almost done and the Viking attacker is complete.

Below you can see the King in progress:

The stamp with the Fleur-De-Lis was used to add the design to the King's cloak.  The small Viking-like piece next to the stamp was used to test baking the polymer clay and is the test piece I will use to make my very first mold!  I always test out things I've never done on something that doesn't matter as much as the final products.

Here are the finished sculpted playing pieces.  The next step is to make molds of all 3 of them.

This is the first step in making a mold for the pieces.  You use a non-sulfur based clay to make the bed for the piece.  Once you have the clay base made, you spray mold release over the inside of this.

I finished the mold:

I cast a few test pieces.  The light piece isn't exactly the color I was hoping for so I'll have to paint these.  The black pigment in the dark pieces seems to have made them a little soft in parts so I'll just have to paint all the pieces.  Oh well, the pigment was worth a shot.

Here is a shot of all the pieces cast!  The only thing left to call them done is some texture painting on all of them.