Moses's Replicas and other stuff (56K WARNING!!!!)

Let me start off by first saying that this is my first post here on these forums so hello to all

Also, as of right now these are the only props/replicas I've ever made. My knowledge in prop making is limited to what I've learned in working with these materials. I also have about 6 years of self taught ability in making 3d models in 3ds Max which was originally because I was a video game modder. I applied those skills to make 3d blueprints for what you're about to see and will for anything else I decide to make.

Down to the pictures since I'm sure that's what you all want to see.




Here's my first prop which I gave to my friend as a Christmas present. It's a Glass Throwing Knife from Morrowind. It was also my FIRST prop attempt.





Here are the construction phases

http://fc03.deviantart.net/fs71/f/20...01-d4jlbz0.jpg



It's made from 1/4in thick polycarbonate for the green glass pieces brushed with green solvent dye, magic sculpt for the rest of it, painted with a acrylic based powdered silver paint, and darkened with a universal non-acid based patina.

Here's my photobucket with the rest of the pictures

Throwing Knife Photobucket



Next is my second attempt at prop making, the 6th House Goblet from Morrowind's main quest.








It's made from 6 solid pounds of magic sculpt with steel "re-bar" for supporting the top half's walls, the spikes, and the handles.


Sorry I don't have ANY pictures of it while I was actually molding the magic sculpt, nor have I worked on it enough since these were taken to justify new pictures. Almost all of my time spent making anything in the past few months has gone to Keening, my third prop. I've started lining and carving the details with my dremel tool.

Here are the rest of the pictures during it's construction process

6th House Goblet Photobucket


And last but not least, Keening.








This is the first one I really got into making real "blueprints" for it. I finalized the 3d blueprints over the weekend sometime last November. They were changed slightly when I actually started building for one reason or another, but mainly minor changes(ex: instead of rod through the blade's bottommost area I used a piece of 1/16in thick tool steel cut into a rectangle.)

Here's how all the parts would be arranged on a 12in x 12in x 0.5in sheet of polycarbonate along with some other 3d blueprint renderings.






Here's an assembly/disassembly video

http://s1151.photobucket.com/albums/...t=1a73cb0a.mp4


Here are the rest of the blueprints and references.

Keening's references and blueprints on Photobucket


I don't have any pictures of the earliest steps but here's what I've got.

SORRY ABOUT THE CRAPPY CELL PHONE PHOTOS. I really need to get a camera >_>


Keening's "Progress" on Photobucket


You'll need to follow along through the pictures on the photobucket link above. Right at the end of carving the handle the crescent at the end broke in half from a multitude of reasons.



I ended up shearing off the disconnected central area on the two pieces, carving out a new center, and acrylic solvent welding the crescent back together. I even came up with a newer, stronger design for it in the process to make sure it won't break again.


After the carving was finished I tried my hand at working with leather to make a sheath. My sewing skills carried over for the leather-working.

The sheath was mostly finished and just needed the button snaps to come in the mail so I could attach them and finish sewing. In the mean time I made a stamp with my symbol on it to imprint it on the sheath.

The stamp itself is made from magic sculpt with 3 steel rings around it to strengthen it while it gets pounded with a hammer on an anvil. I've used the stamp on quite a few other leather items and it's held up extremely well for essentially being epoxy.


I was finishing up putting a coat of paint on it when all of a sudden the yardstick I was hanging it from fell and most of the pieces fell down the wooden stairs of the deck, down a floor, and onto the grass. Thinking of it still gets me pissed off. I had to sand all the paint off with sand paper which felt like it took forever. I finally got around to painting it a second time and did not like the results I came up with. I decided to strip it and try again. Didn't want to sand it off so I tried solvent paint remover. It ended up doing the job but, like I expected, put crazing all over Keening since it's made from polycarbonate.


Third times the charm right?


The gold is only this shiny in the sun and the darkened areas are much darker. I achieved a pitted texture like I was aiming for by making a nice even and full coat of gold over everything and then jittering the spray nozzle up and down to have it "spit" spots of paint about 2mm wide. waited till that had dried and repeated a few times. The pits were perfect for the patina to nestle into.

Finished Pictures




http://i1151.photobucket.com/albums/...d/8e9966bd.jpg

So here's the photobucket link to the finished pictures of Keening

Keening's "Finished" Photobucket pictures

First off those "templates" you're asking for are 3d models I made myself in 3ds max. If you can open 3d model files and be able to pull measurements from them then I'll think about it. I say "I'll think about it" because this is my pride and joy right now and I'm not sure how I'd feel about having copies out there somewhere. I zoomed in on keening in 3ds max until it was 1:1 with my screen size and kept that viewport for carrying measurements over to the sheets of polycarbonate with a tape measurer.


About the sealant, if by glaze I hope you don't mean heat activated glaze meant for pottery. This isn't made from clay or sculpey. This goblet is made from magic sculpt; a 2 part epoxy resin with clay consistency. I used some to make a mold at one point and it started to get slightly bendy with a browned surface around 375 f. I very highly doubt it will be able to stand over 1000f according to this.


Reason I chose polycarbonate over acrylic is because of how tough it is. I also couldn't find anywhere that had colored polycarbonate so I had to color it myself. Here's an example of it's impact resistance.

I took a scrap piece of polycarbonate at 4in x 1in x 1/4in and laid it down on the sidewalk. I slammed it with a hammer roughly 30 times. it was dented all over from the cement digging into the soft plastic, but no cracks or anything else. I laid it over a crack in the cement and struck the center about 30 times with a hammer again and about 20 times with an aluminum bat. same result. I picked it up and because of how hot it had become i was able to bend it in half, but otherwise polycarbonate has incredible impact resistance many many many times higher than acrylic. It will also never shatter. It's more of a soft plastic and will bend and snap cleanly without debris. I had a friend shoot a 0.5in x 4in x 6in sheet with a .45. He didn't have it clamped properly because it was sticking out of a vice so all the force was on the clamp line. the .45 dented it about 1/5in deep and bent the sheet over the clamp line until it broke into about 10 large chunks. If he had it supported on all sides though(like setting it up against something) I'm sure it wouldn't have gone through.


I have learned a few things in my time working on these pieces and if I were to soak the polycarbonate in a dye after it's all carved and polished it will absorb the color, eliminating the need for colored plastic. That's what I'm going to do with Keening's blade. I would have done it with the throwing knife If I had known about it at the time. I also never put a clear coat on the knife. Remember, it was my first prop lol. I treated it entirely as a learning experience.

Thanks for all the compliments everyone. I still pale in comparison to the majority of the rest of you guys. I've only made a handful on things and using unorthodox methods. There's still a lot I can learn and that's part of why I'm here. This is mainly just a hobby for me though so I don't have any intentions of building for sale.


IDK HOW I forgot to mention this, but I also made this for a friend of mine.



I did everything except for paint it and make the tassel on the end. It also needed to have shallow pits filled in on the head since I didn't have a way to make my dremel tool perfectly level throughout the whole carving process and ended up carving more than I should have. I don't have any pictures of it right now but I will ask my friend for some after she finishes painting it.

It's made from a 1in diameter polycarbonate rod for the bottom section including the gold area between the red and blue. A polycarbonate tube was used for the blue section with steel bolts with washers sanded to fit perfectly inside it with jb weld to secure them. I carved plugs to fit into the ends of the tube and jb welded nuts inside the plugs(the staff disassembles into 3 main sections). The plugs were permenately affixed to the ends by drilling 3 symmetrical holes around the perimeter of the rod and through the plugs. I put screws through these holes, cut them off level with the staff, and sanded them flush with it's surface.


The head was made from a 24in x 12in x 0.5in sheet of polycarbonate(I got to keep the extra ) and was carved at first with a band saw to get the outline, then holes were drilled to fit a blade runner's blade into and cut out the general shape of the cutouts. I then finished it all up with my dremel tool and made the grey connector section from magic sculpt. There's a bolt going through the head and into the connector which secures it to the blue section. I wrapped the bolt in a few layers of duct tape before I applied the magic sculpt so that once it hardened any stress from the bolt bending wouldn't cause fractures in the magic sculpt molded around it.


I told my friend she can use epoxy to fill in the dips and then sand it over smooth and paint.

I modelled it in 3d first like usual.



Though the bolt appears to be separate from the connector and the head they're actually permanently affixed to each other. I also scaled it to her height in comparision to it's height next to Yuna ingame so it's just about as close to a 1:1 ratio as you'll see.

Here's some pics

Adjusted the colors to how it looks in person.


Low light conditions with Keening's light off.


Low light conditions with Keening's light on.


Pitch black with Keening's light on.

Hey guys, I'm back. And I've got a new project, or rather I should say a project I've wanted to do I'm finally working on. I'm a bit into it actually but I didn't want to post anything about it until I was sure I was going to seriously work on it. After making most of the fingers and buying a square foot sheet at 1/8in thick of solid copper I'm pretty sure I'm going through with it all the way .


On to the nitty gritty. I'm making Wraithguard from Elder Scrolls III Morrowind (never coulda guessed that eh?). I never actually got around to it because I originally wanted to make it from polycarbonate like most my other things and, long story short, I had no feesible way of forming the plastic without compromising the plastic both structurally and visually even if the forming went perfectly.

Here's an album on my photobucket containing some renders of my 3d model of it that has been modified and sized to fit my arm and hand. There's also a picture of what Wraithguard looks like directly from ingame Morrowind. The white lines are outlines of details. I'm trying to decipher the surface topology since the original texture is very blurry and incoherent.

http://s1151.beta.photobucket.com/us...d%20Blueprints

After pondering for a while I came to the conclusion that I might be able to make it from solid copper instead. It won't require any sort of paint to get the look I want, it will be the most durable and badass prop I have ever made, I done have to worry about 4 days of necessary prep work for ONE SINGLE HEAT FORMING, and I will finally be getting into metalworking like I've wanted to for a while.



This is the point where you can follow along in my photobucket album. Everything in it is in order from newest at the top to oldest at the bottom.

Progress pictures by MosesofEgypt - Photobucket


My dad already works with copper and was happy to lend me his blowtorch so I could experiment and test. He gave me some scrap pieces of 1/8in copper plate which I proceeded to experiment on with his propane blowtorch, heavy antique forming hammer, and my small anvil. I was able to put some nice sharp bends in the piece so he stepped me up to 1/4in thick at my request.

I could barely do anything to this sucker. It was too damn hard and the propane fueled blowtorch was not turning it into taffy like I had hoped. My dad told me that MAPP gas might get hot enough to bend 1/4in so I took a look into it. It gets about 3x hotter than propane and will actually melt copper if held to it long enough.

Went out, bought a mapp gas blowtorch with a spare canister, tried it out, and was able to put a nice 90 degree bend in the 1/4in piece. This was done using only the hammer on a 15 pound anvil which, at the time wasn't mounted to anything so it would bounce around.

I also had the idea that I might be able to make a wooden mold to form the copper over for the larger complex surface parts like the back of the hand and back of the forearm. Since it's actually quite difficult to ignite solid wood without a large active flame this is possible to an extent. I was able to heat the copper up with the PROPANE torch and form it over a piece of wood with no issues other than a little discoloring of the wood. The mapp gas torch however, got the copper hot enough to instantanously set the wood aflame in the half a second the copper was touching. It managed to burn a visible crater in the wood.

That idea is out the window and as of right now the only viable replacement idea I have is to make a mold from pourable concrete >_>.

So after all this testing I was ready to start making parts. I took the largest scrap pieces of copper my dad gave me, HEAVILY zip tied my anvil to the railing of the outside deck, and started drawing the 1/8in pieces out to about 1/16in, making them a fair bit larger as well. All the finger armor pieces will be 1/16in thick wheras the handplate, forearm side wings, and forearm underside are all 1/8in thick and the spike bridge over the knuckles as well as the largest piece on the back of the forearm are 1/4in thick.

After I had sheets the right thickness I needed I started figuring out measurements, outlining the parts on the sheets, cut them out with my dremel, and started bending them into shape.

The middle fingertip is pretty much done, I've just gotta fold it up. The pinky tip is needing to be cut out and folded so it's not as close. I took that 1/4in thick piece of copper I was testing with and flattened it out to about 1/16in like the rest of the pieces. It will be the thumb tip. The bar in which part of it's been drawn out will be the middle and lower sections of the pinky as well as the thumbs lower piece. The first fingertip piece I made didn't turn out that great and I had to modify it to get the current thumb tip design I'm using. Unfortunately, the constant folding/unfolding/cutting/refolding/unfolding has caused the first thumb tip I made to start to break down and become scrap. I've got enough copper to finish the fingers as long as I don't eff up again. Wish me luck lol.