Mad Max Fury Road Ripsaw/War rig steering wheel

This is my first replica build and its not completely done but its time to show some build pics. Finding the exact pieces used is almost impossible because of its nature. I have spent a lot of time studying reference images and scouring the internet for likely alternatives to match what i see. Its time to show the experts here and see what you think.
Heres my reference pics. And thanks for looking

The wheel is a 13 inch Super 500 rat rod wheel i found on Ebay. I covered the black foam with gold paint to make a better surface to bond the shells to and it should be better for applying the weathering. I could not find a gear with the straight teeth so im using a differential ring gear from a suzuki samurai that has the exactly correct dimensions

The gear could not be chemically rusted so I applied a faux rust paint job and used a garage door pulley that fit perfectly inside gear

The shell casings in ref pics appear to be .308 but i am using .223 because they fit on curved surface easier and a friend gave me a large bag of them. I made a jig for removing primers and splitting them in half on my bandsaw. They are attached to wheel with a very durable silicone type sealant that has worked well for me on other projects.

Most of the brass parts were sourced from 2 lamp supply websites, this ring that attaches the face to the gear was cut from a lamp canopy them shaped with a hammer and a curved jig to flare out inner edge.

The head/face was a bit more challenging, it is a 3.5 diameter sphere with a seam running down the middle, as if it was made as 2 pieces and bonded together. For this i started with a 6 inch diameter parabolic lamp shade, split it in half and proceeded to shrink it to the size needed. This was done using what metal workers call a shrinking stump. I made my stump out of old plywood scrap and bought a shiny new ball peen hammer so as not to misshape metal too much. To finish smoothing the outside of the shape my planishing shape was a trailer ball. The softball was the exact diameter needed to use as a shape guide.


The 2 halves of the face were bonded together from the inside with epoxy and a strip of brass backing material. The teeth were cut from another lamp part that is for making the center of a chandelier, it was the perfect size diameter

I could not even come close to figuring out what was used inside the nose opening but i found a suitable piece made of cast brass that had the proper shape to fit. The ear pieces were made from a lamp fitting cut to size and AK rounds that fit inside existing holes perfectly.

Then i cut out eye holes, made a plate that spans from ear to ear and cut holes for spark plugs. Plugs used are the type used for lawn mowers and other small engines.
Rust treatment on plugs is same as i used on the gear.

Next is the jaw and connecting rods. Base of jaw was made from scratch using bullets as a shape guide. There is just enough room for 3 .308 rounds and 4 .223 rounds cut down to height. The teeth are Badger that i dyed to look old.

So heres most of the pieces tarnished with Brass Black and set in place for pics. i need to put on a few more rows of shells on back of wheel, weld gear to wheel, final assembly and weathering.

Thats all for now, I will post finished pics in a week or 2. Thanks for looking and any comments good or bad would be appreciated.

Great job, It looks very close. Look forward to see it dirtied up. I'm new to the posting on the board... is it appropriate to point out improvements or is that a fau par? Still, very good as is

Certainly, feel free to post your opinions and thanks in advance

You are certainly devoting your skill and time to this build. Excellent work. Most Impressive.

That came out 10x better than I was expecting. I can't wait to see the finished results.

Dope

This is absolutely killer! The only things I'd change is instead of the brass used for the Skull, I think it was copper instead, and they looked to have welded the pieces together and then sanded it down, before polishing it off to get that discolored look running down the middle. I also think you could tone down the rust on the spark plugs but that's neither here nor there; that's the only thing I'd change about it.

The one piece that's really left to do is the Screaming Skull emblem that sits behind the skull, in the middle of your garage door pulley. It's only seen at the end of the film when all the cars crash into each other at the mountain pass and it flies into the camera, but being that most these pieces were too complex to replicate digitally, they filmed/scanned the pieces and then comped them into the final cut.

Thanks for the kind words guys, i really appreciate it. The pieces I sourced kept coming up brass, brass and more brass. I really never considered copper because everything basically matches a certain color/tone and to me looks like brass. You can see there were at least 4 of these made and they all have slightly different shapes that i can notice. Most of the good ref pics are what I call wheel #1, It looks the best to me and has the seam in skull directly down the middle. I also see what looks like a welded joint that has been sanded smooth. What I see is a shine and color tone that appears to have been coated with something similar to an amber/gold tinted wood varnish. Now as far as movie images go the look is a lot different, When Max hands the wheel to Nux and he puts it in the war rig it's night time and not a lot of detail is seen. later on until the final crash scene i see it as dusty dirty and dull. I have no clue why they decide to put the funky paint job on it for the final scene.

So what im going to try to achieve is dull and dirty where it doesnt get touched much but a little more smooth and shiny around the rim. I will also be hitting those spark with some wire brush action, i agree they look too grungy. And as your expert analysis has noticed I do have a small template made to create the emblem seen inside at the end. Heres my other ref images that show the different looks. You almost have to decide which style to replicate and go with that, theres not just one look.