Another Iron Man MK VII build

[ngalaxytimmyo]

Hey all! I've been lurking around for a few months now reading up on how to make an Iron Man costume.

My nephews are huge Iron Man fans. The oldest, for his 5th birthday, actually wished to legally change his name to Iron Man. I guess it even became a slight problem in school when the teacher wouldn't call him Tony (I guess it's not so much an issue this year).
I therefore decided it would probably be pretty awesome if Iron Man showed up for his next birthday. This is important as it gives me a deadline (July) to finish this by. I have so many projects lying around half done, so both a deadline and the goal to do this for someone else, will hopefully lead me to finishing it.

I'm using darkside501st Mark VII files. Thank you so much for the time and effort you put into those.

I started it about a month ago now, working on it a couple hours here and there. I've learned a few different techniques so far just by slowly working on it. I'm getting happier and happier with every piece I finish. I plan on using XRobots smooth-on method before painting to make it as amazing as I can. My goal is to make the suit look good enough to fool a few kids. Now onto the pics so far!

(I used one of the hand plates to test using some Smoothcast 300 I had lying around from a previous project. It's designed to be used in a mold, so it's quite a bit more runny then the 65D. I still have to sand and add more coats, I just wanted to see how it would turn out. This is the only resin I can find locally, so if I needed some quickly, I would only have to wait until business hours the next day. I do plan on ordering some of the 65D roto resin soon to see if it's much easier to work with.)

(Also, the chest piece was the first part I made, and I'm not very happy with it. I learned quite a bit while doing it and am planning on redoing it soon)

 

[Spydwar]

Nice start. I used the 65D for casting some of the parts on my MKIV suit. I didn't see much of a difference except set time. As soon as it starts to gel you have to stop or it will just be a mess. But other than that the two seem to be about the same.
Will be watching for updates looks really good so far.

 

[ngalaxytimmyo]

Well, I just finished my first semester of nursing school, so time to get serious about this again. Saw Iron Man 3, then went on a short vacation where my girlfriend brought along Iron Man, Iron Man 2, and The Avengers. So after all of that in under a week, it was hard to get this project off my mind. The other day I started on my mannequin. It's not quite done yet, as I was really hoping to get away with only 1 pipe. Of course, I didn't realize it was Sunday until I was walking up to the door at the Home Depot and they were locking it.
Other than that, I got the shoulders almost done. I'm thinking I'm going to have to use the heat gun to reshape them slightly. Should have did it before. I'm now heating up almost every piece I cut, to make sure it's shaped well before using. If that doesn't work I guess I'll redo them.
I also did the elbows, figuring it would be a good easy piece to get back into this. After that I did the cod piece. I think my girlfriend was less than excited when she got home and I walked upstairs with that on.
This left me with a hard decision for what to do next. As far as big parts, I've got the shoes, hands, abs, back, chest and helmet. I really want to do the helmet and chest last, to make sure I learn as much as I could doing everything else first. I figured I'd have a go at the abs, and it turned out to be a lot easier than I expected. A lot of time goes into thinking of how I should make a cut to either get a good angle or layer going. I only had to do this for one section and side, and able to copy it over to the others. So far I finished 2 of the 4. I like how they kinda interlock, and I'm going to have to do something about the spine pieces to make them work better together, but that will happen later.
The plan on Thursday now is to finish the mannequin so it's easier to use and not propped up against the wall. Then to finish the abs and start maybe on the back.


I've also switched to a silver sharpee. Makes it easier to see on the dark gray foam. You can kinda see it on a lot of the newer parts.