This project started out of a frustration I had upon watching Furisoa some weeks back. It's an okay movie, but it just made me want to watch Fury Road again. Watching that again, there's so many things in FR that just beckons me to make. Furiosa just didn't seem to have that kind of level of interest for me.
It's been nearly a decade since FR and I don't think I've seen a full metal Gigahorse shift knob made, so I attempted to rectify that. There's been plenty of 3D files made available but, whether the sculpt themselves or the fact they were in resin/plastics, it just didn't sit right with me that there wasn't something more like the real thing. The M.O. of FR's art direction was that it all had to be real-deal; if it was on screen, it was exactly as it looked to be. Be it a flamethrower double-bass guitar or a metal shift knob. I don't know if the thing was sand cast or not, but the shapes of the thing as well as some imperfections in the prop lead me to believe it was originally cast in metal and polished to a high shine.
While it's more than possible to sandcast this prop by way of lost wax, I wanted something I could make multiples from in case I messed something up. So, I settled on casting the thing in tin pewter from rubber molds. It's all pretty straight-forward: sculpt, mold, cast.
I started out with the initial sculpt in Monster Clay. I'm a very slow sculptor, so this sculpt took a lot longer than it really ought to. I used the best references I could find of the original prop (surprisingly very little) and worked out the shapes of the thing based on how light reflected from the final polished surface in the movie.
Here is the final mold:
I've already had to make adjustments and remove some pieces from the mold to get better casts. Unfortunately, the number of undercuts in this thing had pulled out some details when I demolded the first cast.
I had to cast this twice to get something I was happy with, and to troubleshoot some problems I was having demolding the metal once it cooled.
This is the second cast I pulled with some rough cleaning:
Much of the initial sanding was done by hand to clean the surface, and to gauge how far do I need to sand and buff before being able to buff much of it out on the lathe. I don't have much in way of powertools, so use my polishing stuff in the lathe when I can.
It took three days of trial and error figuring what to do first (Eyes and mouth!) but this is where the shift knob stands currently. I'll need to get an m16 tap and die set to get it actually be usable as a shift knob. Again, much of this clean up work was done on the lathe but in order to get it to the high sheen that it's at now, I resorted to use marine polish and a terry cloth. The inside of the eyes and gaps in the teeth were the trickiest thing to figure out how to do on these. It finally took all the small felt tip attachments I had, and a lot of steady engraving work to get them to where they are now.
I'm very pleased with where it's at right now, especially after all that time sanding and polishing, even if a number of details were softened to some extent by the work in getting it to shine. I wish I could clean more of the undercuts around the jaw and inside the mouth of the skull but I don't have anything that could do the job without risk maring the rest of the skull. The knob, unfortunately, doesn't work with my car (as it's an automatic), but I'm thinking of some custom stand that I could specially make just for this to display on my desk.
It's been nearly a decade since FR and I don't think I've seen a full metal Gigahorse shift knob made, so I attempted to rectify that. There's been plenty of 3D files made available but, whether the sculpt themselves or the fact they were in resin/plastics, it just didn't sit right with me that there wasn't something more like the real thing. The M.O. of FR's art direction was that it all had to be real-deal; if it was on screen, it was exactly as it looked to be. Be it a flamethrower double-bass guitar or a metal shift knob. I don't know if the thing was sand cast or not, but the shapes of the thing as well as some imperfections in the prop lead me to believe it was originally cast in metal and polished to a high shine.
While it's more than possible to sandcast this prop by way of lost wax, I wanted something I could make multiples from in case I messed something up. So, I settled on casting the thing in tin pewter from rubber molds. It's all pretty straight-forward: sculpt, mold, cast.
I started out with the initial sculpt in Monster Clay. I'm a very slow sculptor, so this sculpt took a lot longer than it really ought to. I used the best references I could find of the original prop (surprisingly very little) and worked out the shapes of the thing based on how light reflected from the final polished surface in the movie.
Here is the final mold:
I've already had to make adjustments and remove some pieces from the mold to get better casts. Unfortunately, the number of undercuts in this thing had pulled out some details when I demolded the first cast.
I had to cast this twice to get something I was happy with, and to troubleshoot some problems I was having demolding the metal once it cooled.
This is the second cast I pulled with some rough cleaning:
Much of the initial sanding was done by hand to clean the surface, and to gauge how far do I need to sand and buff before being able to buff much of it out on the lathe. I don't have much in way of powertools, so use my polishing stuff in the lathe when I can.
It took three days of trial and error figuring what to do first (Eyes and mouth!) but this is where the shift knob stands currently. I'll need to get an m16 tap and die set to get it actually be usable as a shift knob. Again, much of this clean up work was done on the lathe but in order to get it to the high sheen that it's at now, I resorted to use marine polish and a terry cloth. The inside of the eyes and gaps in the teeth were the trickiest thing to figure out how to do on these. It finally took all the small felt tip attachments I had, and a lot of steady engraving work to get them to where they are now.
I'm very pleased with where it's at right now, especially after all that time sanding and polishing, even if a number of details were softened to some extent by the work in getting it to shine. I wish I could clean more of the undercuts around the jaw and inside the mouth of the skull but I don't have anything that could do the job without risk maring the rest of the skull. The knob, unfortunately, doesn't work with my car (as it's an automatic), but I'm thinking of some custom stand that I could specially make just for this to display on my desk.
