Re: HALO Master Chief Costume Progress Thread
Boot Update!
When I last mentioned the boots, I'd just poured the rigid portion of the mold for the soles. Here's what it looked like when I peeled it off:
I was using some old resin from a batch that went bad a while back (paint won't stick to it when it cures) and when this stuff cured, it bubbled up a lot at the surface of the master. The end result was a lot of tiny pits all over the mold:
I puttied over the holes and then did a throwaway cast to see if there would be any problems with the mold. Here's the way the first pulls (solid blocks of boot-shaped foam) came out:
Satisfied that the molds would work, I wedged the donor boot into place. This was a cheap Ugg boot knockoff that would serve as the base for the foam to be cast around:
With the inner shoe in place, I packed it tight full of newspaper so that it wouldn't squish flat when the foam expanded around it. Then I mixed a batch of foam and injected it into the mold between the boot and the rubber jacket mold. Once it started to expand I poured another batch over the bottom of the shoe sole and clamped on the rigid sole mold:
Then I used a 2oz. syringe and injected more foam around the top edge:
As an act of superhuman restraint, I resisted the urge to rush and pull them early. In fact, I waited overnight before I went back to the shop, popped the new boots out of the mold, and then spent the next two hours strutting around in them:
I'm pretty happy with how they came out, but there was one void in the bottom of one of the soles:
And a couple of patches at the back where the foam didn't fill in all the way:
Still, they're very wearable and I'm pretty happy with how they came out:
Now I just need to crank out a dozen more pairs and get to painting.