Blaxmyth
Sr Member
Some time ago I posted a thread for a Hellboy bust. http://www.therpf.com/f11/hellboy-pepakura-full-sized-bust-free-download-184834/ The links are still OK.
Anyway, I’ve just fibreglassed it today in one marathon session. Luckily it’s mid-summer here, so curing the resin and rondo was easy, as the bust is way too big for my curing cabinet.
This is the largest item I’ve done using the wax-release technique that someone posted about a couple of years ago. Basically, it takes advantage of the fact that rondo shrinks after it sets. Start by stiffening the pep with two coats of resin on the outside, then gently rub on some Carnuba wax on the inside, straight onto the card. After the wax has dried off a bit, you apply a good coat (two is better) of rondo on the inside. It will harden and then shrink. It doesn’t shrink much - say about 3mm across the width of a helmet-sized pep.
Because Hellboy is larger than life-sized, I used three large paper cups of rondo – about a litre in total, rotating the mould by hand, then finishing it off outside in the mobile, solar-powered Ford Telstar curing cabinet – the inside gets to 40 degrees Celcius (104 Fahrenheit) with the windows wound up! (Yes, I know – nasty fumes… It’s not being used at the moment and the fumes go away after a day or so with the windows open.)
After that I laid fibreglass cloth inside, at least two layers all over, with some chopped up cloth mixed with resin and plastered into some of the sticky-out bits like his ears, chin and pony-tail.
By the time the fibreglass was cured, you could actually feel where the rondo/fibreglass had pulled away from the card. It was just a matter of slicing the pep open and pulling it off in chunks to reveal a clean rondo surface. The wax seems to leave very little residue on the pep and what there is will easily sand off. Now all I have to do is add a relatively light coat of Bondo and sand it to remove some of the facets. I’m aiming for the Mignola-look so won’t round it too much.
Hopefully I’ll get it done in time for my son’s birthday later this month. Thanks for looking.
Anyway, I’ve just fibreglassed it today in one marathon session. Luckily it’s mid-summer here, so curing the resin and rondo was easy, as the bust is way too big for my curing cabinet.
This is the largest item I’ve done using the wax-release technique that someone posted about a couple of years ago. Basically, it takes advantage of the fact that rondo shrinks after it sets. Start by stiffening the pep with two coats of resin on the outside, then gently rub on some Carnuba wax on the inside, straight onto the card. After the wax has dried off a bit, you apply a good coat (two is better) of rondo on the inside. It will harden and then shrink. It doesn’t shrink much - say about 3mm across the width of a helmet-sized pep.
Because Hellboy is larger than life-sized, I used three large paper cups of rondo – about a litre in total, rotating the mould by hand, then finishing it off outside in the mobile, solar-powered Ford Telstar curing cabinet – the inside gets to 40 degrees Celcius (104 Fahrenheit) with the windows wound up! (Yes, I know – nasty fumes… It’s not being used at the moment and the fumes go away after a day or so with the windows open.)
After that I laid fibreglass cloth inside, at least two layers all over, with some chopped up cloth mixed with resin and plastered into some of the sticky-out bits like his ears, chin and pony-tail.
By the time the fibreglass was cured, you could actually feel where the rondo/fibreglass had pulled away from the card. It was just a matter of slicing the pep open and pulling it off in chunks to reveal a clean rondo surface. The wax seems to leave very little residue on the pep and what there is will easily sand off. Now all I have to do is add a relatively light coat of Bondo and sand it to remove some of the facets. I’m aiming for the Mignola-look so won’t round it too much.
Hopefully I’ll get it done in time for my son’s birthday later this month. Thanks for looking.
