I'm a terrible Jurassic Park fan. Just recently I noticed the cane that John Hammond carries in the film – the one with the mosquito-in-amber top – is made from pieces of dino bones! I seriously always thought it was bamboo. With new respect for how badass the cane is, I started on my own version.
The body of the cane has an aluminum tube. The "bones" are molded from Fimo clay. The get the clay to grab onto the smooth aluminum, I first covered the aluminum with a rough skim-coat of JB-Weld. This allowed the clay to bit into the surface and not slide around. To get the cane into my oven to harden the clay, the cane was created in two pieces that were fit together in the end.
My cane is built to the proper dimensions of the actual cane, with the correct number of segments. However, as I was sculpting I wanted the bones to be a bit more craggy, irregular and raw. I wanted mine to clearly look like a line of million-year-old bones. After the cane came out of the over I attacked it with lots of washes of acrylic paint to get a weathered bone look.
Now, the fun part: The amber. The hardest part? Finding a friggin' crane fly. Seriously. I feel like those buggers are on my screen door all summer long. But the ONE time I want to grab one, suddenly I can't find a volunteer. This project halted for several weeks because I couldn't find a subject. I even resorted to posting a WTB post on craigslist offering to pay $5 a piece if someone caught me some crane flies. Nothing. Finally, a friend who lives in California came through. She mailed me a giant dead crane fly she found in her house. Not only was this thing huge, it was extremely deceased. It had a nice million-year-old vibe to it.
So, with specimen in hand, I created a master for the amber cane topper out of clay. Made a two part silicon mold of that. For the final clear topper, I used a two part clear resin from Hobby Lobby. The bug was carefully placed in the middle during the casting process.
The final product feels rightly badass.
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The body of the cane has an aluminum tube. The "bones" are molded from Fimo clay. The get the clay to grab onto the smooth aluminum, I first covered the aluminum with a rough skim-coat of JB-Weld. This allowed the clay to bit into the surface and not slide around. To get the cane into my oven to harden the clay, the cane was created in two pieces that were fit together in the end.
My cane is built to the proper dimensions of the actual cane, with the correct number of segments. However, as I was sculpting I wanted the bones to be a bit more craggy, irregular and raw. I wanted mine to clearly look like a line of million-year-old bones. After the cane came out of the over I attacked it with lots of washes of acrylic paint to get a weathered bone look.
Now, the fun part: The amber. The hardest part? Finding a friggin' crane fly. Seriously. I feel like those buggers are on my screen door all summer long. But the ONE time I want to grab one, suddenly I can't find a volunteer. This project halted for several weeks because I couldn't find a subject. I even resorted to posting a WTB post on craigslist offering to pay $5 a piece if someone caught me some crane flies. Nothing. Finally, a friend who lives in California came through. She mailed me a giant dead crane fly she found in her house. Not only was this thing huge, it was extremely deceased. It had a nice million-year-old vibe to it.
So, with specimen in hand, I created a master for the amber cane topper out of clay. Made a two part silicon mold of that. For the final clear topper, I used a two part clear resin from Hobby Lobby. The bug was carefully placed in the middle during the casting process.
The final product feels rightly badass.
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