Hopefully by end of day I will have some more progress pics. The shop is a bit of a mess though and I think shop cleaning might beat out RT building...but probably not...lol
My goto source in a pinch for really small wire mesh is a... tea strainer in this case.
The mesh will provide a nice means of breaking up the look of the lights below the coil/fin assembly...and it looks to be present on the screen used prop so on it went.
I would be in for a kit as well. Have you considered doing the Mark II arc reactor or the arc reactors from Iron Man 2? Does anyone happen to know if the second arc reactor from Iron Man is the same and the first arc reactor in the sequel?