Star Wars The Force Unleashed II - General Rahm Kota WIP

[Koda Vonnor]

Re: The Force Unleashed II - General Rahm Kota WIP

I made another armor part yesterday. Used paper to measure out a template and to get the "lean" angle right, then drew it up in Turbo-Cad. I cut the main piece out of 3mm Sintra and used a straight-edge and a sharpened eye-glasses screwdriver to cut the grooves. I cut out the raised edge trim from 1mm Sintra and used Azek PVC cement to glue the two together. I can't heat-bend it yet since it takes a couple days to completely dry.

Don't sound like much but still took about 4 hours, mostly tweaking the curves till they looked like the references. I'll bend it to shape and add the closure system probably next week.

I did see after fitting it, that I'll need to cut about 0.5" to 0.75" off the elbow end of the radius and ulna plates to get the scaling to look right.

Little bits at a time, it goes on.

~ Vonnor

 

[Koda Vonnor]

Re: The Force Unleashed II - General Rahm Kota WIP

I tried to bend this to the curve around a mandrel using a heat gun, but it proved too problematic. The Sintra tended to puff up at the edges and where I had cut the grooves. Also I just couldn't get the curve smooth enough overall. I'm going to just put this back on the plaster arm and sculpt a coverplate, take a mold and cast a fiberglass one. I'll put the grooves and edging on that.

 

[Koda Vonnor]

Re: The Force Unleashed II - General Rahm Kota WIP

Back at it again. I added the wrist edge trim, cut off about 5/8" at the elbow end, and put edge trim on that end too. I will fill in the gaps and edges with bondo/glaze mix tomorrow at a 501st Armor Workshop, then it's prime time. I am going to sculpt the cover plate shown a couple posts ago, and do a fiberglass casting rather than try to heat-form Sintra. It will be a much better fit that way.

~ Vonnor

 

[Vaportrail]

Re: The Force Unleashed II - General Rahm Kota WIP

Has anyone said "awesome" yet? Cuz this is pretty awesome.

I'm about to make some foam gaunlets, I was just going to cut a template and modify it until it fit right. The molding techniques here are really impressive. Keep it up!

 

[Drac]

Re: The Force Unleashed II - General Rahm Kota WIP

Amazing work, as always, your last Rahm Kota was ace

 

[Koda Vonnor]

Re: The Force Unleashed II - General Rahm Kota WIP

Thanks VT & Drac.

After reading back through this thread I came across a comment about the edge beading on the shoulder bells. I had used a soft cast urethane rubber beading for the raised edge of the hard model before I took the production mold. It was much easier and cleaner than sculpting a clay edge.

That got me thinking.

I have had a great deal of trouble in crafting the forearm coverplate for the vambraces. Sintra proved to be difficult to contour properly, so I am going to try casting a soft urethane coverplate and gluing it to a styrene sheet wrapped around the main sections. Then I can take a mold of that and cast it in fiberglass, and add the edging post-cast.

I also tracked down a 5/64" engraving bit for the dremel, and used the router attachment to make clean grooves in the scrap model.

I'm using Smooth-On Mold Star 30, to be backed with plaster when dry.

More to come soon.

~ Vonnor

 

[Koda Vonnor]

Re: The Force Unleashed II - General Rahm Kota WIP

A 100 watt lightbulb took the 6hr cure of the Mold Star 30 down to 90 min. I'm going to wait a couple days for the plaster to fully dry before pouring the urethane rubber soft model, as any moisture will bubble it up something awful.

The casting will be slightly oversize to allow for the fiberglass cloth fringe at the edges, which I will trim off to the final curvature. That way the edges will be a little stronger than if they were mostly Bondo.

 

[Koda Vonnor]

Re: The Force Unleashed II - General Rahm Kota WIP

As you can see I had to take another mold of the flat forearm plate model. The MoldStar30 did not perform well under heat. I know that it was due to the shelf age of the liquid materials but I wanted to give it a try.

The Reoflex 40 was very old as well, with most of the rubber solids having coagulated on the bottom of the resin, and the hardener was almost too thick to stir, but I also wanted to see if it was salvageable. As long as it doesn't inhibit the silicone mold cure I think it'll work OK. The sample in the 1st pix shows the correct cured color.

I used a thin sheet of styrrene to form the normalized contour around the gauntlet assembly, and superglued the soft plate model to that. The lines are close enough to straight as not to be noticeable in production.

I will take a brush-on mold of this tomorrow and cast the hard model in fiberglass. The final cutout shape and the edge stripping will be done on the fiberglass piece.

More coming soon.

~ Vonnor

 

[Koda Vonnor]

Re: The Force Unleashed II - General Rahm Kota WIP

Made a mold of the forearm plate out of Rebound40 silicone rubber and backed it with plaster. Here it is ready to bake for a few hours (to get all the moisture out) then lay in the fiberglass.

~ Vonnor

 

[Koda Vonnor]

Re: The Force Unleashed II - General Rahm Kota WIP

I made the fiberglass forearm guard this weekend. Since I wanted a very clean cloth lay-up, and scissors would have been a challenge with all the curves, I tried printing templates on card stock and taping them down to the cutting board with the glass piece in between. This worked like a charm and rendered six super clean sheets. Exacto cut through the glass like butter. For the template I used the same cutout as for the flexible model, but skewed it more vertical. Since the cloth will self-skew back to the proper contour as I lay it into the mold, it made it easier to do the cutouts.

As before, I used a Rondo gel-coat with about 50/50 Bondo/resin. The weather was warm (mid 80's F) so I kept the hardener a little on the "cold" side. Thin Rondo, then 6 cloth layers, then thick Rondo finish around the edges. I want to be able to sand down the edges to make a perfect fit to the main assembly.

You can see on the rough breakout the Radius side is a very nice fit, but the Ulna side does not sit down flat due to the thick edge and mainly the flashing. This will be trimmed off down to the final contour. Right now the whole thing is about 3mm too big on all sides. The surface edge trim will hide the groove ends.

I'm quite happy with the results.

More coming soon.

~ Vonnor

 

[Koda Vonnor]

Re: The Force Unleashed II - General Rahm Kota WIP

I'm counting the handguards as complete.

Just gotta add dirt.

Really love the shinies.

~ Vonnor

 

[vaderjeff1744]

Re: The Force Unleashed II - General Rahm Kota WIP

ABSOLUTELY BEAUTIFUL WORK!!! LOOKS FANTASTIC!!!cool

 

[rosh]

Re: The Force Unleashed II - General Rahm Kota WIP

The way that you approach building in multiple stages is inspiring- your mold making pics are very informative too. I've been watching this build for some time now, and I'll keep watching till its done. Keep it up koda.

 

[Koda Vonnor]

Re: The Force Unleashed II - General Rahm Kota WIP

Thanks guys.

 

[Canobi]

Re: The Force Unleashed II - General Rahm Kota WIP

Yep, your skills and this build thread are awesome koda, just read through the whole thing :cool


Really looking forward to seeing it completed, will be watching closely and cheering you on :thumbsup

 

[Koda Vonnor]

Re: The Force Unleashed II - General Rahm Kota WIP

I shaved the edges of the forearm plate down to a decent representation of the CG model's contours and added the raised edging. Had some slightly worse than moderate errors in the edge trim (as in broke it clean through) but will fix it a bit with filler and disguise it with the paint and weathering. The last pic shows the angle cut at the elbow to allow nose scratching and sandwich eating.

I found a reasonable solution to the metallic silver rectangles on the glove fingers. After much trial and error I tried inking them with a silver autograph marker and sealing them with Angelus matte finish acrylic sealer. Without the sealer the ink smudges very easily, but sealed it holds to the deerskin a lot better.

I also got some little neo-D magnets in the mail today that will power the gauntlet closure system, which needs to be in place before the wrist clip is sculpted.

More to come.

~ Vonnor

 

[Koda Vonnor]

Re: The Force Unleashed II - General Rahm Kota WIP

I cut a slightly oversize elbow guard from 2mm Sintra, then took a silicone rubber mold of it on the flat, then poured a urethane rubber model using ReoFlex-40 from Smooth-On. I used an old plastic sheet that I think was for covering a bowl in the microwave and tack-glued it inside the gauntlet assembly with a bit sticking out the elbow end. I wanted a semi-rigid form that would extend the conical curvature beyond the end. I lined up the rubber model and glued it to the plastic sheet, sealing the edges with superglue.

The plan is to mask off the elbow end inside the cone and pour a Hydrocal mold over the rubber elbow guard model. That will give me a smooth mandrel to use for heat-forming the Sintra elbow guard. This will ensure that the curvature exactly matches the inside of the gauntlet at the elbow end.

The top and side edges of the guard will have 1mm raised edging. The bottom (wrist end) edge will be riveted to a curved strip of galvanized steel, cut from a piece of duct-work. The steel strip will have two squares of Sintra spaced out and rivited. The forearm plate will have mating sintra squares spaced to the gaps in the steel strip assembly, each with a super magnet embedded in it, as well as raised keys that mate with the edging on the main assembly. The whole thing should snap into place like a row of teeth.

Stay tuned.

I told you the gauntlets were the hardest element of this costume.

~ Vonnor

 

[Koda Vonnor]

Re: The Force Unleashed II - General Rahm Kota WIP

Masked it off at both ends.
Poured in Hydrocal.
Pulled out a mandrel.

The Sintra production elbow guard will be heat-formed to shape in that little depression. The cross-hairs transferred from the soft model are a free bonus.

~ Vonnor

 

[Koda Vonnor]

Re: The Force Unleashed II - General Rahm Kota WIP

After much trial and error, with no trial and success, attempting to heat-form a Sintra elbow guard, I decided to go with what I know. Taking advantage of the dry mid-70s temps with no sun or wind, I built a 4-layer fiberglass elbow guard.

In the process I discovered an interesting thing. Before I laid in the cloth I was worried about releasing the production cast from the mold, so I sealed the hell out of the plaster, then used some auto paste wax on the mold and polished it up a bit. Not only did the casting release easily, the no-gelcoat back surface was dry as a bone with no tackiness. The wax in the mold reacted just like wax in the resin allowing it to fully cure. I added a couple layers of Bondo icing and sanded it down while in the mold to be sure of the surface curvature.

The contour came out perfect with very little gap . Still missing the edge trim at this point but wanted to test fit the assembly for scaling. The fiberglass material is going to work better for riveting to the galvanized steel plate in the magnetic closure system.

It's starting to look like something.

Come back soon.

~ Vonnor

 

[Hexvas]

Re: The Force Unleashed II - General Rahm Kota WIP

I'm not sure whats more enjoyable, seeing the props being brought to life or the process in which they are being made. I'll settle for both

It's coming along great!