Re: Just What This Forum Needs: Another Ironman Build
I haven't been posting enough pictures lately. For this I am ashamed.
The past couple of days have been very productive. In the midst of actually making real progress on a couple of paid projects I was also able to do a bit of work on this thing. For starters, I installed some straps on the iron corset. Here's the closure at the front:
This will get covered by the ab plate so it won't be visible, but it has to have a fairly low profile. The resulting closure works great.
The back has even less room to hide things under the spine plates, so I came up with this:
Here's a shot on the inside:
This turned out to be a horrible idea. In hindsight, I'll be better off drilling holes on either side of the spine opening and installing grommets and laces so it can cinch up like a proper corset. I'm also finally toying with the idea of making a couple of castings of this in a semi-rigid resin with a shore hardness of 45D (about the same as the rubber eraser on a #2 pencil) so it won't dig quite so hard into my hip bones when I walk around. I still won't be able to tie my shoes, but at least it'll be a bit more forgiving when I'm walking around.
On the subject of rubber parts, the Vytaflex 50 that I used to cast the neck piece is starting to seem like a bad idea. It was nice and soft and stretchy and the only thing that looked wrong was the size of the neck piece I'd made. Yesterday I set it flat on the corner of the workbench for a few minutes and when I picked it back up I noticed cracks had started everywhere that it was folded:
There was also a noticeable tear at the top edge:
Since the rubber itself was about the same firmness as a gummy bear, I'll admit that I was skeptical about how much wear and tear it would take. I will admit that I'm disappointed that it has already failed. I'll make another pull with less pigment (in case that's what caused the problem) but I'm not very optimistic. I'm probably going to end up having to make a stone mold and slipcasting the neck piece in latex like I did with the knees and elbows. The main benefit to this plan is that I'll get another chance to re-size the neck piece and make it a bit more snug.
On the plus side, I finally got around to painting up a set of hand parts:
Then I pulled on a burgundy elbow-length opera glove and started adding pieces:
The burgundy glove is a bit of the wrong color, but I don't think it'll be all that noticeable:
Finally, I did a bit more work reshaping the new upper arm prototype:
There's not much about it that's changed. Mostly I just added about 1/4" of thickness to the area directly above the elbow on either side:
As long as I was testing for fit and functionality, I couldn't end the day without trying on more of the pieces:
It looks a bit silly from behind without the buttplates and the hip pods, but it's a lot more presentable from the front:
I think it'll work:
More progress today. Stay tuned...