Re: Vacformed Warhammer 40k Space Marine Armor - Finished Suit Pics on p.17
After a bit of a hiatus from all things 40K, it's time for me to dust off the forms and crank out one or two more of these guys.
I've promised myself that every time I build another one of these, I'm going to make some sort of improvement to the process. When I made "Big Sexy," the veteran sergeant with Terminator Honors, I added the rubber waist section and upgraded the shoulders from vacformed ABS to lightweight fiberglass.
Those were both practical considerations that make the pieces either sturdier or easier to wear. Now that I'm making another one, I've decided to upgrade to a fiberglass chest as well. To that end, I started by dusting off the three forming bucks that made up the chest:
Then I knocked off the MDF strips that were added to give them a bit more height, and stuck them back together into one single piece:
Then I laid a quick layer of fiberglass over the seams:
As soon as the glass cured, I started with Bondo to fair in the seams:
With the coarse work done, I used glazing and spot putty to smooth it even more:
Then, earlier tonight, I sprayed on a coat of primer to see how it looked:
It looks good in the pictures, but it's going to need quite a bit more sanding and filling before I can give it a nice glosscoat. In the end, I'll need a perfect, glass-smooth finish in order to make a fiberglass mold. The pieces that come out of the molds will still have the seams in the same places, but instead of having to figure out how to put the pieces together, I'll just have to sand them smooth and spray on some primer.
It'll all make sense soon.
The other improvement I'm making this time around is one that's long overdue: the hands. I've never been happy with the proportions I ended up with when I rushed the hands in the first iteration of building, so now I'm in the process of sculpting new hands. They'll begin with the same palms that I originally made:
I'm starting with a right hand that will be holding a handle for a chainsword (or knife, or thunder hammer, power axe, or whatever). Here's the very rough sculpt:
I'll be rotocasting the finished pieces around the sections of pipe which will become the handle for whatever melee weapon the Marine will be carrying. The end result will be much stronger than the finger segments I was gluing around the handles of the weapons before.
This next suit should be very exciting for all of you who are especially enamored with big dogs, Vikings, or a place called Fenris...
Stay tuned.