WIP, need advice. How would you mold / sculpt this? EverQuest Wizard Epic 1.0

[Auram]

I am in the process of creating a replica of the Wizard Epic 1.0 Staff from the original EverQuest, and I'm struggling to land on an approach to proceed.

The staff head consists of 4 spires / pylons, which sit inside of a set prongs (similar to a diamond in a ring). The first picture I attached (in game screenshot) shows that the spires (purple) are connected to their adjacent spires on a single edge, and the point that two adjacent spires meeting is covered in the picture by a yellow prong. I removed the background near the prong gap in the picture to emphasize how it goes together.

One of the challenges is that the "prongs" only make limited contact with each spire; there is an airgap for much of the prong length, again similar to a diamond set in a ring

I have one master spire completed and ready to be molded. My question is now how to proceed from this

The best option I've come up with so far is this..

1. Cast 4 spires from a single mold, fuse them together into a single spire-set, make a new mold of the 4-spire-set so they're all one unit. Then, sculpt the prongs on top of the finished, 4-spire-set unit. Mold the finished prong-set as a single unit, pull a casting, and then use adhesive to join the spire-set to the 4-prong-set

Any other thoughts on how I should approach this?

Thanks,
Auram

 

[clonesix]

My first thought is that you only want ONE staff, and are NOT making multiple staffs. So there is NO reason to make molds and do casting.

I would make 4 spires by carving them from Ridged Urethane Foam, and coating them with epoxy. I don't get much from the photos, or the description, so my only suggestion for mounting to the spires, is sheet brass as the contact point. It can be imbedded into the Foam Spire prior to the epoxy, and soldered to the prong.

 

[Auram]

Sorry, I should have included that I do plan on making at least 2 or 3 of these, so molds will be necessary.

The best way I can describe the mounting of the spires is to again relate it back to the way a diamond is mounted in a ring. The spires end in two points, one on the bottom that's a sharp point, the other is on top that has a flat face (you can see this orientation in the second picture.) The bottom 'points' all meet together, making a sort of "x" shape at the base of the prong-set base.

I've attached an additional image of how things go together. Imagine if the finished prop was cut in half horizontally and viewed from above (so you are seeing the bottom half of the finished model. That's what I'm trying to convey in the picture. The purple sections are the 4 spires which make up the spire-set, and the 4 yellow triangles represent the prongs (again, cut in half horizontally)

The

 

[Triple 8 Props]

I'm not sure how much this is really going to help your situation but whenever I am attaching two pieces that don't have a lot of surface area I like to drill holes in the two pieces and use wooden (or metal in some cases) dowels between the pieces. The dowels along with some two part epoxy generally make a very solid bond.