War Machine from IM2: a Collaboration Between Thorssoli and Clonesix

A few years back I had the pleasure of meeting clonesix at the NorCal prop party along with a bunch of other RPF members. I had brought along a truckload of nifty stuff and had such a great time chatting with folks and checking out their stuff that I completely neglected to take any photos. One of the very few that I did take was this beauty:


That's one of clonesix's gorgeous Phase I clones. At the time, I was neck deep in my Ironman build which ended up looking like so:


After sharing costuming horror stories for a while, we got to talking about a project that both of us had on our bucket list: the War Machine from Ironman 2. He had a sixth-scale model that he was figuring would make a pretty good detail reference. I had a bunch of digital models that I could use to automate much of the build. Combining our skills and resources sounded like the beginning of an ideal partnership if it weren't for the fact that the two of us live an hour away from each other.

Still, this project has been festering in both of our to-do lists ever since. Back when I got excited about building Ironman helmet variants, I cranked out this guy:


You can read the details about that project in my blog here: http://protagonist4hire.blogspot.com/2017/03/building-replica-of-war-machine-helmet.html

More recently, clonesix hit me up about getting started on the rest of the armor. Finally, I figured I couldn't put it off any longer. So we've split up the workflow between the two of us. I'm going to be doing the bulk of the CNC carving and 3D printing. He's going to be doing most of the smoothing, prep work, and molding. Then we'll both end up using those molds to make suits for each of us.

This is going to be fun.

So now I've started carving out parts that come out of the Carvewright CNC machines looking like so:


Then I glue all of the parts together into assemblies like this:


And this:


And then handing them off to clonesix who is turning them into this kind of gorgeous:


And this:


Soon the moldmaking will begin as I make progress on prepping the rest of the models for carving and printing:


My current headache is splitting this nightmare into something my robots can chew on:


Hopefully clonesix will chime in here with his progress. In the meantime, stay tuned...

I always love watching you do your thing. Keep up the good work

If it were up to me, I would re-title this thread: " My love of Primer; A Love Story"



here are a few pieces ready to go to mold.







here are the few pieces that will soon be molded and cast.

Are you planning on going to the prop party this year? Amazing work btw!

Another Shawn thorrson iron man project!?!? Thank the maker!

Warmachine2000 said:

Are you planning on going to the prop party this year? Amazing work btw!

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I'm in NorCal and this is about to be the busy part of my year. I'm not sure I'll be able to make it to the SoCal party. I'd love to go, and clonesix has been trying to talk me into it, but I'm not sure I can get my act together enough to make the trip.

drumguy560 said:

Another Shawn thorrson iron man project!?!? Thank the maker!

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Thank clonesix. He's the one who finally got me rolling on this project and he'll be putting in most of the elbow grease on this one.

I've been neck deep in my Fallout 4 Power Armor build for the past couple of months, so I haven't made much progress on carving out new prototype parts. clonesix on the other hand has begun making molds for the pieces he's got at his place. The other night he sent me some snapshots of the work in progress. Witness some gorgeous moldmaking:


















And the first round of parts pulled from these molds:


I've still got the thighs, foot, and the other lower leg waiting for me to do more prep and cleanup. clonesix has the waist, pelvis, and upper arm parts about ready to mold. Sooner than later I need to finish cleaning up the models for the chest and forearms. In any case, this no-rush project is at least seeing progress somewhere.

Beautiful work by both of you: this armor is going to kick serious behinds for sure:cool

joberg said:

Beautiful work by both of you: this armor is going to kick serious behinds for sure:cool

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Thank you for the encouragement. While I haven't had much time on my end to devote to this project, clonesix has been doing an awesome job on the moldmaking end of things. A while back he sent me this pic of the waist pieces and outer shoulder strip all clayed up and ready to mold:


Here's the finished mold:


I really need to talk him into getting more "during" photos of his processes. I always love to learn the nuances of other people's molding techniques.

Here's his pic of all of the flaps for the lower legs and ankles ready to mold:


Here they are somewhere in the middle of the silicone buildup:


And the resulting mold:


So at this point, he's got about 5 gallons of RTV silicone moldmaking rubber into this project. I've still got the thighs, the other lower leg, and the boot (the left and right are interchangeable, so I'm only prototyping one) sitting in a box waiting for me to finish smoothing them out.

Now I just need to spend some quality time cleaning up the models for the forearms and the chest. The chest is a lot of parts:


Once I've got July behind me, I'll have a little more time to devote to the digital side of things. That'll give me a chance to set up the next stack of parts for the Carvewrights and the 3D printers to work on.

Here's a pic for you. I slushed some resin into the shin mold to pop a part out and answer the foot question. What was the question? Can I slide my foot through the narrow slot of the ankle in order to wear the thing. @Thorsoli : Yes, I can.

I slushed a few parts just to see how they would come out. It is too hot outside to think about laminating fiberglass.

These are the first of the parts out of the molds. There is right shin, shoulder bell, and corset section with spinal pieces. Sure, this is a small number of pieces, but it took me 6 months to get this far. Back in January, everything looked like this:

I ran some quick cast thru the mold to give it a test run, as I wasn't about to start fiberglassing this late into the weekend. The bicep pieces came out very clean and will look just as nice in fiberglass.

I've been somewhat stalled on my part of this project lately, but next weekend I'll be meeting up with clonesix to hand off the next stack of parts. It just means I'm going to have to dust them off:


This is the other lower leg, both thighs, and the boot parts. That'll give him something to tinker with while I get around to cleaning up the models for the chest and forearms and finally start printing gun parts.

Hopefully we'll actually start having pictures to post soon.

Stay tuned...

I picked up the molds from clonesix over the weekend. I've got a lot of other work in progress in the shop, but I couldn't resist the urge to lay up a set of fiberglass parts from some of these molds. Here's a shoulder:


And a waist taped onto my friend Freddy:


The end result is very pretty, but that's entirely because of the gorgeous molding work that clonesix has done.

In other news, a couple of my 3D printers are currently churning out gatling gun parts. So that's about to happen.

Started the next thing:

I always love following your threads, and the work you do is just amazing.....looks like you guys are on track for something great again. On a side note you inspired me to start learning about casting and mold making and in the next few weeks I'm hoping to take a one day class over casting, so thanks again for your great work.

whistler said:

I always love following your threads, and the work you do is just amazing.....looks like you guys are on track for something great again. On a side note you inspired me to start learning about casting and mold making and in the next few weeks I'm hoping to take a one day class over casting, so thanks again for your great work.

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Thanks for the kind words. If it helps at all, it turns out I wrote a book about prop making that includes a whole section about molding and casting. You can pick up a copy on Amazon here: http://amzn.to/2htiIiZ

The forearm guns are in progress. Here's the right one, fresh off the printer:


The left one is printing as I type this.

I've also finally gotten around to slicing the forearms into pieces that my Carvewright CNC machines can whittle out for me. Here's what the two boards should look like once they're all carve out:


All told, it'll be about fifteen hours of machine cutting time to get these guys carved out. Then I can flip everything over and carve the parts for the left gauntlet.

Stay tuned.

The parts for the forearms are all carved now, so last night I got a few minutes free to snap all of the waste material off of the parts:


Here's the right forearm all glued together:


The gun is just duct taped in place for now:


I'm happy with it:


When I get a few more minutes, I'll assemble the left version, then it'll be time to start filling and sanding.

How are you guys attaching the gun to the forearm?

I'm using the Do3D files and there's no way it'll hold given the limited contact points as shown here