Batman Rebirth Utility Belt

Valor

Valor

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This illustration of the new Rebirth Batman has always spoke to me. I don't much care for the utility belt design of the new suit, but THIS artist (Howard Porter) did something really interesting with it. I guess I wasn't the only one. I was recently commissioned to build a belt based on this illustration.

rebirthbelt.jpgbr1.jpg

I'm starting by working up the design in Adobe Illustrator. Then I transferred the drawing to foam core to mock-up the general scale of the belt.

So far so good.

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I little final refinement. I changed my mind a few times on the inner buckle "button" ... opted for a simple approach. Everything was cleaned up and put into foam core boxes. I use Smooth-on Mold Star for the molds. Hopefully I can pull a few casts out later tomorrow.

Also, I reached out to Howard Porter, the artist who created to cover art I'm basing this on. I thought I would share since this is so specifically "his" version of the Rebirth Belt. Seems like a nice guy.
 

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My God I totally hate SmoothOn Onyx black resin. I thought it would be cool for all the belt pieces to be black, to better hid any paint chips. I heard some people have issues with it. I appear to be having EVERY SINGLE ONE. It's a very fast curing resin, but what makes it challenging is it is also a VERY HOT curing resin.

If I try to pour a thicker cast – like more than a half inch – The resin forms big blisters on the face of the cast, wrecking the cast.
As the casts were curing I was seeing the resin contracting and pulling out of the corners of the mold, leaving gaps cast. I can literally see this happening as the resin cures.

So, to finish all the pieces I had to do 3 pours per mold so it didn't blister and on the last pour I had to wait for the resin to contract out of the corners then quickly pour a tiny bit on new resin into each corner filling the void. It took me 2-3 times longer to use this stuff.

I switched to my standby of SmoothCast 300 tonight and I was able to pour each mold full in one move, everything cured perfect.

I don't know who this black stuff is for, but it's not me.
 
That's strange, I've made pieces as thick if not thicker than your belt pieces with Onyx with no such reactions. Although I only use the slow wetting Onyx, not the fast one, that I don't know what people do with it, it goes way too fast. Bad batch maybe ?
Awesome build by the way !
 
teragon said:
That's strange, I've made pieces as thick if not thicker than your belt pieces with Onyx with no such reactions. Although I only use the slow wetting Onyx, not the fast one, that I don't know what people do with it, it goes way too fast. Bad batch maybe ?
Awesome build by the way !
Click to expand...

I use the fast setting onyx for both slush casting my helmets and gauntlets and for doing my belt pieces as well and haven't had an issue with it. It's really dry where I am so maybe your issues are due to environmental variables like humidity?
 
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