Thorssoli's First Order Builds - Captain Phasma FINISHED on Page 21!

Re: Thorssoli's Episode VII Builds (TIE Pilot Nearing Completion of Page 14)

Thorssoli...you are a machine!!!

Don't blow my cover. You're going to make it very difficult for me to kill Sarah Connor.

Awesome ! What will be the main difference between the first version I have and this one? Will it be easier to open the squares ans the coin slot ?

Mainly I'm making them a bit bigger so they'll fit forearms with more girth. Other than that, I'm fixing a few things I didn't like about the original sculpt and making the seam narrower so there's less material wasted when they're cut apart and slotted back together. They'll still be rotocast the same way as the previous version, so finishing will be pretty much the same.

As before, I started with a nice, clean casting of my Episode VII stormtrooper/Phasma forearms and added a bunch of Bondo change the contours of the outer side as shown in those two pics in my last post.

When the shape was mostly smoothed out, I buffed out a couple of patches near the elbow and added a pair of rectangles of mounting tape where the recessed rectangles needed to be. Then I built up more Bondo over the whole surface. When it cured, I sanded it back down until the tape was exposed. Removing the tape left behind a nice, smooth, rectangular recess:


Here's a closeup of one of them before I'd removed the second piece of mounting tape:


Next I drilled holes and installed these little peg details that (for some reason) weren't in the stormtrooper forearms before I molded them:


After that, it was just a matter of fixing a couple of minor bubbles with spot putty:


Once they were sanded nice and smooth (220-grit, if memory serves) I gave them a couple of coats of primer:


After it dried, they got a little more sanding, then a glossy coat of lightish red:




Yesterday I split them lenghtwise, added a piece of 1/4" stock to make a gap between the two halves, and mounted them for molding:


Here's what they looked like just moments before I started pouring rubber:


After pouring on a coat of silicone, I spent some quality time troweling the rubber up the sides of the gauntlets:


Note the intense focus:

Intense.

Here's what they looked like when I finally quit last night:


Today I'll be thickening the molds and adding registration keys. So with any luck, tomorrow I'll finish the mothermolds and possibly get a casting or two out of the molds.

Stay tuned...
 
Re: Thorssoli's Episode VII Builds (TIE Pilot Nearing Completion of Page 14)

How quick does your rubber cure? I'm guessing it's fairly quick. I use the cheap stuff from Micro Mark and it's pretty runny. I think it would be on my bench before it cured. I consider my molding skills amateur so I'm not putting any money into better stuff for awhile! :lol
 
Re: Thorssoli's Episode VII Builds (TIE Pilot Nearing Completion of Page 14)

How quick does your rubber cure? I'm guessing it's fairly quick. I use the cheap stuff from Micro Mark and it's pretty runny. I think it would be on my bench before it cured. I consider my molding skills amateur so I'm not putting any money into better stuff for awhile! :lol

Better tools and materials often lead to better work. That said, I usually use Mold Max 30 from Smooth-On. It's runny too. It's supposed to be in order to allow any trapped bubbles to rise to the surface before it cures and add flaws to your castings or weakens the rubber mold. The rubber I'm using has a pot life of around 45 minutes. It's pretty hot in the shop these past couple of days, so it actually goes a bit quicker. During that time it will slowly gel and thicken. So when I'm troweling the rubber out of the drip tray at the bottom of the mold back up onto the sides of the prototype, it's becoming more viscous and tending to stay where I put it.

For second and subsequent layers, I add Thi-Vex thixotropic agent. Depending on how much you add, the uncured rubber can end up working a lot like cake frosting. It'll stay put on vertical or even inverted surfaces. I'll use this mixture to build up about 1/2" of material, then add registration keys (cast ahead of time in either an ice cube tray or a purpose-made tray of little hemispherical divots) and finally pour on a single coat of unthickened rubber to flow over all of it and make the outer surface nice and smooth. The end result for these gauntlets looks like so:


That was the state of the molds last night. Today the rubber will be completely cured, so I'll be making the two-part fiberglass mothermold over the top of everything.
 
Re: Thorssoli's Episode VII Builds (TIE Pilot Nearing Completion of Page 14)

Ah okay so while you're putting it on you're collecting what's pooling and pouring it on again? That makes more sense. I've only cast very small parts for models so I haven't been too worried about quality yet. I figure for anything larger I'm going to need to make a degassing pot and get better materials.
 
Re: Thorssoli's Episode VII Builds (TIE Pilot Nearing Completion of Page 14)

Been a while since I've updated this thread. Progress has continued along the way though.

First off, I finished the molds for the upgrade TIE pilot forearms:


Since the forearms for the flametrooper are the same shape as the TIE pilots, I suppose this means I'm back to work on that project:


For a minute I got a bit distracted by building this:


I'm really good at getting distracted:


But I'm back on track and painted up a couple of these guys:


There's some details that aren't quite accurate, but they came out okay:




Finally, since I'm back to making flametrooper progress, I drew up this quick and dirty pattern:


Then I sat down at this machine:


Then I made me a pocket:




I tried to come up with some ideas for making a better pocket, but I'm not sure this second one was an improvement:


As luck would have it, the same pattern will also work for the snowtrooper pouches. So I guess I'm back to work on that project too...
 
Re: Thorssoli's Episode VII Builds (TIE Pilot Nearing Completion of Page 14)

Made my girlfriend a TIE Pilot costume:


Sooner or later I'll make one for myself.

I also got a good start on one of these:


So that's kinda cool.
 
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Re: Thorssoli's Episode VII Builds (TIE Pilot Nearing Completion of Page 14)

Kinda cool?!? That's awesome! But will it be BB-8 or BB-9E?

Yeah, kinda.

My plan is to make the skin and dome interchangeable so I can dress it up as whatever BB unit I want. BB-8, BB-9, BB-4, 2BB-2, BB-4ME, whatever.

That's the only way I can talk myself out of making more than one.
 
Re: Thorssoli's Episode VII Builds (TIE Pilot Nearing Completion of Page 14)

...do you think you might sell 'em? :)

No can do. My build(s) for the droids are all based off of the BB-8 Builders' Club files. All I'm doing is following the instructions, printing and assembling their parts. Selling them is a bit of a no-no over there. That's why I printed each of the skeleton sections instead of just pulling a mold and casting 24 copies of that piece.

There is a guy over there that's designed a pretty good skeleton (an updated version of his files which I'm using) and sent the models off to be injection molded in a glass-reinforced composite. He sells a kit. So I figure If I ever get the wild notion to make more skeletons for my alternate skins, I may just end up picking one of those.
 
Re: Thorssoli's Episode VII Builds (TIE Pilot Nearing Completion of Page 14)

Fair enough! Thanks for letting me know :)
 
Re: Thorssoli's Episode VII Builds (TIE Pilot Nearing Completion of Page 14)

For your forearm mold, did you just cut it all the way around to make it a 2-part mold once you finished the mothermold?
 
Re: Thorssoli's Episode VII Builds (TIE Pilot Nearing Completion of Page 14)

For your forearm mold, did you just cut it all the way around to make it a 2-part mold once you finished the mothermold?

I made a jeweler's cut most of the way up the sides of the rubber jacket mold. That way I can peel it off of the cast parts and the seam line ends up hidden inside where the parts overlap.
 
Re: Thorssoli's Episode VII Builds (TIE Pilot Nearing Completion of Page 14)

I made a jeweler's cut most of the way up the sides of the rubber jacket mold. That way I can peel it off of the cast parts and the seam line ends up hidden inside where the parts overlap.

Roger, that makes sense. We're looking to mold the FO forearms ourselves soon, and we weren't entirely sure the best method, but this looks much simpler.
 
Re: Thorssoli's Episode VII Builds (TIE Pilot Nearing Completion of Page 14)

Slow progress continues on my BB unit build:


Oh, and a friend hooked me up with a raw cast Kylo Ren helmet he didn't want. So that's a thing too.
 
Re: Thorssoli's Episode VII Builds (TIE Pilot Nearing Completion of Page 14)

Geez it's been a while since I updated this thread.

For starters, I finally made myself a TIE pilot:

My girlfriend and I both spent the day wearing them at Wondercon:

Since we were wearing gloves, we didn't take nearly enough photos.

Then I ended up wearing mine again at Silicon Valley Comic Con:




I've had a lot going on in the workshop, but I suppose it's finally time to get started on this guy:


So that's about to be a thing.

Stay tuned...
 
Re: Thorssoli's Episode VII Builds (TIE Pilot Nearing Completion of Page 14)

Incinerator progress is progressing:


The barrels and muzzle block are printing right now. I should have something like a complete assembly in the next day or so.

In other news, I've printed and mostly assembled the First Order quadnoculars:


So with a little more cleanup and paint, those will be done soon. If you want a pair of your own, these were printed from files by The5thHorseman on whitearmor.net. You can download them here: www.whitearmor.net/forum/topic/45173-first-order-quadnoculars


Stay tuned.
 
Re: Thorssoli's Episode VII Builds (TIE Pilot Nearing Completion of Page 14)

Sweet costumes!! And that incinerator is getting there already...eager for the next update:thumbsup
 
Re: Thorssoli's Episode VII Builds (TIE Pilot Nearing Completion of Page 14)

Got this thing all printed:


Can't help but think I should've made it a tiny bit bigger:


Here it is with the v2.0 helmet:


For scale, I'm 5'7" tall. The overall length of the incinerator is about 37.5" The grip feels to be a bit large, but everything else about it feels a bit small. Is it just me?
 
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