Blade Runner 1982 - Force Badge

While I'm working away on my metal coyle blaster I decided to work on the force badge as a side project.

Original force badge picture from worldcon by Karl Tate



I started by bringing the original image into rhino, my preferred modeling software, to pull measurements and allow me to print templates accurately to scale. I started with dimensions given over on propsummit by Buch which are Height 4 1/8" H (10,5 cm) x Width 3 1/8" W (7,9 cm).



After scaling the picture in rhino I decided to make the walls 1.5mm thick and 6mm high. The 6mm high was a total guess because the available reference pics don't show the badge from the side to get a accurate dimension. I contemplated sending the frame out to print but decided that it would be easy enough to make it out of styrene. I printed out some templates from the model to use for cutting out the styrene pieces.



The badge shape piece was cut out from 1mm styrene and served as the base shape to bend the 1.5mm sides around. I used a heat gun to soften up the 1.5mm styrene then bent it around the base and welded together with plastruct plastic weld. I did the short sides first making the strips much longer than they needed to be then trimmed them down after welding. Then I added the long sides and finished up with some sanding to blend the sides together.

Also I got the center bezel. It is a found piece, a coin bezel meant for holding silver dollars onto belt buckles. The source I used only had gold at the time but I have since found the silver version that I will use on the finished pieces.

Impressive work so far.. color me interested!

My grail piece. I have a bag full of 38mm silver bezels waiting in case you need any.
I have the 995 conterpart badge, cast from screen-used by Rich Coyle some years ago.

Following with great interest!

This is one of the few items on my Blade Runner list. Very interested to see how this goes. Good luck!

userd1402 said:

My grail piece. I have a bag full of 38mm silver bezels waiting in case you need any.
I have the 995 conterpart badge, cast from screen-used by Rich Coyle some years ago.

Click to expand...

Very generous, thank you. I have all I need coming my way but hopefully you will be able to use your's soon! Nice score on the 995 (or is it 99S) badge, really wish I had one.

Its hard to tell in the pic but the coin bezel is curved on the back so I put it on my belt sander to get it to lay flat. This gold one will go in the trash but Ill do the same for the silver ones that are incoming. I was surprised this is actual metal, the cheap finish makes it look like plastic.



You can tell on the original that it was cast in pewter then a bezel was attached, the bezel was not cast most likely because it has too much fine detail. Another worldcon pic by Karl Tate.



I made the force logo at the bottom out of 1mm styrene. I recently left a job where I had access to a laser cutter which would have been extremely useful for this bit but in the end I like the hand made look and actually enjoyed the cleanup. Im also interested in how they made these pieces in the 1980's with all of their great imperfections so in the end it worked out fine. It was a round about process; I spray adhesive'd the scaled force logo onto the 1mm styrene and cut out the overall shape, then I carefully cut out the letters and traced with a pen. Next I removed the printed template and drilled holes to start and then used an assortment of needle files to start the cleanup. It looks like a disaster after the drill press but turned out really well. I still need to fix the "e". After that I welded it down to a 1.5mm piece and did the final shaping and sanding.

I could use you help on the next part. Below are a couple of images from worldcon that have great lighting that show off the texture in the black areas. How do you think this was achieved? I was going to cover the bottom with a thin layer of clay and use a sponge to apply texture but am open to other suggestions. It looks really bubbly, like there were trapped air bubbles. maybe it was slow curing resin, maybe it was vacuumed? I tried to vacuum casting resin one time an it "boiled" until it cured in the vacuum that looked similar. any suggestions are appreciated.

Difficult to say if it's part of the sculpt or the way the paint dried up? The back of the letters look much smoother...

Pulling casts would be easier with a smooth surface... the effect could be added with the paint...

Otherwise I would use a thin layer of Milliput and jab it with sculpting tools in different sizes...

I made a force badge Popsicle.

It doesn't look like much progress but I have been experimenting on how to do the background texture and also the "flames" which Ill post about separately. So now that its all primed I can see that its mostly good to go except a couple of places on the sides (not visible here) where the edge pieces meet. Ill putty those up then move onto the background texture next. Ill also wet sand the primer to get it ready for molding.

spoudastis said:

the texture in the black areas. How do you think this was achieved?

Click to expand...

It looks to me like the original buck was sand cast, probably just pressed into the surface creating a one part mould. The grainy texture was originally all over the part which was then lightly sanded to remove the grain from the raised silver parts.
If I was making it in 1982, I'd have cast aluminium to make it as light as I could so that it didn't pull too much on the costume.

Jim

Interesting idea but you might have to explain further for me to totally buy it.

1. The "flames" show no sign of sand casting and they are extremely small, i doubt that they would have retained their form from a sand cast. they could have been added after that cast but that seems like way too much work and complication
2. I believe the original at worldcon was pewter
3. I lowered the resolution for the images I posted here of the original, Carl's full res images do show signs of tool marks in the form of perfectly circular divots that I think came from a sculpting tool.
4. The texture in my opinion is much too large and agitated to be that of sand.

My mind can be changed but I think the texture was sculpted in. Ill be doing it with apoxie sculpt.

portland182 said:

It looks to me like the original buck was sand cast, probably just pressed into the surface creating a one part mould. The grainy texture was originally all over the part which was then lightly sanded to remove the grain from the raised silver parts.
If I was making it in 1982, I'd have cast aluminium to make it as light as I could so that it didn't pull too much on the costume.

Jim

Click to expand...

This is looking amazing so far! In my opinion it looks like the background and the flames/wings were all sculpted from the same piece. The stippling effect seems to me like tool marks left over from embossing the area.

You have more information than I do - I was working from the low rez image!

Jim

Following with interest!

Today I played a little with different materials to make the flames. I tried three different materials both from the bottle (puffy paint and liquid lead) and through piping bags. Piping bags gave way more control in both the volume and thickness of the line. I made the piping bags out of parchment paper and tested on parchment paper with a scale print of the force badge below so that i could draw the flames to scale for the test.



1. Tulip puffy paint - A lot of people use this for their spider man suits etc. so I though I would give it a go because I thought it would maintain its form and be easy to control out of the bottle. This stuff is pretty thin so it doesn't really have the height that i wanted for the flames. Because it is thin it is easy to control but unfortunately it takes a really long time to dry and in that time it starts to settle a bit and lose its three dimensionality. Nix.



2. Gallery Glass Liquid Lead - This stuff is used for fake leading on painted stained glass projects. It's thicker than the puffy paint and really easy to control out of a piping bag. It maintains its height pretty well, not 100% but still not bad. If it were a little thicker I think it may work. Whats nice is that it dries relatively fast and you can peel it off of the parchment paper so there is the possibility of tracing the force badge then transferring over to the replica. Maybe.



3. 30 minute epoxy + baby powder - I thought this would be a winner but it was a total fail. The baby powder thickened the epoxy up but no matter how long I waited, prior to it really kicking and being un-pipable, it was never able to keep and height and just spread out into big blobs. Nix.



4. Gallery Glass Liquid Lead + Baby powder - I think this is the winner. After being really disappointed after the epoxy test I thought hey the liquid lead would be great if it were a bit thicker so lets add some baby powder. It ended up being thick, easy to control out of the bag, and kept its height. In the photo it looks kind of messed up but thats because i started running a toothpick through it while messing around. Whats nice is that after 30min of drying you can take a toothpick and start to tightened up and modifying the lines slightly. Also you can start to tap it down a little to match the appearance on the original where some flames are roundish while others look flat topped.



This isnt the best pick but i piped right on top of a print out and tried to match the flat topped look. I think with a little more practice this method will work out.

Very nice work and thanks for the tuto and the research! :cool

I had the same idea using the puffy paint to do the details on the inside of the badge...glad to see I wasn't too far off!

Almost the same method as LukaFilm described....

https://www.therpf.com/showthread.php?t=206196&page=13&highlight=FORCE

I wish someone would offer casts of this badge.