Genestealer Build Update 13: Prepping the Chest for Molding and a Few Other Bits and Bobs

First off, let me apologize for the lack of updates.  We got pretty swamped for a couple of weeks with one quick project I'll be posting about soon and another big project I may never get to post about at all.  These things happen.

On the plus side, I've suddenly been given a major incentive to focus on the genestealer build, so this thing should start showing a lot of progress in the next few weeks.

Meanwhile, our friend Gene did a fine job of keeping the dust off of this little patch of work bench where he was waiting:

Realizing that clutter had become the enemy of progress in a big way, we cleared off the bench he was sitting on:

This always helps me feel like I'm about to get some stuff done.

Despite all of the other priorities, I was able to add another thick coat of epoxy to the newly reshaped chest:


A few days later my friend Ian stopped by looking to stave off some boredom and do some tinkering, so I set him to work adding cardboard margins to the edges of the part:


This is the first step on the way to making the eventual fiberglass mold for this piece.  Unfortunately, we didn't get around to adding the clay that goes on next:

We'll get to that this week.

We ran out of time that day because Ian had to get home, but first we needed to lifecast some hands which we'll use as sculpting bases for the four hands the creature needs.  Ian's hands are slightly bigger than mine, so we molded his in the "live long and prosper" pose to be used as the three-fingered upper hands, while mine were molded fully-splayed for use as the five-fingered lower hands.

The end result was a pretty handsy critter:


Since I'm really wanting to see this beasty start walking around, I figured I should get a jump on this piece:

So I started printing up the pieces.  The first recognizable part that came out was the tail:


And now I'm just about done assembling the whole thing.  It's not small:

So now I'm going to have to start rushing through some skin sculpting and molding so I can start pulling rubber parts.

Stay tuned...