Genestealer Update 25: A Very Handy Critter

When I last posted about this project, we'd almost finished sculpting the hands. 

My friend Jeff Santos had done most of the sculpting on the upper hands:

And my friend Walter Welsh had done most of the sculpting on the lower hands:


After letting the incomplete sculpts sit on the backburner for a few months, I dusted them off and gave them some finishing touches prior to molding. Here's all four finalized sculpts sitting on the bench:


For molding each one had a parting wall built up around it with water-based clay:


Then one side was given a thick coat of epoxy-based gelcoat:


All of the hands were handled in the same manner, so I'll end up showing photos of them interchangeably:


I was very excited to be back to making progress on this project:


Once the gelcoat had set up, additional thickness was built up using Plasti-Paste Epoxy:


When that had cured, each piece got a couple layers of fiberglass added on top. Then I flipped them over, removed the water-based clay parting wall, and applied a healthy dose of release agent to the resulting flange:


The process (gelcoat, plasti-paste, fiberglass) was then repeated on the second side of each hand sculpt. Once the second side had cured, bolt holes were drilled in the flanges and the parts were pried apart. The bulk of the oil-based clay was picked out with wooden sculpting tools* to prevent doing any damage to the details on the surface of the mold. To get the last residual bits of clay out, the molds were placed in front of a heater to soften the clay:


Then the surface was scrubbed with isopropyl alcohol using a chip brush with the bristles cut down to make an improvised, and totally expendable scrubber. Once the molds were free of clay, it was time to place the powermesh reinforcement. This was basically just a simplified glove:


Of course, the Genestealer's fingernails are longer than mine, so I had to snip the tips:


Then the powermesh glove was placed on the mold core:


And the mold was bolted back into place:


Once they were bolted securely, I added a bead of hot glue around the edges just in case anything might want to leak. Then the molds were ready to go:


To make my life easier, the molds were strapped to a couple of buckets to keep them upright:


Then I used a syringe and quite a bit of time to inject the molds full of Dragon Skin silicone tinted with Silc-Pig pigments:


In this case, I used equal parts red and blue with just a tiny speck of white pigment to make the plurple genestealer skin shade. The parts will get additional paint treatment before I call them finished, but they'll start with a solid plurple base color. 

The next day felt like Christmas** because I got to unwrap these beauties:


The silicone had cured in the shape of the original clay sculpt with a hollow inside in the shape of the hand armature.  The power mesh reinforcement is captured inside the cross-section of the rubber.  Platinum cure silicone like this is prone to splitting if there's even the tiniest tear, so the mesh prevents the tear from propagating through the rubber.

Removing the silicone cast gloves from the mold core turned out to be a bit of a pain, but once I'd added the claws (cast in Task 16 rubber), I could't wait to try them on:


So far so good:


The three-fingered upper hands came out great as well:




All of the claws were glued into place with Sil-Poxy silicone adhesive.  It's basically silicone glue.  Strong stuff. 

As long as I was mixing and pouring plurple silicone, I went ahead and cast a pair of knees:

While I was on a silicone pouring roll, I also poured the tail:

So now I have hands, elbows, knees, and a tail:

I've been making it a point to make the rubber parts in order of complexity.  So the first rubber pieces we made were the little flat fleshy bits to go in the forearm, bicep, and thigh windows (LINK) because they only needed simple, one-sided molds.  Then I went ahead and made the elbows which required two-part molds with a core inside.  The elbow mold was a pretty simple thing.  The tail and knee molds were basically the same.  The hands were a bit trickier, but I think I've manage to nail them.

So the next thing will be a slightly more complex mold and much bigger.  This will be the waist and hip section:

The armature is printed and layered up with epoxy and just sitting and collecting dust for a while now.  The next step will be to add the clay layer so we can sculpt out all of the skin texture.  Then I get to make the biggest mold of this project so far.

Stay tuned...

*The "wooden sculpting tools" were mostly the broken ends of popsicle sticks.
**Incidentally, it actually was Christmas day.

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