Warhammer 40,000 Space Marine Build Part 6: Hands

When last I posted about this project, I covered the making of the helmets.  The next vital part of the build was the hands.  Since I was turning a group of under-six-foot guys into a squad of over-seven-foot warrior demigods, I had to add a bit of length to their arms in order to avoid this look:



For full details on how I made the hands, read on...




Here I am with a longer arm:

Here's my friend Matt, primary project encourager, with longer arm:

Since the longer arms rendered the wearer's hands useless, it was time to come up with some new hands.  I started by cobbling together the fingers from some wooden balls and scraps of PVC pipe:

At about the same time, I started sculpting the palms using oil-based clay over an armature made from an ABS pipe coupler and a piece of MDF to make the shapes consistent:

At this stage they weren't all that useful:

Once I'd molded some of the finger parts I was starting to feel much better about the overall shape of the hands:

Here's the sculpt of the palms once I'd finished detailing them:

Since I needed them to be lightweight, I molded them for rotocasting in much the same way that I did the helmets.  The first step was to lay on a silicone rubber "print coat" to pick up all of the details:

Once the print coat had set up, the next step was to layer on more silicone to build up thickness:

When the rubber "jacket" mold was thick enough to hold up to repeated casting, I went ahead and built a two-piece fiberglass "mothermold" over each of them.  The mothermold holds the rubber straight during casting to keep the pieces from coming out warped and misshapen.

Here's the first pair of palms cast from the molds:

The palm castings were then fitted into the end of a piece of 4" ABS drain pipe.  Then the fingers were glued into place either around the grip of whatever weapon they'd be wielding or in whatever gesture they would be showing.*  Here I am in the middle of hand production:

Here's a hand built holding a boltgun:

Just behind the wrist, a hold was drilled through the drain pipe and fitted with a piece of 1/2" PVC pipe to act as a handle.  This way the wearer would have something to grip and the drain pipe would act as a brace to aid in the carrying of the various weapons.  Here's my friend Daniel showing off the chainsword hand:

Once the hand extensions were inserted into the vacformed arms, they finally started to really look the part:

More to come.  Stay tuned...

*It was all I could do to avoid building a "thumbs-up" hand and a "hang loose" hand.  I still expect I'll make yet another hand for flipping the bird.  We'll see.

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