Genestealer Build Update 14: Chest Parts, Hand Parts, Leg Parts, Foot Parts, and So Many Parts.

It's been a while since the last update.  I was under the weather for a few days and had to scramble like mad to complete a few unrelated projects right before that, but otherwise, I can assure you that the Genestealer build has been screaming right along.

As of our last update we'd printed the sculpting base for the waist, hips, and tail.  Since then, I've done a bit of work smoothing the whole thing out:




It'll get a few more minutes of prep work, then I'll layer on a couple coats of epoxy to make it shiny and smooth prior to sculpting out the texture for the skin.

In the last update, we'd also lifecast some copies of my hands and my friend Ian's hands so we'd have a starting point to sculpt the creature's hands.  I decided to start by making claws for the five-fingered hands which will eventually be integrated into the silicone skin once we get to casting those.  I started by smoothing out the hand casts and giving them a coat of Epsilon Pro epoxy:

The three-fingered hands still need a bit more smoothing, so at this point they're not mounted on bases or coated in epoxy yet.

Once the epoxy had cured, I covered the fingertips with plastic wrap and masking tape, then used Magic Sculpt epoxy putty to sculpt out some finger extensions and claws:


Once the Magic Sculpt had cured, I popped the claws off of the lifecast fingers and tried them on:


Pretty schnazzy:


Then I spent some quality time sanding and shaping and polishing up each individual fingertip before giving them all a coat of glossy lightish red paint:


The next day, after the paint dried, my friend Rachel went ahead and made molds of them.  When the molds were cured and ready to go, she cast a set of the claws in urethane resin which I glued back onto the lifecast hands:

Now they're ready for me to sculpt out the shape of the skin for the hands.  The final claws will be cast in urethane rubber to make them safe for whoever the character might bump into.

Meanwhile, the three-fingered hands got a bit of sanding and smoothing and a couple coats of epoxy:


Geri the shop husky helped in his not-so-helpful way:


From the last update, we'd just stared adding the cardboard edges to the chest piece:


Once the cardboard was glued on, I layered over it with oil-based clay to give us mold margins.  Then the whole thing was coated with PVA:


After the PVA dried, the whole assembly was coated with orange tooling gelcoat:


Then I built up a few layers of fiberglass on top of the whole thing:


"But wait!" you exclaim, "with all of those overhangs and undercuts, you've now locked the master into the mold!  There's no way you'll ever get it out."

You'd be right, of course.  I'll have to cut the mold apart.  But first, I'll have to add flanges so I can put it back together afterwards.  I start by marking the places where I'll separate the mold with a Sharpie:


Then I bust out this nifty little air saw because it has a very skinny blade and cuts a very small kerf:


I cut along each line stopping just short of each intersection.  This leaves the tiniest little tab connecting the pieces together so the whole thing doesn't just fall apart:


With all of the cutting done, the chest looked like so:


Then, to create the flanges, I inserted sections of aluminum flashing into the cuts:


Then I used aluminum ducting tape to connect all of the parts and make them as smooth as I can:


Then I go back and layer up fiberglass over all of the sheet metal shims to create the mold flanges:


The next day, Rachel drilled bolt holes into the flanges and pried the parts of the mold apart:


It ended up being a lot of parts:


Fortunately, I had her in the shop to wet sand and polish all of these parts in preparation for casting:


After the mold sections were wet sanded and waxed, they were coated with a liberal amount of PVA release and bolted back together:


Jeff mixed up a batch of gelcoat and we got started laying up the fiberglass:


I didn't take photos of myself laying up the glass for the chest, but once it was out of the mold, I did a quick and dirty test fitting:


The chest and back mate up perfectly.  So next time I'm doing any fiberglassing, I'll bond them together permanently.

Now I just need to finalize the shape of the last piece of the chest.  Then I can mold it and glass it and that'll be that:


The only other fiberglass piece to be done is the inner skull that will be built into the head.  I started with a 3D printed skull that was given a quick bit of prep before filling in the eye and nose holes:


The jaw will be made separately.

Once the skull was smoothed out, it was coated in epoxy:


Shiny:


Here's a shot of Jeff trying it on after the epoxy coat had set up:


Silly Jeff.

Prior to molding, I used a hacksaw to cut a seam down the centerline:


Jeff built up the cardboard and clay margins around the bottom edge of the skull.  Then I inserted the flashing for the parting wall and gave both sides a heavy layer of PVA:


Then gelcoat:


After laying up the fiberglass, the mold cured and I popped the halves apart:


Then the edges were trimmed, the molds were wet sanded, and then waxed.  Here's the two halves being force dried in front of the fan between layers of wax:


Tomorrow I'll lay up the first fiberglass underskull.

On a completely separate note, I finished carving out the forming bucks for the thighs.  Here's the inner thigh forms all stacked up and assembled:


And here's the inner thighs with the outer right thigh in the middle of smoothing out the seams:


I still need to assemble the outer left thigh:


Once that's done, I can hurry up and vacform the shells for the thighs.  While I'm doing that, Jeff is fine-tuning the models for the lower leg shells and then we'll have all of the hard parts done in pretty short order.

Speaking of Jeff, we've done the fiberglass work on his pair of stilts:


And we've got the earliest beginnings of the foot parts coming together.  This little benchtop sketch is the beginning of where we're going with those:

Stay tuned.  Things are about to speed up.