The Light at the End of the Tunnel is Suddenly SO MUCH Brighter

This afternoon I was gearing up to head out on another, longer trip to not one or two but three Provincial Reconstruction Teams (PRTs) when, on a whim, I paused to check my Yahoo email account. There, mixed in with all of the promises of fame and fortune and greater length and girth, was a message from the Navy's admin detachment in Afghanistan.

The short version of said message:

I HAVE A FLIGHT OUT OF THIS PIT!!

I figured that whenever I finally got notice of when I'd have to pull out, it probably wouldn't be much notice. Turns out I was right. After weeks of trying to get set up with orders and travel information I have just over one day before travel begins. Fortunately I was only counting on a few hours' notice, so aside from picking up my laundry and getting all of my last day signatures on my checkout sheet, I really don't have anything left to do here but practice my grappling:

3rd Batch of Plastic Sailors

As a follow-on, I've finished sculpting, molding, and casting the third and final set of Navy Individual Augmentee Action Figures:

The bullet the loader is hefting is actually a spent round from an AK-47 that I found out on the shooting range. The casing was sculpted by hand though. Bonus points if you can tell me what letter the signalman on the right is sending.

And finally, I've cast my first Coast Guardsman:

He's international orange and he floats.

Time now to continue on to other goofy projects.

Goofy Projects in a Combat Zone Part II

So a while back I made my little blue plastic Navy men to go with some little green plastic Army men:





They were fun and all, but I decided that there needed to be more than just three unique poses (there were 12 unique poses among the Army men in the package) . So I went ahead and sculpted, molded, and cast three more:


The sculpts are pretty easy, so I'm sure I'll end up making a few more while I'm out here. I've already started on the next two and I've been making up sketches for a third. My mother-in-law suggested I should make little plastic Coast Guardsmen too. I'm thinking they'll be orange. More on that whenever I get to it.

In the meantime, I've started sculpting this little critter at Ana's suggestion/request/reccuring implied demand:



The sculpt still needs a few evenings worth of work, but if you don't recognize it, this will be the face of Katie from the film Horton Hears a Who as shown below:


Here's another angle:


She still needs a nose and eyelids and I'll probably end up pulling the ears off and casting them as separate pieces. I'll be sculpting out the little feet as well. They'll all come from the same mold, so when I cast a set all I'll have to do is come up with a little hamster-shaped pouch of yellow faux fur, stuff it, and attach it to the cast parts. So far nobody manufactures toy versions of this little critter (which boggles the mind, since she made that movie) so I'll be able to offer up some pretty unique gifts.


On the subject of ridiculous, I printed out the paper model for another helmet variant for the HALO armor project. After a long evening of cutting, folding, and gluing I came up with a helmet that was entirely too large. I still went ahead and layered the inside with casting resin (from the plastic sailor project) to make it stiffer and tried it on:


Then I re-scaled the 3D computer model, unfolded it again using Pepakura, and cranked out a smaller one:


The smaller one fits better:


If that wasn't goofy enough, I coated the inside with casting resin and ordered a faceshield from Amazon.com and now it looks about like so:


I'm thinking I'll stop here before I get a wild idea and decide I need to send away for Bondo and a body rasp and and electric sander and some primer and paint and more silicone mold rubber and casting resin and microballoons and milled glassfiber and...

I really can't wait to have useful workshop space again.