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Koda Vonnor

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Everything posted by Koda Vonnor

  1. Those who know me well would have told you I would never even consider getting inked. Not in this lifetime, not unless Hell froze over or sump'n. Looks like Beelzebub gots some shoveling to do... Saturday at 1pm I go under the needle. Left Shoulder: Right Shoulder: Jedi logo will be deep blood-red, as appears on the CW armor. Bird will be ... well ... gotta rock the orange, sorry. Post 'em if you got 'em. ~ Vonnor
  2. Congrats Katie! As a long-time and dedicated member of this forum (non-501st yet) I welcome you as the new DCO! Pam, thanks for all the good work over the past few years. You deserve a breather! You better not be a stranger though. ~ Bill Costigan
  3. Weekend update: A bit of a setback today. I attempted to attach the three cross-straps to the vambrace halves. It seems epoxy is not good at gluing Sintra to fiberglass/bondo. I got the straps in place then popped out the temporary spacers and formed and glued the elbow guard on. The idea was that the straps would flex enough to allow putting the bracer on, but first one then another of the epoxy bonds broke, then the center strap itself broke. Also the elbow end of the cone is about 3/4" too big in diameter. Even with the shirt on there will be just too much play. At the moment I plan on taking it back to the sculpt and trying again. It will be better if I mark the strap slots on the clay anyway. That way I can cut them much cleaner. I can also take molds of the sintra straps once I get them shaped and fitted, then cast them in the urethane I used for the handguards. Much more durable than foam PVC. Try and learn. Such is the way of the scratch-build. ~ Vonnor
  4. Oh yeah, I also sent the main belt blueprints to my leather crafter along with some hardware. ~ BC
  5. I did a bunch of little stuff today. I put the mounting on the loin guard and a start to some weathering. That's just light brown suede dye applied with a foam Q-tip. I will touch it here and there with dark brown for a little variance in the edging, and will try thinning some leather paint for the rubbed areas. I also discovered a Sintra bending trick over at The Dented Helmet. Here is a step-by-step. I cut three new straps being very careful to get the edges square and the curves round. I made a ductwork mandrel about the same taper as the vambraces. Using a sofa pillow and a heat gun I heated up the strip 'til it was like a floppy noodle, then pressed the mandrel onto the strap and wrapped the pillow around the whole thing. After a minute or so the strap was nicely curved. I have to get the first weathered paint coat on the parts before I can glue on the straps, so that'll wait for a warmer day. I think the three side-by-side straps look like a little shield generator model. Next it's back to the hands. ~ Vonnor
  6. I cut 3mm Sintra straps to individually calculated curves (see template in background) for each strap position. The photos show them loosely heat-formed and placed in the slots. This week I'm in need of help. There must be a trick to bending Sintra with a heat gun, because no matter what I did I kept getting uneven bends and even finger compression dents from where I was pressing on the hot straps. I tried putting an initial curve in the straps by wrapping them around an empty wine bottle as I heated them up, but still got a lot of uneven curves. I have enough Sintra to cut many more straps if needed, but if someone knows an easier way to bend the straps I would be extremely grateful for advice. See the closeups I also got an unwanted concavity in the cross sections. Ideally I want an even curve across the straps with a sharper bend as the strap goes into the slot. The CG images suggest that contour. Also of note: The fiberglass resin and Bondo gets very hot and flexible under the gun. I discovered this after seriously distorting one of the strap slots! Not that I can't take advantage of that physical property to micro-adjust some of the overall contours, but it was scary to find out by accident. I fixed the strap slot with heat by the way. Not perfect but close enough for where the strap goes into the slot. Many thanks! ~ Bill C
  7. I primed the right vambrace halves and glued up a temporary jig with 5/8" spacers to hold the piece in it's shape. I marked and cut the holes for the three cross straps. I did it by hand using a dremel and left a bit of garbage that I'll have to fill in after the straps are in place. The idea was to file the holes on a steep angle to help the Sintra straps lay down as flat as possible. I ran out of steam and want to watch the Bronco's play the Patriots tonight, so It'll probably be tomorrow for the straps. One note, the straps need to hold to the contour of the tapered cone, so they can't be cut as simple flat parallel strips. I'll do my best to approximate the curve for the cuts and leave them a little big, then heat curve them and take down the edges as needed. I also did a dye test on the suede used for the loin guard and hip pad (dye shown in photos) to try out some weathering. The brown strip in the foreground will be the mounting straps for the loin guard. More later. ~ Vonnor
  8. I cut the main belt blank and painted the belt hardware to better match the CG model. These are some photos for my leather crafter's reference. I also trimmed down the edges of the vambrace plates and filled in a lot of gaps and bubbles using PC-11 White Epoxy Paste as a filler putty. I got it at a local ACE hardware. It's not toxic like Bondo is and it's a lot creamier. You also get almost an hour working time before it starts getting thick. The down side is it takes 12 hours to harden enough to sand down, and that's with a couple 75 watt bulbs shining on it. Next the right vambrace halves get primed and the three cross-straps added. Stay tuned. ~ Vonnor
  9. Trouble is, the tuition is often bank-breaking. ~ BC
  10. I love how a little edging can give a boring part a new facelift. My aim on the skew was to have it match the taper of the truncated cone. It came pretty close (see third pic). Ran out of double-sided tape last night so will edge the other half today. ~ Vonnor
  11. I put the final shaping on the right vambrace halves today. The contours came out very nice. Next comes a little surface filling and adding the raised edging. Just wrap heavy paper around the model and trace the edge, then cut out the sintra using that template. I will fill the edge gaps and back-fill the corners with epoxy putty, then Dremel all edges to the final thickness. ~ Vonnor
  12. Here's the pants: Color's not quite right but it'll fly until I find another cotton stretch sateen that's closer. It was good practice. ~ Vonnor
  13. After staring at the shirt collar edging for a few days, I bought some canary yellow bias tape. But no matter how I held it to the light it just wasn't the dingy gold that the reference images suggested. So I decided to have some strong tea and think about it. While I was thinking, a section of the 55/45 poly/cotton canary yellow bias tape fell right into my tea mug! Needless to say my tea was ruined, which was OK since using the three tea bags like I did had made it almost too strong to drink. Not only that, but it took me 10 whole minutes to fish the tape out of the mug. Looking on the bright side though, after those 10 minutes and another 5 in a cup of water with a splash of white vinegar, plus 3-4 cold water rinses, darned if I wasn't left with dingy gold bias tape. Here's a pix of the tape sitting next to it's pristine sibling on my first ever self-constructed pants! It was a good week. ~ Vonnor
  14. I received another focused solution in the mail today. It was a small piece of corrugated rubber floor mat that hopes to become the side panels for the torso armor. ~ Vonnor
  15. In the interest of posting SOME kind of weekend update, here's the short info (It wasn't a very productive three days): Bought fabric for pants and shirt and a pants pattern. Pre-washed fabric. Went to iron fabric. Iron doesn't work. Go buy a new iron and bring it home. It don't work either. Go back and exchange iron. Ironed fabric. Laid out pattern on fabric, but forgot to double check girth (ima heftybutt). After cutting out fabric, measured hip circumference against pattern pieces. ... Wasted half the day and 2.75 yds of fabric. Went back to fabric store. Sold out of same pants fabric. Reverse-Engineered old pair of Dockers for proper fitting pattern. I did manage to find the perfect pants fabric (will work for shirt body too) at an out-of-the-way JoAnn Fabric store. It's cotton sateen and a close color match to the references. It was also on sale for 50% off. The slight shimmer creates light and dark highlights as the lighting changes. Quite a nice drape and still light as a feather. It has a touch of stretch which is nice for the shirt. After finally completing all of the pants except the waistband (about half hour ago) the fit is perfect. Snug from the widest part of the butt to the waistband, and baggy from there down to the boot tuck. I also managed to dremel down the edges of the right vambrace halves and add a correction coat of Bondo. I also cut and sanded the front and back upper bandoleer couplers. ~ Vonnor
  16. I wanted to share something I stumbled upon this morning. The reference images show faint corner dots on the metal strap buckles that seem to appear and disappear as the position and lighting changes. After ruining my spare 1.75" strap buckle trying to add the dots with sandpaper I took a pencil and chucked it up in my drill-press. I spinned it up and pressed the eraser end against the diagonal-brushed surface of the buckle. The results were quite nice. Sorry for the underexposure, I had to shine the light just right for you to see the effect. ~ Vonnor
  17. I think the bandoleer buckle bolts were the most fun parts to make so far. After comparing these pix to the references I need to take a little more off the tops and bottoms of the corner bolts. Other than that they came out nice. I also stuffed, backed, and turned the hip pad and loin guard. No mounting or weathering on them yet. Notice the hip pad takes and holds a curved shape due to the backing being stretched a bit across the width as the edge seams were sewn. More to come. ~ Vonnor
  18. You just need fatter legs. Then you could reach your hand in the mold easier. It's fun to roll the die, it bounces all over creation but seems to come up snake-eye too often (it's heavy on the six).
  19. Sometimes the smallest costume parts are the most fun to make. I made the list at work yesterday. The smiley points to the following build. Always reuse your molds. Happy Holidays to all Darths, Lords, and Acolytes. ~ Vonnor
  20. Thanks Drac. Being blessed with a warm and calm winter day today, I laid up the fiberglass in the right vambrace mold. It was only 60°F so the resin and bondo needed a ton of hardener, for example I used 16 drops of MEKP for one ounce of resin where I'd normally use 8-10 during the summer. Even with the hot mix I still had 15-20 min working time per cup. This is a [gel-coat / 3-layer-glass / gel-coat] laminate with a 50/50 bondo/resin gelcoat. Having attempted a layup in a 360 wrap-around mold, I have to say I won't do it for the other arm. It was way too difficult to maneuver the brush and the fiberglass-cloth strips in the small opening. Upon breakout I noticed a lot of flaws. The gelcoat pulled away from the mold in a few places, and some of the edges had bad air bubbles. It will take a bit of effort to repair but I think it's workable. Again I will add the edging to the hard model. ~ Vonnor
  21. Since the weather has turned cold and having no semi-indoor location to lay up fiberglass, I decided to work on the soft costume parts. I'll still do some sculpting and mold making but I do want to get the leather ordered and build the shirt and pants too before Springtime. Here are the patterns and cutouts for the loin guard and hip pad. The floor shot shows the color very accurately (held the pieces up to the monitor). The leather is calfskin suede from Tandy Leather. The Kama is a first cut and will likely be re-done. I think it needs to be a bit fuller and more pointier at the bottom. The camera really washed it out too. It's a bit darker than it looks. As a side note, that one photo clearly illustrates why I am on a diet to loose 30 before taking the torso cast. ~ Vonnor
  22. May I ask what type of material are those blocks/sheets you are sculpting? Are they easy to carve and sand? I have always used oil clay sculpts and hard shell molds for my hard parts. Thanks. ~ Bill C.
  23. Here goes plus one mold, minus one scul... er... wait a sec... I cut cardboard end walls and hot-glued them onto the ARMature, then pressed on side mold walls using water-based clay. The clay walls were a bit flimsy so I reinforced them with "L" folded cardboard strips. You'd be surprised how strong of a structure you can put together with folded cardboard and hot glue. After spraying the exposed surfaces with mold release I mixed up some Hydrocal very fat (heavy on the powder, light on the water) and blobbed it onto the sculpt. I had to do two layers of plaster for both sides since my mixing container wasn't very big. After pouring the first side I pulled off the clay walls and cleaned up the edges of the mold. I ground some divots into the edges for registry keys then painted vasolene along the exposed plaster before spraying more mold release and pouring (well more like sloshing and gooping) the second half. After it set up a few minutes it came apart with just a little hand pressure. I've never had a mold separate so cleanly! I was very happy. The original sculpt is almost salvageable even, just in case my one-piece mold cast idea fails. More to come. ~ Vonnor
  24. The project is moving forward once again after a brief time-out for family and some costume trooping last week. To make the skewed split cuts in the sculpt, and to insure they were straight and parallel, I laid a tailor's tape measure on the clay and scored down both edges. I scaled the overall length and cut in the curves on the underside at the wrist. I sprayed clear-coat on it and will take a plaster mold tomorrow. Notice the guide lines along the sides. Those are for the water-clay walls. I intend to cast the fiberglass/rondo hard model in one piece rather than two. It will be much easier to do the final shaping and smoothing before cutting the halves apart. Like the shoulder bells, the edge trim will go on the hard model. ~ Vonnor
  25. It looked short because it was too thick. I put the sculpt on an after-Thanksgiving diet today. Shaved a lot of the bulk off using a flat-edge metal scraper then smoothed the surface and edges. I also added back the previous cut-outs, just so I could work on the overall contours. Remember this is just the two main vambrace halves for now. After these are in fiberglass I'll add the edging, then fit them back on the armature and sculpt the wrist clip and thermal-form the sintra forearm plate. Also, the three straps on the underside of the arm will be 2mm Sintra, epoxied in place. I'll cut in the slots and file a lead-in taper for each slot on the hard model. The sintra will allow enough flexibility to get the armor on and off, and enough rigidity to hold the structure in place. Gonna try to take molds and get these in fiberglass by tomorrow. May be the last decent poly-resin handling day I get until the springtime. ~ Vonnor
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