Some Neck

The neck tubing is a styrene sheet from the Evergreen range - it should look the part once it's painted and weathered. It won't be flexible but I may rig it to be slightly moveable so the head can turn a little bit.

More Neck, More guns

I wasn't happy with the neck support bands so I re-made them - they still need a few more greeblies to finish them off but I'm glad I went back to them. More detail has been added to the right gun and giving it a shot of undercoat has improved it immensely - the gun armour is next, along with more cleaning and detailing.

Molding & Casting

Original greeblie

Cast greeblie

New mold box

Side Gun Armour

Leg details - original, plaster cast & plastic cast

With only a few pieces left to build, I thought it would be a good idea to practice mold making and casting. GRS in Cork delivered Smooth-on products in record time so I quickly got to work replicating greeblies for the neck. I also tried making a mold of the side gun but the pour hole was too small and I didn't create an air vent and it was a dismal failure. A new mold is currently setting. I love this shit!

Side Guns Complete

Side guns are now finished and they turned out much better than I thought they would at the beginning. The casting worked out ok - some repair work was needed - I really should have made a 2 part mold to get a perfect casting but impatience got the better of me. The Smooth-On silicon and resin worked very well.

Main Guns

Main gun

Cast Barrel

Partially assembled gun

The barrel of the first gun is a heavily modified child's marker from Woodies - I knew they'd come in handy someday. I then made a cast of part of it, the main 'wheel' will have to be scratched but it's a relatively straight forward piece. More detail needs to be added to the barrel - the guns are a little rough but the visible parts will hold up - much of the detail will be hidden behind the side armour.

Body Detailing

With almost 40 of these wedged shaped pieces to add to the body and the feet, casting them from an original was the only way to go. I used 'Siligum' from Gedeo to make the molds (I made 3 to speed up the process) and cast the pieces in Smooth Cast 300. They work perfectly on the feet but I think they might be about 5% or 10% too large for the body but it could be just my eye reacting to a new bit being added to the body after looking at the thing for 4 years!

More Casting

Original, mold, cast piece

Gun elements

Close up of gun barrel

I had always looked at casting as a way to make replicas of pieces that I needed lots of but with the ease molds can be made and cast I can knock out copies of pieces that I only need 1 or 2 of - it still saves time and, more importantly, the 2 pieces are identical. The end of the barrel is a cut down piece from the inside of a make-up dispenser but it still needed 2 half barrel shapes to finish it off. I scratched one, cast it and made 4 copies. The piece itself was also cast and hollowed out, which worked out much more successfully than I had thought it would.

Main Guns: Detailing

Barrel Detail

Adding the finishing touches to the guns and attaching them was the final part of the build stage...

Finished Build!

(Pint glass for scale purposes only, obviously)

The build stage is finished! A final detailing pass and a last shot of undercoat is all that remains before the painting stage. I'll be starting from zero with airbrushing so that will be a whole new challenge to look forward to.