The Missing Shield

First of all, let me wish you all the best for this end of year, and hope you will be able to spend some really good time with all the people you love.

I've been able to get a Spartan K5 recently, thanks to an old collector who decided to sell it to me. I've been looking for that guy for a very long time and even if it's considered like the easiest to get in the Villains, I don't know why but it always escaped me. I've never lost so many auctions for a specific Jumbo.

Unfortunately the one I was able to get is missing his shield, has a broken launcher and of course the spear is missing. But since a very good friend have one more complete, with the launcher and with the shield, I decided to go for it and try to make a replica of the shield.

But this time no use of high tech tools like 3D printing, back to the old school stuff: silicone and resin, and to add some challenge here, one big constraint: I'm not allowed to remove the original shield from the one of my friend as we don't want to take any risks to brake it or damage it.

So what I've done is put his Spartan in a big box, fill of old t-shirt, with the arm in the air and the shield slightly above the box. Once the Spartan was secure, I've put some wooden sticks under the shield and some rigid platform so that the pressure of the weight will be spread all around the back of the shield and not on the connection part with the arm.
So here's a picture of this weird setup

 

You have to imagine there's a little Spartan laying in that box :))

I've also put some plastiline to secure everything and be sure that the silicone won't go anywhere.

Once it was done, I've put some silicone layer by layer, with a thin coat first and it was thickened  a bit after.

Here's a close up of that first coat.

I've been a bit lazy for the picture of the steps after, but basically it was just four layers of silicone and then I've make a mother mold with some fiber plastic to keep the shape of the silicone perfect once it's out of the real shield.

Big stress was that I've realize that silicone is highly sensitive to temperature, and it's supposed to cure around 23°C, problem is that the room I was doing this was only around 18°C which slower the curing time a lot. First I was really confuse as I was thinking that I didn't mix properly the good ratios. But I've just realize that it was curing but 6 times slower than it should be.

Anyway, at the end the silicone mold is great and I've manage to do a first cast test to see how it looks and here's a shot of it.

 

The idea will be to create second mold for the back part that I can put on top of that one so that way I will be able to make rotational casting of my resin.

But because of the constrain that I can't remove the original shield from the arm of Spartan, I'm not able to mold the back of the shield and there's the connection part there.

So, a bit of 3D modeling and now I'm waiting for the 3D print of that piece that I will be able to glue on the flat back of the shield before doing the second part silicone mold. A bit tricky to explain but I think I know where I'm going with that.

With the end of year celebrations, everything goes a bit slow so I should get the 3D print in two weeks. And while I was ordering that part, I've also place an order for the spear and a launcher model. I will probably use the launcher like that and just paint it, and for the spear, I will certainly make a mold to cast it hollow and brown like the originals.

Well, this conclude the last post of this year. Thanks a lot to the few people reading this blog, and hope to be able to bring you some cool stuff next year.

Take care.