The cane is finally finished. The shaft was cast out of a two-part PU resin and hand painted before being sealed with a satin varnish.
After a much needed break from tiling and brick laying I jumped on the lathe to begin making miniature chimneys. The chimneys were simply machined out of chemiwood, an easy material to work with on the lathe and easy to get a good finish on it. By chance, it also has a grain which works perfectly for terracotta on this scale. I have to do a total of around 16, though some have been moulded and cast as seen above.
As you may have guessed from my post in March, I was making John Hammond's cane from Jurassic Park as a side project, so here's an update! From the pictures above you can see I managed to find a polished pebble from a shop in Swanage which is nearly the exact dimensions of the one in the film, just a 1mm too wide! So that was promptly moulded in silicone.
The shaft of the cane was actually turned clay on a makeshift 'Claythe' (get it?). I created a vector of the cane's exact silhouette from overlaying references pictures then laser cutting the silhouette out of acrylic. The wet clay was then turned into the silhouette thus creating the perfect shape that's as close to the film as possible. I then added numerous nicks and distressed it to make it seem like the millions of years old fossilised tail it's supposed to be. It was then ready to cast in Silicone using waste pipe as a make-shift mould jacket. The final picture displays an already dead (found in a lampshade) Crane Fly half submerged in clear amber tinted resin. The fly species itself is a debated topic but i'll save discussion that for next week! As you can see, I like my details and these are some of my favorites... There were laser etched and hand painted with acrylic. The numbers were chemically etched from brass and stuck on.
Back in March I showed the golden Idol about to be moulded and since then it's been cast and even had a plinth made for it! You might notice that the two are slightly different, well the first one is sprayed gold whereas the second has had brass powder intrinsically added to the resin which was then polished to a shine. Each one weighs nearly 2Kg as they've been back-filled with sand to give an authentic weight.
As a majority of the beefy work as now past, it's onto the finer stuff (and my favorite stuff). Although mostly self explanatory, I feel the 3rd picture needs expanding. It's actually a mid-etch shot of the laser cutting deep etching patterns for the pub eaves.
Well the only April fool played on me was by the retched roof tiles! They're finally done as well as a majority of the cladding and even some details now. As you can see, there's a warm glow behind the window in the eaves, it's actually flickering like a fire too! The lattice on said window is chemically etched, I may do a tutorial on that at some point. Also visible in the background is the next row of varied houses/shops, but that's a story for another day...
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June 2015
CategoriesAll illustrations and photography © Alex Brooker 2013-2015 unless otherwise noted |