Olifant: Tusk, Take 2

While going through my collection of yard sale finds, I came across the flashlight shown below. I bought it because I loved its Buck Rogers futuristic look.

Since I've been working on the new Olifant tusk canister, it ocurred to me that the missile end could make a good finial for such a canister. And as I wasn't feeling all tingly inside about the versison I had been working on I decided to begin again with the flashlight as my starting point.


After molding the flashlight in RTV silicone and casting it in urethane resin, I cut out a series of acrylic discs and stacked them around the "missile".


The flashlight has nine vertical grooves spaced evenly around its circumference except for one place, which is wider than the other eight. I decided to add a piece of hardware there above the discs, bigger than the other eight screws which will be added to each finished casting. Then I coated the acrylic discs with urethane resin to seal them and smooth them out so that the canister will rotocast more easily (that's the white stuff in the picture above).


As it was difficult to see what I really had with the white and black and gray all contrasting, I sprayed a coat of white sandable primer, which makes it much easier to view.

Skull Respirator: Fabrication

I am using the same Jello™ mold that I used for the anemone canisters to make the top part of the skull. I first cast polyester resin into the aluminum mold which had been sprayed with a mold release. Then I bandsawed the skull in half, and sanded it down somewhat more until the shape looked right sitting atop the existing skull.



After pondering how to make this respirator look less organic and more mechanical I am thinking I need to fabricate the entire skull, and not use any of the original plastic skull.

Above you can see a bunch of acrylic pieces that I've cut out with the laser, ready to assemble. As you might imagine this takes quite a bit of planning and taking measurements from the original skull, to get to this point.

Here are the same parts assembled. I will mold these and cast them in resin to modify. Then I'll add on the gear teeth, and the lower jaw.