Dr. Beulenpest: Casting the Beak Tip

I have now cast two beak tips in urethane resin for Dr. Beulenpest's plague doctor mask, one for the upper beak and the other for the lower.


On the left is the rough casting right out of the mold. On the right, after it has been sanded down a bit, on its way to the final shape of the upper beak.

Here I've placed the combined beak casting onto the clay model to check that it's looking right.

In pondering more about the joint between the resin beak tip and the leather I'm thinking I need a piece of leather trim piece to ease the transition.

Defender: How I Make an Eyepiece

I thought it might be interesting for some of you to see what goes into creating one of my resin parts. For the Defender mask I decided to make one of the eyepieces similar to a camera lens, with a stepped conical inside. I built the prototype in layers of 1/16" (1.5 mm) thick clear acrylic sheeet. The drawing below shows part of the file I created in CorelDraw.



As you can see, the outside dimension of each piece stays the same, while the inside hole decreases in size as we move down the page. Some of the outsides are zig-zag while others are smooth. The red lines are the cut lines, while the blue lines are just for planning. The tiny red circles are for alignment pins.



Here are the pieces after being cut out with the laser. The parts on the left were extras I didn't use; the ones on the right were put together with three pins, and sprayed white to seal the cracks.



I then molded the prototype with blue silicone rubber and let it cure overnight. The next day I cast it in a charcoal urethane resin. I drilled holes around the perimeter (that had already been marked with the laser) and inserted twelve rivets to make it a bit steamier. I then remolded it and cast it in black.



Here is the finished part with pewter Rub N Buff™ added to the surface to keep with my black and silver color scheme. I'm not sure yet if I will use this one or recast it in a cold cast aluminum.



The small ½" (12.5 mm) diameter hole at the bottom of the lens sits fairly close to the wearer's eye, allowing him or her to see out, while keeping others from looking in.

Defender: The Neckguard Trim

I will be adding a second layer of leather over the bottom edge of the neckguard, in order to reinforce it and make it lay smoother. If I make the trim the same size as the neckguard, and stitch them together, the resulting piece will want to lay flat, which I don't want. The neckguard should roughly form a half circle. In order to get it to readily make that shape I will make the trim piece longer than the base piece.

If you take two pieces of paper—one slightly shorter than the other—and fasten the ends together, it will bend into a curve. If you wrap tape around a tube, and keep adding it on over itself, the tape will build up in thickness, with the circumference of each turn being slightly larger than the previous one. Drafting a pattern for the neckguard uses the same principle.


I can make the patterns in paper, and bend and measure them to find the right size differential, but that won't be accurate for cutting it in leather because the leather is thicker than paper, and thus needs a larger differential. Add to that the fact that vegetable tanned leather—which I cut and stitch while damp—will shrink while drying, and I can only guess at how long the trim should be.



Here is the neckguard trim piece after cutting and dying.



And here it is tacked into position. The oblong openings will hold luminiferous aether collection devices.

Scrimshaw Whale Tooth

After finishing the whale tooth and putting in on the stand, I realized that the scarab bead didn't look right. It was crudely carved and the color was too bright, and detracted from the tooth itself. So I removed it and to cover up the mark on the base I engraved a small 19th century looking black plate with gold lettering.

For the tooth I molded a sperm whale tooth that I had acquired years ago, then cast it in a polyurethane resin. I then sanded down the resin tooth smooth where the scrimshaw was to go, and engraved two steampunk scenes. This left the real ivory tooth undamaged. One side of the tooth shows a giant squid attacking the airship Gryphon.



And the other side shows a steamy mermaid. Here is the story I wrote to explain the history of the piece:

The old Chinese man loved his opium pipe more than any other thing on earth. Because of his devotion to it he had never married, and had long ago lost contact with his family. He had finally found his place in the world on a whaling ship, working as a cook, which allowed him ample time to enjoy his indulgence. It was here plying the seven seas that he learned the art of scrimshaw, scratching a design into a whale tooth, then rubbing lampblack into the marks to make it legible.

It was while in an opiate stupor that he saw the most amazing sight of his life—a giant squid attacking the airship Gryphon. He alone saw it, and the whalers laughed at his tale, but the old man swore it was true, and set about to record the event in bone. On the flip side of the tooth he copied a tattoo worn by one of the sailors, portraying a mermaid in steamy attire—wearing a corset with a set of goggles on her head, and carrying a raygun in her hand.

The old man lost his life while the ship was docked in Alexandria, stabbed to death in a knife fight while gambling in the seediest part of the city. His few possessions were scattered, and his scrimshawed whale tooth—his most precious belonging after his pipe—ended up in a curio shop. The owner paired it with a small display stand which fit it perfectly. It was a bronze casting which portrayed the Egyptian god Horus and lotus blossoms, mounted on a wooden base. He had a small plaque engraved which reads “The Attack of the Giant Tentacled Sea Monster”.

I have more pictures on my Etsy shop.

Scrimshaw Tooth Stand

I am just wrapping up my latest project: A whale tooth with steampunk scrimshaw scenes, which sits on an Egyptian themed base featuring the god Horus. I began by planning it all out, and wanting to be able to have the whale tooth display in several different positions, went looking for an Egyptian motif that could accomplish that. When I found a picture of the god Horus with his upraised wings I knew that would work well.


I proceeded to cut the design out of a sheet of plastic, and engraved the outline. The Horus pieces are made up of two layers of 1/8" acrylic glued together.
I then glued the parts together and made a silicone rubber mold. From the mold I cast the finished part out of cold cast bronze. The part in the photo is right out of the mold, with the bottom gate still attached, and the piece unpolished.

I gathered together the other pieces of the display stand: A walnut base, a turquoise colored scarab bead, and a square headed bolt (for that antique look) to hold the bronze casting to the base.

Here is the finished display stand. The bronze casting of Horus has been polished.

In this other view you can see the lotus blossom supports. My next blog will show the scrimshawed whale tooth along with the story behind the project.