Prepping For A Cape Pull

Before I produce my first pull from the mold, I need to clean it up. I also need to figure out exactly how much latex I need to mix up for one layer. What I do not want to happen is to get 3/4 of the way through a lay up only to run out of latex. I could NEVER match a color from a previous batch, hence my dilemma.

So these pictures illustrate these two purposes being executed. I'm covering the mold with a layer of latex to figure out how much I need, and to clean it. The latex picks up every little piece of dirt and dust out of the mold when it comes up.

Here's the mold about half way done.



And here I'm practically finished.



I left a little section around the neck area so I would have some room to experiment further with colors and compounds.

While at Lowe's the other day, I picked up this little roller:



At first, I was VERY excited by the results I was getting. The latex was going down pretty smoothly, and not pulling up much. I was actually starting to think that I would end up using a roller for the project instead of a brush.

But after a few more tests, I realized that the brush kicks up too much of a texture. Way too much. So I'm going back to my foam brush.

However, I'm once again on the fence about which latext to use. I've gotten some good results recently with the Slip Casting rubber, which is much thicker than the balloon casting. So I'm back on the fence about that.

See? THIS is why my projects take so long to finish! I noodle them to death until they are "perfect". So it goes.

We Have A Winner!

After months of experimentation, a few hundred bucks spent on materials, and a lot of pain mixing colors, I think I've FINALLY nailed down the cape.



Hard to tell from this photo,but the colors of both the inner and outer skin are looking really REALLY good. There's a black streak in it where I didn't mix things up properly, but since it's just a test, I'm not worried. I'm really happy with the deep shade of red I got. Almost like plum. Very cool looking. No brown to it at all, like I was getting with the Burman pigments.

But yeah, everything else really came together. Next step is to mix up a big batch of the right color, and go to town on the thing. Great news all around for this project!!

Color Match Looking Good!

Woke up this morning and did another layer of freshly pigmented latex on the cape mold, and I must confess, it's looking pretty darn good. MUCH closer than anything I was getting with the burman products. Stoked!

I've got a couple more tests to run, and then I'm going to move ahead and mix up a big batch of the stuff with the new paint from Michael's... and go to town on the thing. I would say there's a good chance I'll have my first complete pull out of the mold by the end of the week.

Something Good From Michael's??

I hate Michael's. It's like the worst store in the world. I would say nine out of ten times I go there, they do NOT have what I want. I don't ask for much. Just a few popsicle sticks, some foam core, and some water soluble paint.

But it looks like I may have broken the curse. Not only did they have what I was looking for, but it looks like I may actually have the latex pigment problem licked.

Here's the stuff I picked up. I got red, black, blue, and purple.



And here's a little demonstration of the hell I'm in. See that bright, solid red block up on top? That's the dry latex. See that pink/purple looking mess below it? That's the wet stuff. That pink/purple, when dry, turns into that red. So you can see how hard it is to get the color right. It's all just shot in the dark mixing.



The great news about these new pigments is that they mix predictably. If you mix black with red, you get dark red. Not brown. That's where things fell apart with the Burman stuff, and it looks like I'm going to get the results I want with this new stuff. Just need to get the color as close as possible.

In an earlier batch, I got it almost DEAD ON, so I know it's possible. I'm just doing one final test to get a better feel for the proportions necessary.

In other news, a swatch of broadcloth arrived today from www.fabric.com. It's decent. The color is decent, and the weave is slightly imperfect, just the way I wanted it. The drawback is that the stuff is very thin and lightweight. Not sure if it's what I'm looking for. Still, good to know that the broadcloth is the stuff with the slightly uneven weave. That may come in handy in the future.

Giving Up On Burman Pigments

I just can't seem to get the color matched, not even close. When I try to darken the red, it just turns brown. No good.

I'm going to look into some other water based paints, like Tempera, to see if they will work. I read some stuff online that says any type of water based paint should work with latex, so I will give it a try. Not sure if that is true, but I'm at the end of my rope with the Burman pigments.

All I Need Now Are Tears

Tonight was the first time I shed blood for this project! I was moving the cape mold around a bit, and was silly enough to take my leather gloves off for a few minutes. Next thing you know, there's blood everywhere. And by "everywhere", I mean all over the tip of my ring finger.

Not really a big deal, but that means I have now put blood and sweat into this project. Next up, tears! Not likely though.

But on with the show.

Tonight I start in again with the cape. I peeled off some of the leftover rubber from last time around, and MAN does it look good. It really captures the diamond texture nicely. I cannot wait to see this thing finished!

I'm using Burman Foam products tonight, namely their Ballon Rubber. It's very viscous, and is easy to brush into all the little nooks of the diamonds. If it was any thicker, like their slip casting rubber, I'm not sure I would get the same results. Fortunately, I have some of that too in case I want to experiment.



Here's the cape mold, all set up in its new home. Ready for some action.



And here we go again with the endless iterations of color matching, trying to get it to match the tiny swatches I have. I'm not going to go nuts on it this time, but I do want to get it as close as I can without going insane. I think I'll limit myself to say, ten rounds of color manipulation, and then I'll just go with what I have.



And now for something completely different. I was watching a DVD of Remmington Steele, one of my favorite shows as a youngster, and noticed this:



To the untrained eye, this will seem very unspectacular. Perhaps to the trained eye it will appear that way also. What's cool about this picture is it shows our man Steele picking up a camera accessory that was made famous by a little movie I like to call "Star Wars". And not that new garbage that came out a few years ago. I'm talking about the original. Before people called it "A New Hope". Back when it was just "Star Wars". Anyhow, that graflex flash tube is what they used as Luke's lightsaber. Pretty nifty, huh? Kind of one of those "When worlds collide" moments. I guess.

First Fabric Arrives - It's A Winner!

Got my first fabric shipment in the mail today, and I must confess that I am VERY pleased. This is the Christmas Red stuff I ordered from Hancock Fabrics. Here is the post where I link to the site.



This stuff is 118" wide, so there's PLENTY of extra room. I like that. The color is very nice. It's a TINY bit more orange than my reference swatch, but only a tiny bit. It's a very bold red, and that's really what I was going for. Again, I like to think that nobody will be walking around with color swatches to compare the inside of my cape to, so I think I'll be safe if it's a little different.

The weave is also pretty good, though not quite as heavy as I would have preferred. Don't get me wrong, this is a great fabric, and I feel lucky that I nailed it so closely on the first try. That is ultra cool. But for those of you who have read my blog for any length of time, you know what a nut-job perfectionist I can be.

Another Smooth-On order.

I have ordered some more urethane today. I've lost all of my notes I took on the previous stuff I have experimented with, so I'm sort of starting from ground zero. I thought I had documented it all on my blog, but I guess the search feature doesn't work as well as I had hoped. Or I forgot to blog about it.

Today I ordered small kits of the following products:

PMC-780 DRY - Trial Size
Vytaflex 60 - Trial Size
ReoFlex 60 - Trial Size

The first I am familiar with. While it doesn't quite pigment the way I had hoped, I have a very opaque yellow pigment that gets me the results I want. All of the R&D on the belt is done. I just need to produce one that doesn't have flaws. Easier said than done.

I have yet to experiment with the new urethane I got from Berman Foam. It arrived the other day, along with the latex I need to pour up a cape. Or "Brush up" a cape, I suppose.

Either way, it's been very busy over here, and I must confess I have not found much time to keep working on things. Everything is ready to go, just need to find the time.

And now that I've got that really cool Begins belt distracting me further, it makes life that much harder.

Once I get the urethane order, I will put together a post with brief descriptions of pros/cons of each of the types I have played with. Not sure if that will help anyone else, but it will certainly make for good reference for me.

Begins Belt - Sanding the Lil' Bits

I noticed something interesting about myself tonight. Don't get me wrong, there's PLENTY of things that are interesting about me, but this one kind of caught me off guard.

I was reminded of the fact that I am better at doing repetitive, menial tasks when I am really tired. It must have been about 1:30 AM when I started working on the belt tonight, and the next task queued up was sanding the backs of the link pieces, and sanding the little faux metal pieces that get attached to the brackets. There's lots of them, and it takes a couple of mintues to get each one done.

Under normal conditions, I would probably do about five of them, then get frustrated over how slowly things were going, and I would step away to do something else. But tonight, I was like a tedium machine! I just kept going, and plowed through the entire stack.

Here's a close up of the links that are now all nice and clean on their back sides:



And here are the little metal buggers I was speaking about:



Not a spectacular load of work for tonight, but about an hours worth of effort. Oh, I also sanded down the back of the "gear" that goes into the center of the buckle tonight. It will need a little fine tuning, as it doesn't quite drop smoothly into the buckle, but that's not a problem.

That's all for tonight, and that brings the blog up to date for this build.

Begins Belt Sprue Removal

I decided to make my first order of business on this build to remove all the sprues from the kit. Take a look at this first pic. You can see a couple of giant ones coming out of the back of each piece.



First step was to take some handy dandy wire snips, and just go to town. I went through all of the pieces and snipped off all the sprues I could get ahold of. There were a couple that were too thick to be handled with these.



I then went in with my dremel tool and sanded down the remaining stumps. I used a cutoff wheel to attack the thicker sprues. It didn't really take much time at all to get the entire kit de-sprued.



I also did some overall levelling on the backs of some of the pieces. Probably not necessary, but I wanted to make sure the back side was relatively flat. It ultimately will not matter, as that side will be facing inward. Even better, it will be covered with neoprene, so that was probably double overkill.