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Back into the business of Weapons Manufacturing!
I decided to create my own missile pods by using Apoxie Sculpt. It's a two-part modeling epoxy that is malleable like modeling clay, but will harden in air. They say you have about 1 hour of sculpting time from when it is mixed before it hardens. My first plan was to make a two-part mold out of the Apoxie Sculpt and press the pieces together. I created a master Missile pod and created the mold around it. The mold worked fairly well, but the Apoxie Sculpt was too soft when I worked with it, and some of the sculpts came out really messy. I tried leaving the sculpts in the mold for longer, but they stuck to the mold pretty badly. While two-part sculpting works well for some things, I decided that there had to be a better way.
I wanted to try sculpting the Missile Pods freehand. I knew that they would be too squishy (that's a technical term!) to work with right away. I decided to roll them into little cylindrical lumps and leave them to get mostly hard. Then I'd shave off bits with a hobby knife. Since I'd be using a knife to cut them, I figured they could harden for longer than normal. I left them for about an hour to an hour and a half and it worked out pretty well. The last couple were pretty hard to cut, though. After they had cured, I cut one end off square to serve as the "business end." I then used either my fingers to smush or the hobby knife to shave the edges to square it off a little.
Then I left a big lip and shaved down each of the squared sides so that they tapered down to the back end.
Finally, I put a pair of holes for the missiles to fire from and glued magnets on them. Now I have a full complement of missile pods to confound my enemies. Well, I will once they are all painted! If you enjoyed this, email me and let me know |
