Fevereon Props: September 2009

Disclaimer!! This was how I went about making these chakrams. It takes forever, and sucks to be honest! If you could find another way that would be better than doing it this way (unless you ENJOY spending a couple hundred hours sanding T_T )

I AM -NOT- TAKING COMMISSIONS FOR THESE. NEVER AGAIN. UGH.

I was commissioned to make a pair of rather spikey chakrams based on Axel from Kingdom Hearts.

This is the third "take", as the first one was begin carved in wood, and took waaaay took long, and the second (in which i used this mold) I had casted in pure resin, and the chakrams weighed about 13 lb each and were brittle. Boring out the centers was also taking waaaay too long)

I sculpted 1/4 of one side of the Chakram to save on casting the cost of the mold rubber. In retrospect its a complete nightmare, and if I was to do this again, I'd sculpt and make a mold of one full side..

Heres how I went about making the mold a bit, Click for a larger view.

1- laid out 1/8th of a chakram on matboard, used hot glue and shims to define facets

2- hotglued some insulation foam into place to use as filler so i wouldn't use up all mah bondo

3- slopped bondo on there, and used the shims to help guide tools to make facets even.. this is the result after lots of sanding

4- gold has a habit of making imperfections show, so thought i'd take advantage of it for once.. sprayed it with the gold, and did more cleanup.. figure that fizing it now would prevent having to fix it 16 times over later

5- glued part onto MDF, put lil putty around edges to keep silicone from getting underneath, then used hot glue and tagboard to build a box around it. seal up ALL crack lest it dribble out

6- used smoothon sorta-clear 40 silicone rubber on it after applying mold sealer and rubbing off excess (its waxy). crossed fingers that i did it right and waited 16 hours (attempt to save on rubber by adding a couple chunks of insulation foam failed, they floated to the top)
after it cured, this would have been a better time to add layer of plaster as a support!

7- pulled everything apart and viola! a big rubbery 1.8th of a chakram! woke up fiance by sneaking into bedroom and lobbing it on him

8-after pouring plaster support structure underneath, i thought I'd try adding some silver here. after spraying light coat of mold release, dusted on some silver aluminum powder that i got from pearl art supply. (think flouring a pan here) used can o' comlressed air to spray excess off.

I dusted the inside of the mold with aluminum powder.

I made the "shells" by laying down two layers of fiberglass. Once they cured and i popped them out of the mold, I laid them across a belt sander to remove the excess and flashing.

Filled the cavity with Great stuff foam, and let it set for a day

After cutting off some of the excess with an exacto knife, I again took to the belt sander and flattened it out

Added a flat sheet of fiberglass on top of 1/2 of the chakram segments.

After pairing off segments and gluing them together I assembled them into a full chakram.

Beginning main assembly.

One of the chakrams fully assembled. This needed a lot of sanding work done, as I made a bit of a mess when gluing them together (used fiberglass resin)

Once assembled, i began the long process of puttying up imperfections and sanding them smooth.

A WHOOOOOLE lot of puttying, sanding, and puttying again, and the segments are smooth enough to primer. Decided to primer areas that i finished sanding, to keep track of whats done and whats not...

There were still a bunch of lil' bubbles n' such, so I went back and sprayed the thing down with Kilz, its thick and cakey and fills in holes good. Laid a thin coat of gold so i can see what needs work easier.