Tutorial: Making a Quick Tentacle

Now that there is a challenge on the Etsy Steam Team to make a specimen bottle with something creepy inside, I’ve been thinking about how to make a tentacle. Propnomicon published a great tutorial on on his blog about making one with plastic wrap, fiberfill and latex, from which I learned a lot. I wanted to make some with suckers on them, so I thought of how I could accomplish that using materials I was familiar with. I did a quick down-and-dirty test last evening, and the result was good enough that I thought I’d share it without even attempting to improve it.

All you need is plasticene (modeling clay), various sizes of small plastic tubes, and some latex rubber (available at craft stores). I began by scooping out a channel in the clay in the shape of the tentacle, with one end larger and narrowing to the other. I then took the tubes and carefully poked shallow indentations along the surface of the channel to make the suckers, the larger tube at the larger end getting increasingly smaller as I reached the smaller end. I was working with three different diameters in my tubes. Metal tubes are too narrow, which is why I suggest using plastic or rubber tubes.

Now I had my mold, or negative tentacle. Next I brushed a coating of latex rubber into it, carefully blowing any bubbles so that the liquid rubber would sink down into the indentations. I then brushed in a liberal coat of rubber so that I couldn’t see the individual suckers anymore. I let it dry overnight, and voilà, a quickie tentacle! Okay, it’s only half a tentacle, but in a specimen bottle I think it will look good.

Above is pictured the finished latex tentacle as it came right out of the mold. The photo of the clay shows it after I demolded the tentacle, so the clay is somewhat distorted. The latex rubber leaves a beautiful feathered edge. It can be colored by simply adding a little latex acrylic paint to the liquid latex rubber before brushing it on. Of course the tentacle can be trimmed with scissors, and if the original mold in the clay were done more carefully I think a really spectacular tentacle would be fairly easy to make.

Raygun 66: Molding the Grip

The acrylic sheet and Bondo™ construct of the grip is ready to mold for casting. The popcorn cup will get hot-glued down around the grip to hold in the liquid silicone rubber. The wooden dowel and clay below the grip will form an opening in the mold called the gate, through which the rubber will be poured (the mold is made upside down). I will leave it overnight, then cut the mold apart using an Xacto™ knife.

Pachyderm: Making the Eardrums

I blogged about making the copper steampunk gasmask pachyderm ears here http://tombanwell.blogspot.com/2009/01/copper-pachyderm-ears.html , but I’m still missing the center piece which I’ll call the eardrum. I am just about done with them, and here is how I went about doing it.



My first thought was to make a resin piece that would just fit into the opening of the copper ear. My concerns were how to attach the ear and the eardrum to the strap which will fasten to the mask itself with snaps, and how to keep the weight down. A mask of this size can get heavy pretty fast, and be uncomfortable to wear. I was planning on bolting the eardrum through the ear and through the strap, but this presented the problem of hiding the bolt head on the front of the eardrum, and also on the bottom side of the leather strap where it could rub against the wearer’s skin.

After deciding that a resin piece would be too difficult to attach and too heavy, I considered a wire screen or other thin metal dome. Given that I don’t have many metalworking skills, I eventually opted for making the eardrum out of formed leather.

I knew I wanted the eardrum to be domed to give it a little class, so all I needed was a form over which I could shape the vegetable tanned leather. I looked around my shop for a suitable something—I was thinking of a bottle lid—to no avail. I thought perhaps a drawer pull would have the right shape to it if I could find one with the right diameter. Going to my local hardware store I quickly found just the knob I needed. The first picture shows the copper ear, the knob, and a piece of plywood ready for attaching the knob to.

I carefully measured the opening in the copper ear, and cut a hole the same size into a piece of ¼” acrylic plastic. I added a second piece of wood on top of the plywood to reduce the height of the knob, thus completing my forming jig, as shown in the third picture.

I then cut out a circular piece of oversized leather with the ventilation holes already cut, and soaked it in water to make it plastic. I laid the damp leather over the knob, and forced the acrylic piece down over the leather and knob, stretching the leather and conforming it smoothly to the knob. I held the forming jig together with two clamps as shown, and let the leather dry.

The fifth picture shows the before and after of the leather circle. After dying the eardrum black, I inserted it into the copper ear. Now I just have to attach them both to the leather strap.

American Dragoon helmet tutorial

Here is a tutorial on my website on making this American dragoon leather helmet.

http://www.tombanwell.com/how_to_dragoon_helmet.html