The Scale Mail Bust is all painted and it's time to design some armor. Like the name implies, I'm going to try my hand at making some scale mail. I jumped into SketchUp and designed a scale. I made the model 25.5mm long and about 1.25mm thick. Not sure how thin I can go, but 1.25 mm seems like a nice number.
I then took it into Chitubox and laid out as many as I could on the bed.
About 2 hours later, they were ready.
I then pinned them to a foam board and primed both sides.
I then painted both sides black and gave them a coat of gloss.
The last step was to buff them all with some graphite powder and give them another coat of gloss. I honestly did not realize how much work, and how time consuming it would be to flip each of these scales 10 times.
I also do not know how may scales I'm actually going to need. I figured I'd fire off an initial batch of them, try and put them together, and see how far I get. Based on that, I'll have a better idea of how many more I'll need to make.
I first started by masking off the areas on the model that I want to cover with scales. I can use these as template to guide the pattern.
After about an hour of fiddling around with several rings sizes, I figured out how to assemble scale mail. I settled on 5mm rings that seemed to do a pretty good job. It looks pretty cool. This just might work!
About an hour later, I noticed an issue. These scales seem to be just a little too thick. Instead of sitting flat against the model, they are starting to stack on top of each other. I think if I keep going, the scales are going to start sticking straight out like a pine cone.
In retrospect, I probably should have just printed off 20 or so just to see how well they went together. Oh well. Lesson learned. I went back to my scale model and lowered the thickness from 1.25mm to 0.7mm. I then printed just a few as a test before I wasted any more resin.
Wow, what a difference! Despite being this thin, they are surprising strong. I didn't think I could print something this thin. I bet push come to shove, I could go even thinner. However, I think 0.7mm will do just fine.
With that, I fired off another full bed of scales. This time, I printed them on their ends so that I could fit even more on the bed.
That's a lot of scales!
Primer, primer, black, black, clear coat, clear coat, graphite, clear coat, clear coat. So much flipping!
They look awesome. Painting them on the foam sheet actually had an unanticipated benefit. Sometimes they'd stick to the foam, and when I'd pull them off, it would kind of mess up the finish. However, once I buffed them with the graphite and clear coated them again, it actually looks like weathering. Some of them look like pitted or corroded metal. It actually added a really nice effect. For the last clear coat after the graphite, I pinned them to cardboard so they wouldn't stick to the foam again.
I then got back to work on assembling the scales. I think I got carried away. That actually might be too many rows.
Once I settled on the final pattern, I made one for the other side and flipped the pattern so that they would be symmetrical. I then added the chains to hold them in place. That looks so cool!
I then made the pauldrons.
I couldn't resist at this point putting them on the final model. That's 360 scales.
That looks really good.
I had a left over belt from one of the previous figurines. I didn't use it because the leather was too thick and it didn't really fit well in the buckle that I made for it. I wonder if I can repurpose the center portion as a chocker for the pauldrons.
Hey, that actually looks pretty cool.
I then got to work on adding some chains. I printed some cool bird skulls that I think will look really nice on a necklace.
I primed the skulls.
I then gave them a paint job. I had them in the palm of my hand as I brought them inside after giving them a clear coat. I walked past my wife and said, "Hey, what do you think of these bird skulls?" She immediately jumped and yelled, "Oh gross, where'd you get those?" I laughed and told her I 3D printed them. I guess they look pretty real.
That actually looks pretty cool.
I added some more chains to the front and back and added some thin leather straps to hold the pauldrons.
I wanted to somehow obscure some of the defects that I couldn't sand out, but I didn't want to go nuts with the chains. It honestly doesn't look too bad. It looks worse in the photos. It has to do with the lighting. I think once it's painted they won't be noticeable. They are also on the back, so they'll never be seen.
That looks really good, but I think the bottom chain needs a leather strap or something. I laser cut the same belt buckle portions of the old belt that I reused on the neck. This time I printed it using some pretty thin leather so that it would fit better under the buckle that I made.
I then stained it with some wood stain and put it together. Very nice.
Next up, a rather elaborate headdress!
See this project from start to finish: Scale Mail Bust - Part I Scale Mail Bust - Part II Scale Mail Bust - Part III
Scale Mail Bust - Part IV Scale Mail Bust - Part V Scale Mail Bust - Part VI
