I admit it: I'm a total geek. I love electronics, programming, 3D printing, 3D art, and vintage Apple hardware. I'm always juggling half a dozen projects. I also enjoy documenting it all: my successes, my failures, my experiences... and everything geeky along the way.

Scale Mail Bust - Part IV | Kevin Rye.net - Main

Kevin Rye

Geek Extraordinaire. Yeh, I said it.

Scale Mail Bust - Part IV

Aug 02, 2022 Filed in: 3D Modeling | 3D Printing | Painting
I found a really sweet headdress model that I wanted to print for the Scale Mail Bust. It's huge and will have to be broken into several smaller parts. I could have just taken the horns off and printed the whole thing on my CR-10S, but I was afraid the print quality would require a ton of cleanup.

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I decided to resin print it. Sine my Mars Pro 2 is tiny, it'll have to be broken up into a bunch of parts. 12 to be exact.

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While I was working on painting and assembling the scale mail for the bust, I started printing all the parts. Since it was going to take about 75 hours to print all the parts, I figured I'd multitask.

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Counting all the parts, the support material, and a few failed prints, I used an entire 1L bottle of resin.

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I took my Dremel and roughed up all the surfaces that were to be glued. I then applied a generous coating of epoxy and glued the main portion together one piece at a time.

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I then took some heavy grit sand paper and tried to remove as much excess epoxy as possible.

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I then started to fill the seams and hide some of the defects with 3M Acrylic's-Green putty.

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Once I was done man-handling the main part, I glued the horns on and cleaned up the seams. I thought if I glued them on first, I'd risk snapping them while trying to sand everything smooth.

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I then applied a coat of primer to see how the finish looked.

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I then gave it a little more putty, more sanding, more primer. By round 4, I was happy with the results.

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I then painted it black and gave it a glossy clear coat.

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The last step was to buff it with graphite powder, give it a satin clear coat, and then paint the horns. It came out awesome.

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I have to admit, it was almost impossible getting the headdress on. I thought I made it big enough to just slip right on the head, but once it was all glued together and painted, it was just a tad too small. I really thought I was going to snap the cheek guards off trying to get it on. I ended up taking my Dremel and removed some of the material on the underside to give me a little more clearance. With some finagling, I managed to get it on.

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Next up, the final paint job!

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