#Serious sam frozen in carbonite skin#

The result: a plastic hand i dentical to the original: Once the resin sets up, it's a simple matter of breaking apart the alginate and getting the cast resin piece out: In this case I used black casting resin:ĭuring the pour, you have to tip the mold down toward the fingertip side in order to let any trapped bubbles out:

So it's important to pour the casting as soon as possible. The one drawback to alginate is that, once it cures, it will shrink as the moisture dries out of it. So much so, that the resultant castings will actually have fi nger prints that are identical to hers. The alginat e picks up every fine detail. The little bum ps you see on the left side of the ho le are the pores in her skin. Once she'd slid her hand out, this was the hole that was left behind: Here's Jenny wiggling (always a fun thin g to watch): Once the alginate has solidified, you need to gently remove the hand by wiggling and twisting and pulling until you break th e vacuum and you can slide out. Here's a shot of Jenn y showing us what her hand looks like:Īfter mixing up a batch of alginate, I had her insert said hand. Then you stick your hand into the bucket, wiggle it around to work the bubbles away from your skin, assume whatever pose you want the duplicate to have, and wait until the alginate solidifies. In order to make a copy of a hand, you mix up a batch of alginate in a bu cket big enough to give you at least h alf an inch of clearance all t h e wa y around the appendage in question.

#Serious sam frozen in carbonite skin#

It's safe to use in direct skin contact, and you can control how fast it cures by changing the temperature of the water that you mix it with. After a f ew minutes, it hardens into a rubbery solid. To use it, you mix it with water and it turns into a gooey mess with about the same viscosity as ketchup. The ma terial itself is sold in a powdered form. This is a seaweed-based product used by dentists to take impressions of teeth and gums in order to make dentures or retainers or the like. In order to make an exact dupli cate of someone's hand, the easiest (or at least cheapest) thing to use is called Dental Alginate. For more information on how it was made, read on. Here's a picture of the finished product. My role was to provide pa rts an d technical advice.

T he conversation ended with her gleeful ly agreeing to come to the workshop and put in all of the labor and pay for all of the materials required to make the project possibl e. That'll s ave me the trouble of fin ding or sculpting a copy of Harris on Ford's face.' 'What if it was me?' says she. 'No,' I repl ied, 'it's ac tually easier if it's someone who can come into the workshop for lifecasting. 'Sure,' says I, 'it's actually not such a big deal.' 'Does it have to be Han Solo?' says she. While I was sitting in th e cafe one mor ning, poring over photos of the original prop, my friend Jenny w andered in and asked what I was doing. So I told him I'd look into it and see what's involved. A while back a friend of min e asked me if I could help him build a replica of Han Solo encased in carbonite to hang on the wall in his basement bar (which he'd themed to look like the throne room of Ja bba the Hutt).