Been super busy lately with work, but I did get the chance to make my biceps up. I actually had to try a couple iterations of it to get something that looked proportionate with what I think I need on the rest of the armor, as my first few attempts were too thin. Eventually, to get something consistent, I made a pattern out of craft foam that fit pretty comfortably and traced it onto some leftover PETG from my vacuform arm scrap. This then got laid overtop a 5″ diameter HVAC aluminum pipe that I bought from Home Depot for like $6. Because it’s aluminum, it’s safe to heat the plastic up against, so I was able to take a heat gun and do some bending to try and get the plastic to wrap around the curve.
Lots of mess in these pictures, but hopefully it gets the idea across. I actually used the seam on the aluminum pipe where the ends join to melt a similar seam into the plastic, since Joe looked like he had some kind of plastic seam on the outside of each bicep.
I sprayed the usual sprays to match the rest of the armor – some matte on the inside to frost the armor a bit, a touch of orange to add grime around the edges of the outer parts of the armor, and a gloss coat over that to protect it. Once all that’s done, it’s a matter of doing my edging as per the previous methods of all the armor. I skipped a few steps in my photography here, but the summary is that I took a close look at my movie reference images and decided that it looked like a thick piece of leather was being used to close the gap on the bicep armor under the arm.
I cut those rounded squares out of some thicker leather that I had, then I riveted them to the armor along with a bunch of the necessary connecting straps to the forearm parts.
I promise better photos of everything once I rivet it all together to the chest armor, and when I’m not so dead-tired. Range of motion in these is surprisingly good, all things considered. I’m still very aware that I don’t have the necessary build to really fill the armor out as much as I’d like, but I may end up correcting that with a muscle suit or something equally hilarious.
