Anumber of coats of polyester spray filler and a few hours of rubbing, the shell is now looking how I had envisaged it months before.
The fine detail can now be clearly seen and by using your imagination you can catch a glimpse of the million year old trilobite fossil that started it all.
Up until now the job had gone surprisingly smooth but that was soon to change...
Only a few coats of primer later
With silicone rubber a support mould is essential, as the rubber has no real support qualities of its own.
A support mould was made from fibre glass in two halves; this was fairly straight forward with the exception of the tank area as this was part of the main and support mould, so this had to be treated with wax and release agent.
alien start
alien 04
alien 07
alien 10
alien 13
alien final
 
fresh out of mould
sopport mould

 

         
 
 
After what seemed an eternity of pushing and pulling the new body-shell was eventually born, and as the shot will attest to, it even resembled some form of Alien life form and the first impression of this creation on the work bench did collect a few curious looks.
It was a real surprise to find how little work needed to be done considering the amount punishment the thing had endured extracting it from the mould.