Yuri on Ice Cosplay Skate Construction | home

  I started with a rough outline of how I wanted the skates to look Trying to keep the skates themselves with about a cm of plastic around them How I outlined the sole — slit in cardboard  

  I was going to try tracing paper to copy the design, but gave up  

  And just cut out the outline, using the hole to transfer the design to two other pieces of cardboard I used felt as an interface between the bottom of the resin and the rubber mat I eventually used as the bottom sole. I couldn't find what I wanted at the art store the day I got supplies, but I figured that the felt would bond very well with the plastic, and I could glue whatever to the felt for the sole later.  

  Measuring the rough outer diameter of the form Silicone baking mats. Relatively inexpensive, pretty strong, and the plastic didn't stick at all. Note, however, it's got a texture to it, so the skates didn't turn out crystal clear like I wanted. If you wanted crystal clear, you'd either need something very smooth as the form, or you'd have to do a lot of work after the fact (grinding, buffing, polishing) to get it clear. I've also read about people paining a very thin and smooth layer of plastic on after the fact, but I didn't get around to trying that.  

  Bonding the strips together. The superglue in the background didn't work out that well. But there's no problem a hot glue gun can't fix Roughing up the edges first  

  Gluing the form down to the cardboard base I built it on Using this stuff to add support. I think we used to piss Mom off making this stuff out of flour as kids. Now I buy it for like $14 a tub.  

  I put some bands of gaffer tape around to add structural support And a ton of bracing My support structure ... didn't, at least, not very well. If I were doing this again I'd build something more solid to hold the skates up and align them more properly.  

  The end result. Both skates poked out the front a bit, which I fixed with some epoxy later on. The skate on the right is what I wanted, at least on the front — I wanted both the front and back bits of the sole to be touching the resin, so the load would be spread out more. Only the front of the right skate did that, the others all had a centimeter or so gap between the bottom of the sole and the plastic. I was worried about the load being entirely on the skate blades and those cracking the plastic, so I cut some rubber stoppers and wedged them into the gaps. Remarkably, they held up for an entire day at Flame Con.  

© 2017 Thomas L. Kula

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