It’s been a wild week! But I’m so much closer to shaking hands with Crow than ever before. Which has to be much better than “Shaking Hands With Danger.”
<<That’s a Rifftrax reference BTW. Hopefully they’re allowed here.I set about casting the fanny pincher claws and beginning my first foray into experimenting with HydroSpan resin in the effort to enlarge them. I’m going to recklessly assume most folks here are already familiar with the creation of silicone molds and the resin casting process so I won’t waste time typing out a full, lengthy explanation of it here. You can always search for “Smooth-On” on YouTube for a ton of videos that illustrate the steps & methods better than I could relate them anyway.
The only thing of note is the preparation of the thumb/wrist half of claw- The wrist portion needs to be reduced & shortened as Netflix Crow’s wrist clearly terminates at the wooden sphere at a point closer to the rest of the hand then the original claw permits. The wooden peg you see added is the portion that will insert into the sphere after enlargement.

This was also the first time in many, many years I can finally say that I had to use complex math outside of grade school. The HydroSpan resin has a mix ratio of 100A:50B by weight. That requires you to do a formula based on how many grams of part A you’ll be mixing to determine how many grams of part B you’ll need to mix as the catalyst. Thank God there was a video demonstrating how to work that formula on YouTube as well. Take
THAT, 12th grade algebra!

The results? HydroSpan when mixed turned out to have a viscous consistency, much like honey. Which, if you’ve worked with resins before, you’ll know is a bit thicker than the usual fare. To ensure success, I created and utilized what are called “squish molds” as opposed to the more common type where you would sculpt a “pouring-spout” into the silicone for TWO REASONS
<<Hey! Another Rifftrax reference!1. The thick, uncured HydroSpan is unlikely to ooze its way all the way down into every corner it needs to via a pouring-spout method
2. The claws parts are both very thin-walled. Any time you have parts that don’t have ample thickness, using a squish mold is better as it allows you to pour the resin into an open-face half of the mold and then set the negative on top, ensuring an even spread of material into the nooks & crannies of your casting. Here’s a video of what I’m talking about just in case that sounded confusing:
https://youtu.be/WlTuDgzhTlkI now actually believe this to be the same stuff that is used to make novelty water-enlargement toys like these:
https://www.amazon.com/Growing-Jumbo-Lobster/dp/B00362TP4QOnce that cured, I discovered the HydroSpan did not become fully rigid and stayed rubbery. This made trimming the flashing away from the parts a little difficult but aside from that, the casting was successful. The next step in the instructions are to submerge the parts in water for up to ten days to reach the full 60% enlargement.

I was shocked when I checked back in only 48 hours and discovered they were already at what has to be full size!!! It appears that the thinnest sections absorb the water fastest. As you can see in the photos, the denser portion of the wrist is still smaller than it should be while the thinner walls of the “thumb” exploded in scale overnight. I’ll still let the whole thing soak for a full ten days regardless.
Unfortunately, the next big challenge presented itself pretty bluntly the moment I touched the enlarged parts. Due to these parts being so thin-walled and the HydroSpan material being so soft, they and now super rubbery and can’t hold their proper shape worth a darn.

I don’t think there’s any way I can recast these parts to make a new silicone mold of them and not have that process fail miserably. There’s no way I could ensure the wet, slippery parts don’t float off into the silicone while it cures or guaranteeing the parts maintain a consistent and non-warped shape.
A possible solution? I figure if the enlargements of thin parts won’t hold their shape, then perhaps enlargements of the thick ones (i.e. the molds that produced them) will.

So back on the chemical mixing merry-go-round I go! Once the castings of the molds get “big-ified” in the water, I’ll have to make yet another set of silicone molds of
those before I can attempt a standard resin casting of the larger claws… I have to say this is getting really expensive, but I learned a long time ago if you can’t embrace that fact, BotBuilding isn’t the hobby for you.