Celeborn's collar.

[mellymell]

I'm thoroughly enjoying this project now that I've gotten into it. Expanded pvc (sintra) is a DREAM to work with! I love it! I might remake my Batgirl armor out of it. I've got a rather large sheet. Plenty of room to play. I started thinking last night of all the other LOTR jewelry I could make with it. Galadriel's brooch, Arwen's Requiem

Comments

[lordofhaladin]

looks amazing!!!

[mellymell]

Thanks! I'm kind of amazed by it, if I may say so. I keep looking at it thinking, "I did NOT just make that!" Drawing out the design was the hardest part. Once that was done, everything else has been cake so far!

I highly recommend this stuff. Couldn't be easier to work with and only $8 or so +S&H for a 24"x48" sheet!

[lordofhaladin]

yes, you did. :)

O RLY?! how hard is it? would one need to have power tools to work with it? I may want some, where did you find it? (online I assume as you mentioned S&H)

[mellymell]

My original plan was to use a coping saw and cut it by hand, but then I thought I'd give the dremel a try and it worked so well, I didn't bother using anything else.

I think you could totally cut it and even sand it by hand. If you were doing something not so intricate, like armor, you could probably even use tin snips or something. I have no idea how the other thicknesses would be, but I was even able to cut out a section with heavy scissors to lay out my pieces on (since a 2'x4' sheet would be a little unwieldy to work with).

You can get it in various thicknesses and even some different colors. This is the thinnest (.040") that usplastic.com sells. Here's the link to their whole range of the stuff.

[baka_san]

pickguard material is similar stuff, looks like.

[mellymell]

Perhaps, but yikes! Costly!

[baka_san]

yeah, i noticed that.

[mellymell]

I've been trying to figure out what the untouched surface of this stuff looks like and it looks like the white surface of laminated mdf. It's mostly smooth and has a somewhat reflectively shiny surface, but has a subtle texture to it. Not completely smooth like acrylic or the like.

Conversely, I ordered the wrong stuff first (standard pvc in 1/8" thickness) and it is more like a white board surface. Very smooth and shiny and extremely rigid. Would definitely need a sturdy heat gun to shape it and possibly a good scroll saw for cutting.

[baka_san]

i probably would have used a scroll saw for what you did. did you mount the dremel on anything or just freehand the whole thing?

the biggest problem working with that stuff is that the plastic melts as you cut it.

[mellymell]

Yeah, I probably would have as well, if I had one. That's on my list of "someday" tools, along with a router.

I didn't mount the dremel, it was freehand (and messy), though I was able to get into a groove sometimes and move the piece more than the tool. I had a scrap of mdf under it that I didn't mind getting carved up a bit.

I think the melting issue is what gave me such messy edges. Instead of just falling away, those pieces got a little gummy and stuck together. Oddly enough, the negative edges were cleaner for some reason. You can sort of see that on the shot of me holding the dremel. Don't know if that had to do with how I was holding the tool or what.

[baka_san]

i need to get one of these. it would work well for any small-ish routing you need to do.

[mellymell]

Perfect! I still would like a full sized router for some furniture work I'd like to do, too. And a new dremel! Mine is a mess. I have to keep an eye on it and let it rest when I see sparks inside (I'm thinking some ball bearings are out of whack in there or something). But it was free, so I can't really complain... much.

[mellymell]

Oh, and it's somewhat rigid, but not hard like the sort of pvc that pipes are made from. The core of it is foam-like (molecularly speaking), but the surface has been polished smoothish. So it's flexible, but not like craft foam is. You can supposedly shape it by boiling it or using a heat gun and it'll hold it's shape without needing to be reinforced.