Just an update to let you know what's happening. There's been a slight change in emphasis this last week as I push to finish a "Tom doll" to send to him and his wife. Just to let those of you who don't already know who Tom is, he was a Boomerang pilot in WWII who flew the "U-Beaut 2" that Richard is making. We managed to track him and his wife down about 6 months ago and have been in constant contact ever since. They are both 89 and up until a few weeks ago were fighting fit and driving all over the country but Tom had an asthma attack just before ANZAC Day (April) and ended up in hospital. That was followed by an inflamation/infection around the heart and while in hospital for that he got an infection via the tube used to feedother Tom the antibiotics. He is really not well at all. A while ago his wife Beryl asked that if/when I made Tom, could she have one. I've been meaning to get them one for ages but just keep on doing other stuff. So this week I committed to getting an finished and am almost there. The picture of Tom is with Richard's Corsair when they came up to visit last year.

I h about 3 different moulds of his head and stupidly hadn't labelled them [:@], they're hard to tell the difference from the outside so had to cast one of each to find the final good version. They're now labelled! I'll attach a couple of pics of the raw body sadtraight from the mould. It looks like Elivs with the wings before it's trimmed. I took a pic of the 1/5 body beside it for size comparison too. The shirt on the 1/5th body is actually a 1/6 size from China but you can see it fits the body quite well but is just short in length. You could get away with it probably and the arm length would be covered with gloves too.

Speaking of gloves Brad, I'm assuming you'd want the gloves posed in the flying position with hands on the throttle and joy stick? For the hands, which would be used for general posing, let me know how you want them posed??

I had to get the paints out again this week to do Tom and I've found that by giving the casting (head) a good rub with fine steel wool I didn't have to etch prime it. That is so good as the etch primer is dark grey which meant I had to then base coat that with white to apply the skin colour over - no good putting it over dark grey. By using so many coats it filled in some of the fine detail too so the steel wool is a good step.

The uniform is more or less finished and just needs the finishing bits and pieces - buttons sewn on, epaulettes etc. I'll post some pics of the epaulette making process soon incase it's useful to anyone else. I just use cotton tape and run rows of very narrow, close zigzag stitching down the length. I sew over this again to thicken the stitching and fill in any missed bits. The length of tape with stitching stripes is then cut into lengths and joined into a band. A picture will tell a thousand words tho and I'll try to remember to take some when I make the next lot. The little buttons can be bought from tinyzippers.com and she also sells thin, lightweight velcro which is a lot less stiff and bulky than regular stuff.

I got Richard to cut some more boots as the first ones were done in foam and were a bit rough which meant a bit of sanding whereas the wax comes out smooth as anything. So he did 1/5 and 1/4 scale ones and I moulded them both.

As soon as I get Tom finished and sent off to him I'll be able to make the mould of your head Brad which is sitting pretty and patiently Dying to do it actually and get it painted up and see if you recognize it at all!

cheers
Patti