Being heavily slammed with the budget this year, I didn’t have time to plan anything until the week of the party. (That’s right – everything you’re about to see was done in four days. Imagine how well it would have come out if I’d started it sooner…) Anyway, I’d seen a humorous pic a while back about this guy who did a funny take on the Iron Man costume. Instead of the 'real' Iron Man outfit, he'd made himself up to look like an iron. A clothes iron! I thought that was a riot and Hell, I can pull that off! And, I could even take things a bit further; I could incorporate steam! How did I make out? Let’s see...
Hmmm...a canoe?
Uh-oh...cutting implements. This can't be good for the canoe...
I think it's safe to say this canoe will never float again (no worries, it was old and didn't float when it was in one piece, either.)
Gotta drill that seat out and get it removed...
Ok...now what?
The plan was to use the canoe shell as the body of the costume. I'd need arm holes on the sides, but I didn't know how big they needed to be, or what alignment (front to back) would work best for me. So, it was back to outside, to do some test holes on the other canoe half...
I had a pretty good idea on how/where to cut the holes, but I wanted to get a little further along on the costume so that I could stand up inside it and measure it more precisely, before I went ahead and cut the actual holes out. It was getting late and I didn't want to be keep making a ton of noise outside, so I opted to knock some other things out of the way. Things like a first coat of paint on the canoe-half, as well as what would be the face plate of the costume.
Day 2; outside for cutting of the face plate and fitment to the canoe half. Nice, what a fit!
Cutting of the arm holes - sure hope my measurements are right, because there's no going back now!
It was at this point that I had my first setback. When I stood the (half) canoe up so that I could stand inside to try and measure where the arm holes should go, I realized that keeping the full half-length of the canoe would make things too tall for me to be able to walk at all, so I shortened it by about a foot and a half. Unfortunately, by taking some of the length off, it also removed some of the rigidity of the sides, allowing them to flop open wider than they had been. Why was this a problem? Because I'd already cut the face plate - which now was narrower than the sides, causing it to just fall into the canoe, rather than resting on the side rails. Damn. To fix this, I had to measure and cut a piece of 2x4 to screw at the bottom of the (half) canoe to hold the sides back in to the width they had been, previously. That fixed the width problem but it now meant I had a piece of wood down where my legs go - would it interfere with my mobility? Time would tell...
Next, I wanted to cut 'steam' holes into the face plate so I tried a number of different templates to get a size that I thought had the right size perspective, overall.
First mock-up! Arm holes are cut (and lined with foam to protect against the sharp edges), second coats of paint have been applied, face plate has been shaped, and face/steam holes have been cut in.
To hold the face plate against the body, I first tried hinging it, but that wound up being a headache and a half, so I just went with velcro. Overall, this wound up working great. (I had to sand the aluminum to get a nice clean surface for the velcro to stick to. The face plate, however, was a wood-composite material and the velcro stuck to it "well enough" to last the day, but not much longer.
Next step; cut holes into the top aluminum, where the steam would come out.
The Dremel came in very handy during this whole costume creating process. I don't remember what I was grinding here, but it was the trusty Dremel to the rescue again.
Ok, the plan to incorporate the steam involved using a fog machine. But where to hide that?? There wasn't room inside the canoe for it, so I had to tuck it into what would be the handle of the iron. But that was made out of cardboard, so to make sure there would be enough support for the fog machine, I cut some wood, bracketed it together to make a shelf, and then screwed it tightly against the canoe. (I drilled from inside the canoe, through some backer wood for support, and into this shelf.) I also cut a hole where the fog would be fed into the canoe.
Cool! It looks like it'll work!
Uh-oh...the fog machine is a tad too long, and sticks out the back. Crap!
Ok, not a problem, not a problem. Working some magic with spare pieces of cardboard, I rigged up an end cap...
That flap sticking up would help attach the middle part of the handle to this bottom part. Next; build the middle and top parts and mold them to the body of the canoe.
Here, scribing the curve so they would come together nicely.
Things are cut, taped together, and I cut/screwed a piece of wood inside there that I could drill into from inside the canoe, to pull it tight.
Sweet, that's going to come together nicely.
Ok, going in a different direction now, I needed to create the Arc Reactor thing that Iron Man has in his chest. I'd gone to Home Depot (yet again!) to pick up some materials which we'll get to in a second. But something else I needed was a piece of cloudy plastic for the front of it. Here, you can see it took me many attempts before I finally succeeded in cutting something nice and round, and to the size that I needed.
Next step; cut a piece of styrofoam and mold it to the shape of a PVC threaded coupling.
Put 'em together and viola - not too bad.
Ok Dave, that's all well and good, but how are you going to make that thing look like the Arc Reactor? Simple! I'd picked up some LED lights at Target, and using a small drill bit, I poked out holes for the LED's to fit into. I taped 4 of them together to make the center light and then arranged 6 lights in a pattern around that. Using the cloudy piece of plastic over the front (which actually threaded in nicely), it diffused the light in a way as to light up the entire styrofoam. Not too shabby, eh?
Ok, back to the costume body. Second mock-up, this time with fog/steam!
What you may not be able to make out in this pic is that even though I'd connected a section of hose to the fog machine and had then run the hose up into the top of the costume, the fog was pouring out of the sides, where the aluminum edges met the fiberglass. Ok, not a serious problem, I just need some caulking. Hmmm...no caulking. Wait, here's a tube that's about 2 years old. As expected, it had pretty much cured into a solid piece of unsuable crap. But, I got lucky; I cut the hardened stuff out of the plastic, and then sliced deep into the middle. Success! Inside, was just enough to use to fill the gaps.
I rigged a copper half-clamp and some wire to rig up a holder for the hose to keep it in place. Stuffing a towel around the hose, I had a pretty air-tight pocked at the top of the costume for the fog/steam to come out.
Ok, let's get final paint taken care of. Here, the canoe is taped off and the handle is getting its flat black coats.
I had to cut a small hole in the end cap that I'd made, for the fog machine's plug to fit through. But I didn't like how the rough edges of the hole took away from the aesthetics, so I used a small piece of foam insulation and notched the middle to make a grommet that would sit inside the hole.
What you may not be able to make out in this pic is that even though I'd connected a section of hose to the fog machine and had then run the hose up into the top of the costume, the fog was pouring out of the sides, where the aluminum edges met the fiberglass. Ok, not a serious problem, I just need some caulking. Hmmm...no caulking. Wait, here's a tube that's about 2 years old. As expected, it had pretty much cured into a solid piece of unsuable crap. But, I got lucky; I cut the hardened stuff out of the plastic, and then sliced deep into the middle. Success! Inside, was just enough to use to fill the gaps.
I rigged a copper half-clamp and some wire to rig up a holder for the hose to keep it in place. Stuffing a towel around the hose, I had a pretty air-tight pocked at the top of the costume for the fog/steam to come out.
Ok, let's get final paint taken care of. Here, the canoe is taped off and the handle is getting its flat black coats.
I had to cut a small hole in the end cap that I'd made, for the fog machine's plug to fit through. But I didn't like how the rough edges of the hole took away from the aesthetics, so I used a small piece of foam insulation and notched the middle to make a grommet that would sit inside the hole.
Ta da! It's the little things that show you really care.
Hmmm...I see that I didn't take any pics showing the install of the Arc Reactor. That didn't prove to be too hard, and it looked pretty sweet in the middle of the face plate.
Hmmm...I see that I didn't take any pics showing the install of the Arc Reactor. That didn't prove to be too hard, and it looked pretty sweet in the middle of the face plate.
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Whew! Thursday night around 10pm. The costume party was the following morning and I'd managed to pull things together in 4 nights, start to finish. I moved the costume up to the garage, ready to be loaded the next morning. What was left in the basement, was a frikkin' mess!
I didn't care - cleanup would have to wait. For now, it was beer time.
The unveiling! (We each get our pic taken and the pics get posted onto the company's internal employee page and then during the day, employees vote on their favorite costumes.) I did have one setback, though; the hose kept pulling off of the fog machine so I had to hit up Facilities for some wire and pliers, to safety-harness the hose in place.
Things seemed to be going well, but the true test would be later that evening, at the party. That's when you have to show your stuff to the execs and then hope all goes well and that they are impressed. When I checked on things later in the afternoon, I found a major setback! The fog had apparently heated up the hose so much in the morning, that it had turned soft as jelly and collapsed upon itself, effectively crimping itself. And it had cooled in that position! Damn - the fog won't work now!!! I had to hit up Facilities again, this time for some copper tubing, a pipe cutter, some more wire, and some duct tape. Jeez McGyver, what the hell are you going to do with all that?
I had to cut the saftey-harness off that I'd put on this morning, then cut a section of pipe, then wrap the edges of that with a piece of duct tape so the sharp edges wouldn't snag on the plastic, then I managed to work the section of pipe down into the hose, straightening it just enough that the fog would work again. Ok, let's wire everything together once again and get ready for the party!
People asked me what I was going to do with this thing now. Well, the plan is to put the second half of the canoe out to the street tonight and see if the trash guys take it. If they do, then I'll see what they think about throwing Iron Man in the trash.
I didn't care - cleanup would have to wait. For now, it was beer time.
The unveiling! (We each get our pic taken and the pics get posted onto the company's internal employee page and then during the day, employees vote on their favorite costumes.) I did have one setback, though; the hose kept pulling off of the fog machine so I had to hit up Facilities for some wire and pliers, to safety-harness the hose in place.
Things seemed to be going well, but the true test would be later that evening, at the party. That's when you have to show your stuff to the execs and then hope all goes well and that they are impressed. When I checked on things later in the afternoon, I found a major setback! The fog had apparently heated up the hose so much in the morning, that it had turned soft as jelly and collapsed upon itself, effectively crimping itself. And it had cooled in that position! Damn - the fog won't work now!!! I had to hit up Facilities again, this time for some copper tubing, a pipe cutter, some more wire, and some duct tape. Jeez McGyver, what the hell are you going to do with all that?
I had to cut the saftey-harness off that I'd put on this morning, then cut a section of pipe, then wrap the edges of that with a piece of duct tape so the sharp edges wouldn't snag on the plastic, then I managed to work the section of pipe down into the hose, straightening it just enough that the fog would work again. Ok, let's wire everything together once again and get ready for the party!
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The party itself went ok - I was lucky enough to make the top 15 (there are 15 prizes to be given out), but when it came time for the execs to announce the winners, I was majorly disappointed to hear that I'd only landed at #8. 8th!?!? Oy. There were other good costumes, but after hearing other employees tell me during the course of the day how blown away they were and that I had to be in the top three, it was a big letdown. As it turns out the costumes that landed the top 5 spots were all modeled after company products, so I guess there's a lesson to be learned there; you can either make a kick-ass costume and do 'ok', or you can be a suck-up and do really well. Between last year's disappointment (coming in 6th, when I was a walking, WORKING shower) and this year's disappointment, I might just hang things up. Who knows.
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Ok, enough bellyaching. The other part of the costume fun each year is showing it off to Sam and Zak, my niece and nephew. Halloween is still a week away, so their costumes weren't fully ready yet, but Zak at least threw a wig on for me.
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They thought the costume was kinda odd at first - until I let loose with the fog! Then they each wanted a turn inside!
Zak went first and hammered the fog, hard. He loved it when it got so bad that he couldn't even see. (The costume had suffered a bit from being transported to work and back, and some of the seams were leaking fog again.)
Next was Sam's turn and she hammered it pretty well, too.
Zak went first and hammered the fog, hard. He loved it when it got so bad that he couldn't even see. (The costume had suffered a bit from being transported to work and back, and some of the seams were leaking fog again.)
Next was Sam's turn and she hammered it pretty well, too.
People asked me what I was going to do with this thing now. Well, the plan is to put the second half of the canoe out to the street tonight and see if the trash guys take it. If they do, then I'll see what they think about throwing Iron Man in the trash.
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Unless you think I could get anything for it at the scrap metal yard?
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