Step 2) Artfully Arranging Armatures and the Sorrows of Soldering Space Shrimp!

After gathering my photos and other reference material it was time to actually build the armature (the support system which would hold up the clay for the sculpt).

I decided to use ½” copper and plastic pipe attached to a wooden base. The red bits are strips of electrical tape marking where I should cut the various lengths for the armature (if you look closely you can also see the little arrows reminding me to CUT ON THIS SIDE OF THE TAPE, DUMMY!)

Both the copper and plastic pipe cut easily with a regular hacksaw (especially the plastic pipe – like butta!)

A rough first assembly of the armature that will one day be little CJ! Nothing in this shot is permanently attached or even taped yet – in fact it’s all being held together with elastic bands. I’m using an old sculpting base in this shot, as I hadn’t built the new, sturdier one yet.

The beginning of the proper base – a ¾” galvanized steel flange and the matching 4” length of ¾” threaded galvanized steel pipe, bolted into a nice sturdy inch thick piece of wood leftover from renovations we did this summer.

This is where the full-sized plans came in handy – it made it very easy to double check the angles for the armature against the drawing.

My first attempts, ever, at soldering after a quick down-and-dirty lesson from my father. The “pelvis” (left) went together easily enough (and was then reinforced with a bolt) but I ran into difficulty with the area around CJ’s “shoulders” (right). The pieces wouldn’t hold together with solder or, if they did, slipped out of alignment while they were being soldered.

So I went out and bought some more copper pipe fittings and assembled them into a new, sturdier “shoulder” piece (middle). Along with being sturdier this new rig was much easier to adjust to the angles I wanted.

Here’s the armature with the arms and legs attached. I used plastic pipes for the limbs because it’s less expensive than building the whole thing out of copper. The core was built of copper for strength (at least that was the plan *insert FORESHADOWING OF DOOM here*).


I also wanted to be able to detach the limbs later to be able to sculpt the torso more easily and that was easier to do with the big plastic joints rather than the copper ones.

Now it’s time to bulk out the armature…