The Buckles: Battle Handmaidens build

As I was waiting for fabric to arrive, I got started on the belt buckles for the handmaidens. I will admit from the outset; it would’ve been a lot easier to just order two from Etsy or ask someone to 3d print them for me. However, I had the supplies I needed to attempt the buckles kicking around and as the lockdown boredom descended I figured I’d give them a go.

This is the best reference photo I found online; I believe it’s from the visual guide to The Phantom Menace.

First I got hold of some blank buckles, with a recess in the front for me to put in the design. I got these from here: shorturl.at/iknyV

I started with a base wax positive of the buckle, minus the crest (as my wax did not like that level of detailed carving) I just used regular candle wax, which is probably why I struggled, so I would recommend a higher quality wax. I ended up with this:

Then, using regular silicone that you can use with a caulking gun, I mixed silicone with a bit of cornflour to make a mould with. I didn’t order any kit as I was trying to do this with things I had around the house, so it took a little while to get the ratio right of silicone to cornflour. There are some really good videos about this that I used for reference before starting. ALSO: silicone is incredibly stinky. Make sure you’re in a well-ventilated space when you’re doing this. It also takes quite a while to cure, so I did it in the afternoon and left it at least until the following day to make sure all the details had set right in the mould.

Youtube handy helpers: shorturl.at/eETUV and shorturl.at/iHOV7

Once I had a negative mould, I cast a few copies out of thermoplastic. I had some of this left over from other projects I had done, and it’s very easy to work with; you just put it in boiling water, wait till it melts and fish it out with something that isn’t your hand. It very quickly becomes cool enough to handle but you do have to work fast before it starts to set. Once these were dry, I gave them about an hour, I used apoxie sculpt to create the crest in the middle of the buckle. I did a few of these to get my eye in, and then chose the one with the best proportions. Again, I made a silicone cast of this chosen one, and let the silicone set overnight.

With a mould of the complete buckle in hand I did several more thermoplastic casts, then chose the best two from the batch. As the mould is not perfect, especially round the edges, I had a fair amount of cleaning up to do on them to give them a nice crisp shape.

I used a dremel 3000, mostly because it comes with lots of different heads to use and it’s the best one I have. However, if you’re using one on a plastic, be aware that the heat of the friction will heat up the plastic and can start to melt it. I regularly shut the dremel off and either pulled or cut off the melty bits (if I was actively trying to get rid of them) or smoothed them down with my thumb or a sculpting tool. I also used the edge of a flatter sanding disk to sharpen the edges of the crests and line details. Once they were in a shape I was happy with, everything got a sanding to make sure they were nice and smooth.

From here I added a bit more apoxy sculpt to the corners just to get them sharp. Once that was dry, I sanded it all down again, using the smallest buffer for my dremel, just to make sure everything was ready for painting.

First, I hit it with an enamel silver paint, just to get a good covering and to get rid of the colour variation between the thermoplastic and the apoxy. Then I added a couple of layers of silver rub n’ buff, which gives a very good metallic look to a project (without it actually being metal) With that base down, I added dark wash, highlights and some European gold rub n’ buff to start to bring out the detail. After hand painting on the markings on the buckle, and a few more highlights for good measure, they both got two layers of clear sealant for some shine.

Overall, I’m very happy with these as a first attempt! I’ll probably slap some more varnish or sealant to make them shine a bit more, but a good start.

final buckle dimensions: