Steam Punk Costume

For about five minutes in 2011 my wife decided that she was into Steampunk. As a result we decided to make costumes that fit the steampunk genre.

I made two pairs of goggles, a mechanical arm, some bracers, and modded some toy guns. I think that she managed to make some gear shaped earrings and bought a dress before she lost interest... Oh well.

The piece that really made the costume in my opinion was the mechanical hand. Aternox has a great tutorial on how to make one of these, as well as a gif of his in motion. My build is a bit different in appearance, but the mechanics are the same. Below is a video of mine in motion (please ignore the random pets photo bombing).

Rather than plating the backs of the fingers with sheet metal as Aternox did, I spray painted the springs a copper color, and used gold Rub-N-Buff to get the coloring. I did a base layer of black spray paint and then just rubbed the small amount of the Rub-N-Buff over it in streaks to get an aged bronze look. Rub-N-Buff is pretty awesome stuff and I used it to color a number of other pieces in this costume.

The piece over the back of the arm and the one over the back of the hand are both bent sheet metal, painted the same as the wooden hand (top left picture). To cover my real hand underneath I used the sleeve of a thrift store leather jacket that was sacrificed for a few pieces of this costume (top right). In order to be able to get my hand into the glove and over the rings that controlled the wooden hand, I had to be able to pull back the leather sleeve. To do this I glued fridge magnet strips to one side of the sleeve, and they would stick to the sheet metal over the arm, but could be pulled back to adjust things (bottom left). The glove itself is screwed into the strip of wood that is bolted to the hand itself (bottom right). There is also a velcro strap running around the wooden strip to attach to my forearm (you need a decent amount of leverage to pull those springs down on the finger pieces).

The upper arm section is where most of the thrift store leather jacket ended up. I cut the right arm and upper chest/shoulder out of the jacket, sewed the ragged edge together, and sewed a belt onto it to go down and around my chest to hold it on (that is the strange lump under the vest in the picture). The two hardware looking pieces on the shoulder are actually pieces of one of the nerf guns I painted for the costume.

The gun was a Nerf Raider and the shoulder stock was held in place using the snaps and straps from a purse that had to die to make the costume (also picked up at the thrift store). The ammo drum was held in place using a Kraft macaroni box that I lined with more leather from the sacrificial jacket and sewed onto the arm. On the front of the leather box I glued on a piece of plastic that I painted with more Rub-N-Buff. The pieces mounted on the arm could easily be removed and added onto the gun during wear.

The guns got a base coat of black spray paint, and then silver and gold Rub-N-Buff applied with a finger and Q-tip. The gun shown above is a Nerf Spectre. Next post I will talk about the bracers and the goggles.