"A fiery horse with the speed of light, a cloud of dust and a hearty "Hi Yo Silver!" ...Part 2

...In the first part of this two part entry, I showed you my progress in creating Silver, the Lone Ranger's horse, and now I want to show you how I came up with my custom Lone Ranger figure, that is in scale with this faithful steed of his.
So here we go...

 The biggest option pool I had in this scale for a base of a person in this size was Star Wars action figures. After considering quite a few, I decided Lando in his Return of the Jedi outfit would work great for the bottom half. Because of his blue pants, black boots, and ball jointed legs for horse straddling. Also, an Endor soldier would supply a head and he even had gloved hands that would work. To finish my gathering for Lone, I grabbed a rebel soldier from A New Hope for the blue torso and arms.

 

I put the Endor soldier gloves on him to see how they fit, and realized his black vest wasn't an extra piece over his blue torso but it was sculpted on. So I ended up having to cut it away and sand it down. I was glad to not have to paint his arms though, because his elbow and shoulder articulation would make it a mess.

 

I also decided I liked the head he came with because it had an "older and fatherly" look to it which I think Clayton Moore always had so I went with this one instead of the Endor soldier head.

If you look really close you can see where I sketched out where his mask would be with pencil.

 

 

 

My first outlines of the mask to build it up.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

And now with a full mask and hat ready for his job at McDonald's!

 

The hat with the brim. Lookin' a little more country...

 

I added a thin layer of epoxy to harden and make the hat durable.

 

Now for his trousers...

 

And I painted on his pants belt that will go under his gun belt.

 

With some leather pieces I cut out a gun belt with holsters!

...But actually, before I could cut accurate sized holsters,

I needed to know the size of guns I'd be holstering.

so...

Here's what I did for the guns.

 

I made four castings in some sculpey clay of an Indiana Jones pistol I have and then filled the casts with epoxy. I let them dry overnight and I cleaned them up and sanded them down.

Separate halves of each gun.

 

After a ton of sanding the gun halves, I finally got them to the combined thickness I wanted. I wanted longer barrels than the gun I used to cast these from so with a tiny diamond drill I got from my dentist, I drilled holes for a new barrel. A strong barrel. A mighty barrel.

 

I used some nails for the size of gun barrels I was looking for, and a wire for the small revolver barrel underneath and marked the length I wanted to cut them after gluing them into the cast part.

 

Then I was able to measure for the correct length on the holsters.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

After painting the belt black, I added a buckle and belt strap!

I glued the belt on at the front and back leaving the sides flexible for the guns.

 

Toothpick tips work great for bullets hanging on his gun belt.

 

After fitting the top and bottom halves together I found there was

about an 8th inch gap between, so I added epoxy to the torso.

 

All together now!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Here are the guns finished.

 

Painted on some details onto his shirt.

 

 

 

I actually made three different scarf/bandanas

for him before I got it right.

 

 

 

 

 



This is one of the two I didn't go with because it was it

was just too fat once the head was popped back on.

 

 

Here he is. with the right, thin bandana.

 

 

This was a really long but rewarding project.

I'm really happy with how they both turned out.

 

This summer Disney's putting out a big screen version of the Lone Ranger with Johnny Depp playing a comedic version of his faithful sidekick Tonto. It's going to be a lot different take on him than the Clayton Moore version I grew up loving, but I still want to see it out of curiosity and hope because he's such a fave of mine. I'm really hoping that the new "modernizing" isn't going to redefine him to a new generation by taking away the fact that before all the other great things about him, "he was a good man." This is the version of him I was trying to create.