A Hollywood Prop Maker Severs My Hand

A Star Wars Hollywood prop maker made a cast of my hand to look like Luke’s severed hand from Empire Strikes Back.

1. Creating the Mold
2. Pouring the Dragon Skin
3. Making the Stand

1. Creating the Mold

If you remember from a few weeks ago, my Hollywood prop maker friend Frank Ippolito helped me make the hilt of Luke Skywalker’s lightsaber and now he helped me cast my hand for Luke’s severed hand. Frank mixed the 1:1 ratio of powder to water alginate into a bucket to make the mold. He made a really good point about first applying the alginate directly to my hand to make sure it caught the details of my hand prior to me putting it in the bucket. Without touching the sides of the bucket or moving, I sat with my hand in the alginate mixture for about 10 minutes allowing it to cure to my hand. By using an air compressor, he was able to carefully remove my hand from the mold so that it wouldn’t cause any errors in the alginate. 

2. Pouring the Dragon Skin

At this point, we were ready for the silicone. Next, we had to de-gas the Dragon Skin FX Pro silicone to prep it for the pour. Due to the California heat in Frank’s shop, it took two tries to get it right to pour. After the dragon skin silicone cured, Frank removed the hand from the mold – was it so weird? Yes. When pouring the silicone into the mold, Frank instructed to rotate the bucket so that the silicone could move into the finer details and release any air bubbles. You can see in the fingertips where some of the bubbles didn’t escape but we were able to fill those.

Before we left, Frank took the time to paint the hand to look exactly like a dismembered hand. It was really cool to watch him work his movie magic and take his time making it right for me. He has a video over on Tested.

3. Making the Stand

Back at home, I wanted to make a stand to hold Luke’s hand and the saber. I cut an idea of what I wanted out of cardboard to test it out. I took a picture and loaded it into Fusion 360 to refine the photo and create a vector shape that is the scale for the real world. This is just one of the many things you can learn in our Fusion 360 course! Once I was done in Fusion, I sent the images to the Glowforge laser to cut them out. 

I learned so much from Frank and it was exactly what I needed to hold Luke’s lightsaber. Special thanks to Frank and Thingergy! Luke’s severed hand and lightsaber look perfect in the display cabinet I made last year. Super happy with how it turned out.