I printed this skull back in 2019. The original file is this skull from Thingiverse. Now, it’s October 2020, so yeah, this took a while. I mean, I had it all printed long ago, and then I did an experiment where I covered one half of it with wood glue, and the other half with Smooth-On XTC-3D High Performance 3D Print Coating. I did this because I hate sanding prints (or wood, for that matter) and I wanted to test both methods of coating. For this application, I don’t know that it made much of a difference, but that might be due to the organic shape, and the fact that I primed and painted it afterwards…
Somewhere I’ve got photos of the coating process, but since they are nearly a year old now, I forgot to locate them. I do remember that the glue method took many more coats than the Smooth-On method, though of course glue is a much cheaper material…
You’ll notice the skull also looks a bit “weathered” and yeah, that was another test. I am not an “authentic movie prop maker” so I don’t know all those methods, and what I did was actually rub mud/moist dirt all over this thing and then let is sit for a long time. I eventually washed off a lot of the dirt because, well it was really dirty looking.
There are a few delicate parts of the print, and I’m pretty sure I broke off at least one piece and glued it back together. Again, since this is a pretty organic shape, no worries. And yes, it is pretty much life size.
I printed it in two pieces after slicing it in half, which means the surfaces touching the print bed are not visible as they are in the center of the skull, glue together. There’s a pretty bad seam that I never managed to get that sanded down quite right. I probably should have just taken a Dremel to it.
Overall I’m fairly pleased with how the skull turned out for a 3D printed object. It’s rare that I print “decorative” or “sculptural” prints since most of my prints are internal to some sort of enclosure with electronics inside.
Remember, the great thing about skulls is that we’ve all got one! (At least I hope.)
