About

Cost
$ $ $ $ $
Difficulty
• • • • •
Time
2h30

Extruded Polypropylene, 12/3 Romex, Cyanoacrylate, Felt and Thread = DOMO!
My girlfriend likes Domo-Kun. Whenever she spots the furry little guy on a t-shirt, backpack, or even on the web, she blurts, "Domo!" "I want a Domo!" she says.

So I bring her this Domo-kun doll.

He has sharp teeth, you can rotate all his limbs and pose his arms abt which way you desire.

I included a x-ray type illustration to explain how he was put together:

He is shaped from scrap EPP, Extruded Polypropylene. I found this scrap inside a LCD TV cardboard box as it was used to protect the TV until you take it out to watch it. You can use any foam, honestly, but I chose EPP because it is easy to form shapes out of or into, it's very durable, and and yoiu can run a thread through it and it wont rip through the foam if you tug tight. EPP is recognizable from other foams because its made in sheets of about 1 inch thick, and thicker pieces are made by stacking the sheets together, SO it has a layered look. Where standard Styrofoam snaps, this EPP bends.
I used 3M Spray 77 aerosol contact adhesive to adhere several layers to get the thickness I needed.
To get two pieces to stick to one another I would lay them both with the sides i wanted glued together, laying face up on a large section of newspaper very near but not touching one another. then with overlapping strokes i would spray the foam till they had a very light dusintg of glue on them. wait 30 seconds for the solvent in the glue to evaporate and activate the glue's bonding properties, and very carefully sandwich the two sticky faces together. with contact clues like this, you really only get one chance to stick them as they usually don't ever come apart again without damaging the glued surfaces. this glue is that great. if you are having trouble with the pieces actually sticking together, you can double coat the pieces before sticking them together. remember to wait at least 30 seconds between coats and before you try to stick them together. the glue has a 5-10 minute max working timer, so if you wait longer than 10 minutes, you should re-apply the adhesive. for a great fast bond i usually double coat and use a hair dryer to reduce the waiting time to practically seconds.

I used large sewing snaps in tandem to attach each of his arms and legs to his torso. The snaps for his arms are glued/stapled at either end of a torso wide sized (2 paint stick thick) wood sandwich inside the foam body.
His legs are also EPP with snaps atop the felt on the leg but are recessed/flush on the body. I had trouble trying to snap him together as the foam compressed when i was pushing the two parts together and it absorbs force so well that i couldn't manage enough force to snap the snaps. I used a construction steel hanger nail called a Tico nail. They are short and wide ans it just so happen to be the exact length from the bottom of the foot to just inside the dome of the leg's snap. so when i pushed on the nail head it transfered all of my efforts directly to the snap and it went together, like a snap. pun?

His teeth are made from an old light switch cover that i traced the teeth patter onto and used a small fine tooth hacksaw or coping saw to cut bear the line but not so close that I couldn't use a flat file to even them all up. I even pointed the teeth. Domo's have very sharp teeth don't you know?!

I have to finish this later, it's a lot of work to write evrything down, more work than the actual Domo-Kun doll. Ha!

Posted by krispykreemd Published
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Comments

badgerbadger
badgerbadger
You, sir, are AWESOME.

(and this is a great tutorial, as well!)
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