Dear all
I am now onto the strengthening of Neil's left arm. I decided to go with triple layering and then at the hinge point of the elbow adding (as required) strips on top of each other on the inside of the elbow and directly opposite on the inside of the "bend" of the arm. My thinking is these are the two points where the arm wants to hinge so the strips at the elbow should act like a brace to stop the tensile forces of the bend and the other strips should act like a brace stop the compressive forces of the bend. Well that is the theory.
So first layer 2
Then layer 3
Now at this point the arm was very strong and had only very slight flexing so I just added some "extra patches" at some critical points (for example the bits labeled "X")
The arm is now rock solid.
I thought a comparison would be nice at this point for scale purposes. So first up is "Gene", Apollo mug, and 1/4 arm
Then Neil's life size left arm added
As you can see I have also added a strengthening band around the wrist and shoulder as the angle was quite sharp and I thought "rubbing" might become an issue.
Just one more photo of me trying on the arm
It took quite a number of goes to take this photo and get the arm in the photo!
Regards
Kevin