The Infinity Gauntlet

I am a big nerd. I had biked to the public library and checked out literally twenty pounds of comics, one of which featured Thanos and the Infinity Gauntlet. I then realized that I could totally make one, and that it would be a really awesome thing to have in my room. So I decided to make this, because Thanos is an AWESOME villain.

I used stuff I had lying around the house, but all in all, it shouldn't be too pricey to get this stuff.

For the Gauntlet:

- Plaster Cloth (I used about a third of one of the 4'' rigid wrap packages.)

- Water

- Scissors

- an old magazine

- packing tape

- Plasti-Dip Spray

- Gold Spray Paint

- Gloss ClearCoat

- Acrylic Paints

- A hot glue gun and about five sticks of glue.

- Somewhere to make a mess. I used the old patio table outside.

- Your Hand

Wiring and Finishing

- LEDs. I used these: LEDs.

- 22 gage stranded wire, but you could use whatever you prefer.

- Heat-shrink tubing

- 2 AAA battery case: I used one of these

- Soldering Stuff

- Switch: I used one of these - they are VERY SMALL

- Cardboard and Felt and some tape

Go to wherever you're planning to make a big mess, because this will probably be a mess. Cut up the plaster cloth into strips about an inch wide and dip them in the water and lay them on whatever hand you're not using. Try and capture the fist shape - make sure the indents between fingers are defined. Don't clench your fist super tight - it'll drive you nuts waiting for it to dry. I would highly recommend cutting up a lot of strips before you start doing this, because I didn't, and it was not easy cutting strips with one hand. Leave enough room to wiggle your hand out once it dries. You could use a release agent like petroleum jelly, and it would help. I didn't, and it was fine. Now, once you've got the fist shape, go wait for it to dry. I got mine off after about twenty minutes of finding things to do one-handed.

The gauntlet flares out at the wrist, and nobody's arm flares like that, so I had to improvise.

Here's what you need for this step:

- Old Magazine

- Packing Tape

- Arm

You need to make a conical shape radiating out from your wrist. I folded sheets from an old Vogue magazine in the way shown in the photos and taped those into a sort of semicircle shape. I taped a crumpled page on the reverse side and then taped it onto my wrist, like shown.

Then, go back out to wherever your mess is and plaster up the cone-thingy. Try and make the hem as even as you can. Wait for it to dry. Once mine was dry, I pulled the magazine out and cut it off, and then wriggled the plaster off my wrist.

Now, you've got both the fist and the flare. Go find some tin foil and sculpt in the bit of the hand that's missing. Don't make it too tight, or you'll be unable to pull the tinfoil out when it dries. Then, go cover the area up with plaster. I tried to avoid capturing the tinfoil texture by laying my plastercloth strips taut from the flare to the fist. Just try and make it look as natural as you can. Let it dry and fish out the tinfoil!

Now, when I tried the plastidip on my test piece of plaster, the texture was pretty nasty. So, I had to think of a solution. My solution was glue. A lot of glue. It was just plain old white Elmers glue applied with a paintbrush. I applied about three coats, and this acted as a sealant and filled up some of the little grid holes from the plaster cloth. This made it look a lot better, and allowed for the glossy finish I wanted to succeed later on.

Then, go find a permanent marker and an x-acto knife. Use that marker along with a reference image to place where the infinity stones should go, along with the LED hole. The, use the x-acto in a twisting motion to drill a hole into the plaster. It shouldn't be too difficult. I was using 5mm LEDs, so I tried to make the hole appropriately sized. Then, I drew in the lines for the ridges on the fingers, and the square border pattern.

Next, I let the hot glue gun heat up. Very slowly and deliberately, outline your circles and fill in the ridges. DO NOT fill in the gems yet. Also, outline the border. There are four rectangles.

Now that you've put a whole lot of glue on this thing, it's time to paint it.

First, I used about three coats of plasti-dip on this thing to get the gauntlet and hot glue detailing the be about the same texture. I wasn't particularly careful, and the coats can be pretty thick, as long as they don't run.

Then, once that was dry, I used about three coats of gold spray paint on the gauntlet. Again, the coats were pretty thick, as that helped make the texture a little more even.

Once that dried, I used a couple coats of gloss clear coat.

Then, after that, I got out my acrylic paints and filled in the circles for the future infinity stones in their respective colors.

I then mentally prepared myself to wire the LEDs.

I'm not particularly experienced at this. I'm sure there are better ways to wire this, but here's how I did it.
The red, yellow, and orange LEDs all needed resistors. I just used the ones that came with them. The blue, green, and purple ones didn't. Once I soldered the LEDs to the wires ( the wires were all about ten inches long so I could access them later.), I put some heat-shrink tubing on the negative wire, and a larger diameter over that and heated it. I repeated this process for each LED.

Now, the hard part. Which I didn't do a very good job documenting. I put the wire-end into the hole in the circle for the LED, yellow into the part painted yellow, etc. and then pulled the wire down so the LED was mostly in the hole. I then got the hot glue gun again. Once it was hot, I made sure I had enough glue. With the LED positioned in the hole, I put a big BIG blob of hot glue in the circle and filled it in so it was rather gem-like. Once I did that to all of the stones, I got out the acrylic paint and put a thin coat over so it would look good off as well as on. Try to match the color of the paint to that of the LED. Now, inside the gauntlet, you'll see that it's sort of a rat's nest of wires. Collect all of the positive wires and solder them together, and do the same with the negative ones. You will see that in the images is a diagram of how I soldered everything together. You should also shrink-wrap all the connections.

I then found some cardboard and traced the bottom edge of the gauntlet onto it, and then drew another outline about 2/3 of an inch in from the traced line and cut that out. I also cut out a spot of the switch. Then I covered this piece in felt. This fits inside the gauntlet as a platform for the batteries and a wall to keep the electronics from spilling out.

Then, I found my switch and soldered two longer wires to its leads. I put the switch in its hole on the cardboard thing and hot glued it into place. One of those wires went to the battery pack, the other to the clump of negative wires. Next, I soldered the positive battery wire to the clump of positive wires and used a piece of double sided tape to affix the battery pack to the cardboard piece. Lucky for me, everything worked exactly as it was supposed to. I added a tape hinge to the cardboard piece, and it looked quite nice!

You've done it! Revel in the glory! Feel powerful. The Infinity Gauntlet is one of the most powerful objects in the Marvel Universe!
Mine needed some finishing touches. I had put the paint on the purple stone on a little too thick, so I used some nail polish remover to remove it, but that was really it. I wanted to make a stand for it, but then decided that it looked cooler without one.