While testing out some different options for grille lights to put behind the grate of the grille on our of our custom carts, we were reminded how much we like the custom “honey badger edition” badge that we had made up for it. Since then we’ve had a honey badger logo added to custom wheel center caps, a steering wheel cap, embroidered into the headrests of our new custom seats and even put on a key chain for the cart. And looking at the hood, the idea of a honey badger hood ornament came to mind.
We first thought was see if we could find something about the right size that would just work. After a pretty good look, we began to realize finding something posed fairly symmetrically was adding difficulty, but we did find a few honey badgers of about the right size eventually.
We were leaning toward this one although the detail was a little fuzzy and (in our mind thinking we’d chrome it) we worried that even more of the detail might be lost if we finished it in chrome.
Progress
Then we found a business that specializes in 3D printing fantasy figures that had this one:
We liked the symmetry, the higher level of clarity of details and more whimsical look so we struck up a conversation. Explaining our goal, we asked if they could size it more ideally to what we felt would look right and they said yes. We mentioned that ideally we had pictured something leaping, kinda like the car company with the leaping “puma”.
They responded with suggesting this:
We were elated. That being much more what we had in mind we replied and asked if it would be sufficiently rigid if we fixed just the back feet to the hood. We brainstormed a little and the it was decided that integrating it onto some sort of base would be best. We sent over this Photoshop mock-up and asked if it could be done:
Let’s Try It
Again the answer was yes so we worked out an agreeable price and asked them to proceed. They told us they could get it printing the following day. Having very limited knowledge how 3D printing works, we emailed at the end of the following day to ask how it came out. We learned that the printing process can take many, many hours depending on the design and the equipment, and that our little honey badger was still printing.
The following day we got the news that the print was done. Fast forward a few days and the finished print was here:
Now Make It Shine
The details looked as advertised and the size was just as requested. Now all that remained was to paint it. We had already set our heart on chroming it like a traditional hood ornament. But that would prove harder than we knew going in. Turns out, many chrome paints don’t look particularly “chromey” and even more so on resin. Turns out that a black primer base coat helps and turns out there are tutorials on line of folks trying all kinds of paints to get the results we were looking for that we should have consulted first.
In any event, the consensus is that the best of the paints are the same couple and we tried them both. We also learned that adding heat during application and drying helps but the best result we could get thus far came out like this:
Thoughts
We’re not unpleased. We like the character and it retained the little details well enough. We like the modified leaping pose for sure. But the chrome came out more silvery to our eye (particularly evident in the base). So we’re on the fence. Not sure if it will make the hood as is. But we’d love to hear your thoughts. We have an order in for another chrome product (not a paint) that we’re going to try. If that doesn’t come out better, we might try hand painting it in truer colors to see what that would look like, but our preference for a hood ornament remains chrome. If/when there is any update, we’ll share.
