More detail on that Anubis staff I am making but focusing on the Ankh symbol at the head of the staff. This is one of the parts I designed and 3D printed. I didn't sand it perfectly smooth as I didn't want it to look like it was made in a modern industrial molding machine but something a bit handmade many moons ago. Plus I didn't had a lot of time to work with it (besides, I'm a lazy dragon). But I did gave it several coats of filling primer, which got rid of a bunch of the layer lines. Then a few coats of the gold spray paint.

I did try a coat of the clear gloss paint but it made the gold run with some of it turning brownish. I guess the gold wasn't completely dry and cause a wired reaction with the clear. Doing a quick new coat of the gold brought it back. I did avoid covering the clear on the bottom as I wanted to make the blue paint there shinny instead of the original flat color as I didn't have any glossy blue. The gold part there looked good enough so I didn't have to respray it.

A thing of note is that I split the model in two pieces front and back (Tou can barely see the split line). That allowed me to lay the model flat on the print bed so that I didn't need to add a ton of supports exept where the wooden staff would be inserted. I added some holes where i used a bunch of short 1/4" wood dowels to align the two halves. I used contact cement to glue them together so it should not come apart.

Another thing of note is that this is the 3rd version of the print. The first design I didn't like the proportions so I thicken it up a bit. I looked at some reference of the Ankh symbol and found that it vary quite a lot, some very skinny and tall, other very thick and wide. I tried to make a nice, pleasing shape but my first attempt was not quite there. The redo is a lot better methinks. That is what is nice with 3D printing, one can quickly make adjustments and reprint until it looks just right.

The second printing had an issue with one of the corners lifting off the bed (as sometimes happens). A simple fix is to simply add a pad around the offending corner to give is more bed adhesion. But I took the opportunity to add some curvature to the sides as the original flat ones was too angular. Adding the curviness gave it a more natural, organic look methinks. Just flows better too.

So the third time was the charm and I went with that. I could have done more tinkering but I was running out of time to finish before a furmeet (turned out I had more time as the recipient couldn't make it that day anyway, oh well). I think I am done with the Ankh part aside from the cordage around the leather wrap part. I just need to add some details elsewhere.