Latex Intestines

For Dead Time we needed to a fair amount of guts and the vegetarian talent had said no to using real ones (fair enough really) so we had to come up with a way of making some convincing fakes. In the past we have done this by making flat sheets of latex and then rolling them in to tubes but this usually ends up with short lengths that are full of holes and have a visible seam at the side. The new approach gets round all those issues and gives a pretty good result.

 

The finished guts

Me modelling the gut poles.

To start with you need a tube to form the guts around. We used lengths of plumbing pipe that double up as tracks for our home made dolly (thats another post for another time). This stuff is really cheap and you can get pretty long lengths of it in most hardware/DIY shops.

Next up you need some liquid latex and some latex thickener. The thickener is not essential but it did make the process a lot easier. Again, you can get both of these items pretty cheaply online. We use Tiranti which is a great site for all kinds of modelling and casting supplies.
Color you latex with acrylic paint or even food colouring and then add a few drops of thickener and give it a good stir.

Once you have your latex nicely thickened coat the pipe with it to the length of guts you will need. Longer is better for realism's sake but it also makes it harder to peel of the pipe later so if you can get away with short length then do that.
Once the pipe is coated leave it to dry before applying further layers of latex. Three or four layers should be enough. Use less and you will tear the latex when you peel it off, use more and it will bunch up too tight to come off the pipe at all.

Peeling the gut.

Once your final layer is dry you can peel of your intestine. Coat the whole thing with baby powder to stop it sticking to itself and then start peeling at one end. The first few inches might come off a little ragged where the lates is thin but after that it should roll off like a beauty. The more smutty minded of you will no doubt make a lot of jokes about flesh poles and zombie condoms but of course we did none of that kind of thing.

The peeling process depends a lot on how thick you made the layers and how smoothly you applied the latex. With two pairs of hands you can just pull, roll and fold it until you reach the bottom. It is pretty tough stuff so can be quite rough with it.
Make sure that you keep applying baby powder to the inside as it is exposed and when you reach the bottom you should have a fairly disgusting looking ring piece of latex that you can unroll ready to be used.

What you are left with looks a bit wrong.

We stuffed ours with cotton wool soaked in red food colouring and then covered it all in syrup blood and it looked pretty good.

If you need guts then give this technique a go and post any additions here for the good of mankind. We would also love to see any pics that you have of your guts in action.