I had NECA's Ash in package since it came out, and since I've been trading off a lot of my non-articulated figures lately, but I really liked this Ash, I thought why not make it a custom? I love the versions of Ash that appear in the AoD comics, with Ash being really muscular and more hardened from fighting through time - so I went for a mix of the comic stylings.

I decided to see how far I could push myself with this thing. Instead of finding a base figure with abdominal articulation, I decided to cut apart the NECA AoD Ash and add my own. Merged Ash with a SMC Sandman figure using a lot of dremelling, drilling, and a metal pin. From the abs down is all Sandman with a bit of Milliput to fill the shirt area in. Sandman's pants were pitted pretty badly (okay for Sandman I guess...) so I did a wash with watered down Milliput a couple times to fill them in a lot. I left a little of them showing to serve as grit and grime from Ash's adventures

His arms needed to be pretty muscular, and NECA gave him wimpy-movie-Ash arms with long sleeves, so Doc Samson had to get a couple amputations. I lopped his right hand off at the wrist and added some bandaging and a magnet to the stump. Sculpted some tattered sleeve on the right side (as seen in comics) to show off his new physique. Had to smooth the sculpted short sleeve on the left arm and then find a way to insert those massive Doc Samson pegs into the little NECA arm holes. (I ended up slicing Ash from the shoulder down into the hole, boring it out a bit and the arms fit in pretty good. I then had to fill in the wounds with some Milliput to secure them.)

Next I had to find a chainsaw. I'd recently traded off my McFarlane Movie Maniacs Ash, so I was stuck, but a good board member from the Spawn forums sent me some random chainsaw for free (thank again Jutty!). Problem was that it didn't look anything like Ash's saw... Lopped off the rear handle, added a curved piece of metal for the side handle and a few bent bobbi-pins and a flat piece of metal for the top handle and voila. For the arm-attachment I used another strong magnet and the wristlets from DCUC's Orion.

Now for that mechanical hand... I could've used the NECA one, but it was tiny on his new arms/body. So I was faced with constructing my own. I cut the extra wrist off of SMC Demogoblin's right hand and used the wrist and back of LCBH Super Patriot's hand to make it look more mechanized. A small screw and a tiny bit of Milliput later it looked pretty good. Didn't need to add a magnet because the screw was attracted to the magnet in Ash's stump. I sculpted a watch on Ash's left wrist as well.

A LotR belt-strap-thing and Ash's original chainsaw starter-upper and a paint job or two and I called him done. He can still swap out for his alternate elongated face and other heads as well (waiting on a loose McF Ash and an S-Mart Ash from a boardie and he'll have plenty of heads to swap into).

Here's the shortened version of the recipe:

-NECA Army of Darkness Ash/head/accessories/chest
-ML Sandman crotch/legs/feet/abs
-HML Doc Samson arms
-SMC Demo-Goblin Right Hand
-LCBH Super Patriot gauntlet
-Chainsaw from ?
-Milliput
-Caffeine
-Loud music