(Otterman @ Jan. 23 2007,04:04)
QUOTE
And now, points of practicality:
1) It's not trivial for me to do this. A typical run of a mold for me is 20 castings, and not all castings produce acceptable product.
2) Throughput is low, due to time constraints. I can compensate by making multiple molds. By low, I mean 1 usable casting per day. Ponder that when you see my giant box of Imperator pieces.
Ouch. Er... I feel kinda bad about this now. No hurry, then? 
On mockups: depends which part you think is C-shaped and which U-shaped. I take it you mean the mechadendrite 'tentacle' when you suggest bent wire with a blob on, for widget 2.
The other is the servo-arm. I don't know what to suggest for that, other than a small bit of styrene cut to shape. It'd have less detail than my original sculpt, but then I was thinking of putting slightly less detail into the castable version anyway. Unless you think the resin can handle it.
Big axe with hand: bit of wire/metal rod; tiny blob of putty with fine grooves pushed into it to represent the hand (let me worry about the correct position of the grooves
); more styrene for the blade and doohickeys - 1mm thick or lightly less, I think. Sound reasonable?