First Armor Wip Mark Vi

[momoss]

Your awesomeness at pepping has inspired me to get a move on with my own armor! And those two pistols are pretty badass too :cool



I'm just curious, but where did you find your gloves? They seem perfect for a Spartan!

Ah the gloves, I got them off of ebay at a place called Best Deal Paintball. They are around 12 dollars. I think the price is right so I got them, plus I didnt find any good enough gloves at local stores.



Well I guess theres also room for a tiny update, though no actual work was done on the armor yet I decided not to wait and get at least some of the materials I need. I got a respirator, fiberglass resin, and clear coat. I'm going to install some extra support struts on the armor tomorrow and clear coat it all, and start resining the outside. I'm going to wait to use the fiberglass cloth till I get some body filler cause I want to do the mudglassing method. I think its stronger than fiberglass so I wont need as many layers of the cloth right? At least I hope so :lol I only have 3 packs of cloth.

 

[momoss]

Finally! After 2 family vacation road trips totally side tracking me, I'm back! And started the resin phase of my armor! So far the helmet, hand plates, and chest have been coated with 1-2 layers. I may have under-estimated the amount of brushes I needed for this. I'm definitely going to need to buy some more -__- Also I'm not sure if I'm going to have enough funds to get all the LEDs I want or have the dual visor (unless I find 2 really cheap visors), but I'll see as progress goes on.

There are some annoying resin globs on each piece that I hope I can sand/file off after I mudglass the insides, I was trying to avoid having those but oh well. The resin on the chest is worrying me. It was done later in the day when it was starting to cool off outside and its been a good couple of hours and its still not done drying. I'm worried if I didnt put enough hardener in there. When I did 15 drops for the handplates it hardened too fast so for the next batch I did like 7 drops. I guess if its still wet tomorrow I'll just have to resin over it again with more hardener and hope for the best.

 

[Gallard]

Resin usually always hardens. It took me over 24 hours once to completely harden so dont worry!! And that a amazing build!

 

[Scrub]

Looks pretty good so far!

 

[kupokitty]

Hey Momoss, you could try these things that I found at Wal-Mart. http://www.405th.com/showthread.php/25572-You-DON-T-light-up-my-life...?highlight=bumpers

I think they're also at Lowe's. They're like...$3 a pack.

Cheapo imitation lights!

 

[Will Turner]

I like the spread of tips and advice people keep sharing here. Nice to see a community come together to help.

 

[momoss]

Hey Momoss, you could try these things that I found at Wal-Mart. http://www.405th.com/showthread.php/25572-You-DON-T-light-up-my-life...?highlight=bumpers

I think they're also at Lowe's. They're like...$3 a pack.

Cheapo imitation lights!

Hey thats cool, thanks for the tip! I'll be sure to pick those up if I have no time to get LEDs. For the visor ebay is a must. I found a pair for 15 dollars so I may be able to do the dual visor after all. http://cgi.ebay.com/ebaymotors/ws/e...0236980412&viewitem=&sspagename=STRK:MEWNX:IT

Got some more resin work done. The chest is taking forever to dry but it IS drying so thats good news. The biceps are partially resined, and I only did one part of the cod because it was left over resin from doing the shins. I'm hoping to get the remaining armor resined tomorrow and as soon as the chest is completely dry I'm going to glue the ab-plate to it and then resin that.

More work to do tomorrow. I may wear my swimming goggles instead of my saftey glasses because I'm tired of salty sweat going into my eyes. Stings like crazy Lol Its so hot outside >__<

 

[LongShot X]

Wow... Nice pepping and nice weapons. Keep up the good work. Keeps me motivated when i see others posting progress pics.

Cheers!

 

[Will Turner]

Ditto to the above

 

[Exilium]

Wow...great stuff!
Dont worry about the resin hardening, it will....eventually. First time I tried this, I did the standard Master Chief helmet and it took 3 days for me to touch it. Another 2 or 3 for it to fully harden. There is a tutorial video somewhere, where they use the cap from the resin quart and only put like 7-8 drops in it. I find that 6 or so drops gives you plenty of time to work and will dry pretty fast.

Keep up the nice work.

 

[Spartan Will 043]

It's a great work! I can't wait to see it finished

 

[momoss]

Day 3 of resining and more armor is resined!

Tomorrow I'll finish putting resin on the cod piece and hopefully the chest will be completely dry and not that tacky dry so I can glue and resin the ab plate to it. I'll probably resin the pistols tomorrow as well. I'll resin the Assault Rifle on Friday if I have enough resin left after tomorrow. Then I'll have to buy more fiberglass resin at Walmart for the mudglassing. I'm wondering if the rondo goes on before the fiberglass cloth or if I can get away with pre gluing in place the fiberglass cloth before applying rondo on top. Cause pre-gluing the cloth was gonna be my plan so I dont have to be rushing to put fiberglass cloth in while the rondo is drying. I hate being rushed.

 

[AceNat]

awesome as usual momoss!
for the mudglassing ive seen people just lay in the fiberglass then brushing the rondo on top, i havnt tried this myself so i cant say if it works well or not
but good luck, im interested to see how the mud glassing turns out

nat

 

[momoss]

awesome as usual momoss!
for the mudglassing ive seen people just lay in the fiberglass then brushing the rondo on top, i havnt tried this myself so i cant say if it works well or not
but good luck, im interested to see how the mud glassing turns out

nat

Thats probably what I'll do then. I'll try it on my handplates first when I start mudglassing, if all goes well I'll do the rest that way. I'm also wondering if I can cut off the support struts on my resined pieces now. Because they are starting to rip apart with the added weight of the resin, especially with the chest piece. Plus it will kinda get in the way when I try to lay down fiberglass cloth.

 

[momoss]

Well after some fiddling around and loads of Tacky Glue and resin, I finally got the ab plate attached to my chest!

Had to dremel off a few support struts to accomplish this but I think at this point its safe to say the chest is not gonna warp anywhere with the 2 layers of resin on it. Also some areas are still tacky after 3-4 days in a HOT garage which annoys me. I may have to resin over those spots again with a bit more hardener than usual so it can cure because I'm tired of the chest being sticky! I'll give it a few more days.

Oh one more thing. After I resin, should I cut it in half or do I cut it in half after I mudglass?

 

[IceDragon]

I've found that direct sunlight helps in the curing process dramatically. One of my parts spend a night hanging in the bathroom and don't fully dry and harden. But an hour of direct summer sun usually does the trick.

 

[AceNat]

thats looking good!
for my chest i rondoed first then cut, as it keeps its shape better

nat

 

[momoss]

Geeze I totally dodged a bullet today. A storm came out of nowhere and totally rained on my chest and cod piece. The support struts didnt last long under the extra weight of the resined pieces and some gave way and i had to remove them. The chest didnt warp because it was already pretty solid but the cod piece looked like it was gonna be a complete loss when I brought it in the basement. I must have spent around 2 hours sitting there with it and supporting/fixing its shape with any objects I could find around in the basement, mostly paint cans and boxes...and it worked! I got about 98% of its original shape back. I had to remove the support struts because they were really heavy with the added water and were causing a majority of the warping issues. I swear if it wasnt for the 2 coats of resin that were already dry on the outside, I would have been rebuilding a new cod piece right now. Tomorrow I'm going to be rondoing the inside of these pieces to reinforce them after this potential disaster.

 

[momoss]

Today was Rondo day! I rondo-ed the helmet, chest, cod piece, and handplates. This rondo stuff is HARD. I almost hurt my hand hitting my helmet Lol I'm not gonna even bother with the fiberglass cloth because this stuff is hard enough but I'll put some cloth on the cod piece. I'm a little worried about how the cod is looking though. I think the back warped a bit. Especially that piece on top of the butt plate, I know that bent in some. The rain is probably partly to blame, I did my best to get it back to what it was. By the time I noticed this bend the rondo was already hard and there was no hope of bending it back.

I'm not done applying rondo, the front and one side still needs some. I'll also fix that little warp thats on the side when I rondo it. As for the piece in the back I'm thinking about cutting it off and repositioning it and have it fiberglassed back on. I could also build onto it with bondo as I'm going to be doing a lot of that to the whole cod piece anyway to smooth it out and add details. For now though I'll leave it be.

 

[momoss]

I had a wild idea today for the cod piece. Instead of cutting that warped part off, I just dremel-ed it down all the way to the paper and then stopped there so I could bend it back and then glue/tape some new supports to keep it there. I was like wow its genius! Lol Well not really but it did work and now the cod looks like it was never rained on...more or less. I'm gonna bondo it up when I get to that phase with it and then it should look spiffy and new.