Wow, THANK YOU SO MUCH! This is such an honor, and I'm so happy that the 405th is back!
So, what some people may not know is that this helmet actually has a rubber neck seal on it (the back portion of the helmet). I have incorporated this method on other helmets, but with this helmet, it is absolutely necessary because with the geometry of this helmet, you can barley get your head in without it.
So here is how I did it....
This helmet has a seam line running from the top of the head all the way down the back. So, there was no way I could accomplish this with the original mold. With rubber, you cannot have a seam line because of how hard it is to fix. So, I needed to make a new mold of the back section of the helmet. So I cleaned up the seam line, hit it with a clear coat, then went on to molding!
I decided that I wanted to use Rebound 25 as my mold rubber, and BrushOn 35 as the casting rubber. These two rubbers do not bond together because the Rebound is a Silicon rubber and Brush on is a Urethane Rubber. Also, because brush on 35 is a urethane, it will bond to Smoothcast 300, which is what I cast the hard portions of the helmet.
I used freeform Air for the Mother mold.
And BAM! The mold is done!
Ok, so the next thing that needs to be done before you cast the rubber is you need to Dremel out that back neck part. Then, you coat the rubber mold with a thin dusting of baby powder (a good release agent), Next, you strap on the mold to the back, mix the rubber (ADD BLACK DYE), and paint it in the mold and on the back of the resin surrounding where you cut that resin part out. let that sit for 12 hours, you should get something like this.
The only problem with rubber neck seals is the fact that you can only paint the rubber with latex based paint. But using black dye is very effective!
Thanks for looking, and it is such an honor to be added into the Elite section. Its been a dream of mine ever since I joined!
-Brad!