Howdy, everyone! I apologize about not posting sooner, but I've been a little busy lately. Between Emergency Pharmacology class, ambulance/hospital clinical shifts, church functions, army reserve drills, scraping a living off rocks and continued efforts to win the affections of a certain girl who goes to the same church as me, I've found myself completely tapped on time. Construction on my helmet has slowed to a crawl. I'm happy to report I've passed my EP class with an A, and I'm one week away from finishing clinicals. But I have a mission trip in Mexico coming up in a couple weeks, along with another in Missouri in August- it looks like I won't be doing work on my helmet for a little while. When classes start up again, I'm hoping to squeeze some build time out of the weekend. But we'll see- girls have a way of taking up all your time and energy (and money)...
So, first things first. Ever since the last post, I've been sanding and filling and sanding and filling. The progress is pretty subtle, but I'm getting closer all the time. I don't have any close up pics, but I do have a couple from when I was hanging out with a couple of my friends. We all started drinking, and they thought my helmet was just about the coolest thing since Frogger...
Apologies for the blurriness of the pics- I was the guy under the helmet.
Later on, as I was researching Halo 3: ODST, I noticed that the character Dutch was voiced by none other than Adam Baldwin, the Animal Mother himself! If you're not familiar with the name, it's from Full Metal Jacket; stop reading this right now and correct yourself! Now intrigued with the character, I took a closer look at Dutch's helmet and noticed some differences from the standard issue. Most notably, a saggital crest that looked suspiciously like a mohawk! This was about the coolest thing in the world for me- I've been rocking the mohawk every chance I could get, from my last civilian hair cut before I shipped out to basic, to the three month break after my second deployment. In short... I dig it. So I got Dutch's ODST helmet from RUNDOWN (thanks!), scaled the right pieces, and glued it together in a hurry. What I got was about the most awesomest bit of helmet customization I could think of! But enough talk, it's picture time!
The 'hawk ready for gluing...
Alignment marks drawn in...
And we have liftoff!!
After gluing, I quickly covered the new piece in a layer of fiberglass resin to keep it from crumpling up.
You may have noticed that I filled in the recessed details along the helmet. I was having so much trouble with getting them smoothed out that I decided to fill them, get the rough cast, then cut them back in for the finished product. Time will tell if I have decided wisely. I also used some of the excess resin to seal the inside of the crack, so hopefully there won't be any more issues with that.
All in all, I'm exited about the helmet so far. It's missing some detail, but I bought a small wood chisel set to help sharpen the recessed corners of the helmet. A little more filling and sanding is to come, then I plan on making a rough cast of the helmet and finishing out the detail parts before making the final mold. I also got the polycarbonate sheet for the visor; right now it's on my shelf, just waiting for its turn. Hopefully it won't be waiting too long...
Well that's about it. Thanks again, everyone, for all your support, tips, advice and critiques. I welcome more of the same, and I hope to have more for y'all soon!