Project Romeo (Wip)

[yccars]

Thanks for the info, but I figured out the dabbing before opening this thread. Spray adhesive, you say? Are there any negative side effects resulting from using resin as a base for glassing?



I got most of my dome done. I hope to have the entire helmet glassed by midnight tonight (at which point I will drop everything, get some cereal, and fall asleep watching Stephen Colbert. (Or, rather, Saturday Night Live).

I'm really proud of how the fiberglassing is turning out. I keep catching myself tapping the dome.



Our farm hands are occasionally visited by a friend of theirs called Lee. Lee is a schizophrenic. Lee KNOWS that there 137 satellites in geosynchronous orbit over the united states, and the government is spying on us. There are also soldiers with photoreactive plating on their armor that makes them invisible. No one else can see them, but Lee can. My family, the hands, and I have a plan:I'm going to throw on my Romeo suit and sit out in the hay field one day when he visits. He will spot me, shout something comfirming that he can see me, and everyone else will act as though they cannot see me.

 

[Ral Partha]

Spray adhesive, you say? Are there any negative side effects resulting from using resin as a base for glassing?

Nope. I used to use resin to hold down the fiberglass but anything that would reduce the amount of resin used is always a good thing. Plus the spray adhesive doesn't seem to compromise the strength of the final product.

 

[Dagger06]

Ah, another person using a military gas mask for a respirator and turning a WETA ODST helm into a ODST-game one.



Your fiberglassing looks a lot nicer than mine did! Looking forward to seeing your completed Romeo and how all that gear gets integrated.

 

[yccars]

Cool, thanks for the tip. I want to make the visor(visors, actually. One superficial visor w mirrored darked blue tint, one a bit thicker and edge let, with HUD elements printed on transparencies and set into shallow etchings) out of plexi if possible. Any heating advice? I can vacuform and I have a propane blowtorch or oven as heating options...no heatgun



I also forgot to post this picture earlier which shows that there is no warping so far in my resining/glassing. It looks kind of narrow in the image...but not so in person.

 

[flipboy439]

lookin good man. keep up the good work!

 

[yccars]

Thanks once again for all the compliments and tips everyone.



But I have a question once more. As of now, most of my helmet is glassed (pics later), but I'm worried about the visor. The pep doesn't have very rounded corners and I'm concerned for when I put the plexi/PET/whatever I decide on in the helmet because there are probably going to be gaps. I don't want to vacuform to the pepped visor as it really isn't accurate (no offense to NZ-TK! It's a great model.). It has more angles where there should be curves.



How would someone recommend I go about fitting/vacuforming the visor?

 

[bobbio555]

Thanks once again for all the compliments and tips everyone.



But I have a question once more. As of now, most of my helmet is glassed (pics later), but I'm worried about the visor. The pep doesn't have very rounded corners and I'm concerned for when I put the plexi/PET/whatever I decide on in the helmet because there are probably going to be gaps. I don't want to vacuform to the pepped visor as it really isn't accurate (no offense to NZ-TK! It's a great model.). It has more angles where there should be curves.



How would someone recommend I go about fitting/vacuforming the visor?

I'm no pro (I really mean this, I'm going to try this method on my visor, but I have no idea if it'll work)but what I would do is cut out the pep visor, resin it, put some clay on the resined side, take the clay off and resin that, then vacuform the resined clay. Then you could have a custom fitted, detailed visor to work with.

 

[yccars]

That sounds like a great idea. That way I could easily create the ridge thing that runs the center of the visor. What kind of plastic are you vacuforming to the clay buck? I'll probably use some plexi (whatever the thinnest plexi is you can buy at Lowe's)

 

[flipboy439]

you should check out the beginning of rube's ODST armor. he made a block of bondo i think and sanded it to the right shape and then vacuum formed it. too bad he only sells visors with his helmets. haha.

 

[bobbio555]

That sounds like a great idea. That way I could easily create the ridge thing that runs the center of the visor. What kind of plastic are you vacuforming to the clay buck? I'll probably use some plexi (whatever the thinnest plexi is you can buy at Lowe's)

I don't know what type I'm using, I was planning on figuring that out once I get to that stage.

 

[yccars]

It's UPDATE time! If anyone here at the 405th even remembers this thread...



In the last week, almost 2, I've been very tied up with fair projects (my insect collection got reserve county champion, my gory awesome display about internal parasites of the horse got grand county champion), so I haven't been able to think about touching my armor until today. I had to go out and buy some resin hardener because even though I use less than half the recommended amount, I ran completely out of hardener before base resin...



But I managed to pep and resin the chest plates (Belakor's. I think they're more accurate than Nightshade's...but that's just my opinion), which came out pretty well...there was noticeable improvement in my pep skills between each of the 3 parts. The lighting and camera angles make it look really warped, but it is not so in person. All the white areas where the tabs are are from the hot glue I used.

The next thing on the list for today was starting the Bondo stage of my helmet. It feels strong and smooth, but it also looks like stucco. What you can see in the picture is the 4th layer of Bondo I applied trying to fix it...but I never could.

Here are some more pictures of the dome from alternate angles:

Haha, you can see the ammo box I store my resin brushes in. Instead of 200 7.62 cartridges in there, there are about 20 paint brushes

I kind of junked up the back of the helmet. The large band at the very bottom kind of pinches in underneat...no big deal though.

I'm really hoping that if I just paint the crappy stucco bondo job as-is, I can use this to mask it. I've used it on plenty of things and if you spray it thick enough, it becomes very smooth and wear-resistant (duh, it's glaze). Just thought I'd put this idea out there. What do you guys think?



And if it helps you guys help me figure out my stucco issue, I started sanding with 80 grit, then finished off with 120...or 220? Whatever it is, I bought it to prepare a softwood surface for polyurethane.



I want to start the sniper plates, as well as some other Nightshade files, but I'm not sure how to scale them because they're pep 3. If anyone by chance has already done them, I'm a 5'6" male, pretty skinny.



Thanks for reading and any help you can offer!