Reach for the Front!

[Katsu]

I will be silicon casting the pieces, since I wouldn't be wearing bondo and fiberglass anyways, but looking at your old posts I see you mentioning it being easier to sand, which would be a big plus, though I am amost done bondo'ing the helmet and shoulders now! Hahaha...

I've been using a random orbital sander so far, but even that can be pretty hard on the hands. Is gold grade any weaker or more vulnerable to dings?

Also, what bucket? I feel like I am being a bit flakey...

Thanks!

 

[Brandon McClain]

It's no weaker. It's just much nicer to work with. MUCH nicer to work with. And bucket is just another term used for helmet within the community.

 

[Katsu]

Ohhhhhhh thanks for the tip, sounds good!

I just wanted to be sure you weren't refering to something in the background of one of the pictures, I don't pay much attention to what the other guys in the shop have laying around, hahaha.

 

[SeniorRawr]

Hahaha, it'll work on the cqc since it doesn't look like it will need much bondo work. The pics you have are serving as my reference, so thank you for those, how did you get them?


For attaching, I am not too sure. I may go with rare earth magnets, or a screw-in system, since I want to have the option of taking them off. I've seen people use magnets for their guns, but I don't know how well they'd stand up to being on a less protected area like your shoulders. It might be better to just install a nut in the attachment and then screw it in from inside the bicep. Did you have any ideas in mind yourself?

lol reach screen shots uploaded to file share, downloaded to laptop from bungie.net profile.

alao, i was thinking you could try and put something on the undeside of the shoulder piece to attach it to the chunk of the bicep armor that runs up by itself, when i get home i can upload a pic of what I'm talking about if you dount get what I'm saying.

 

[Katsu]

I took Brandon's advice and gave Gold Bondo a try today. Overall I like it, it sands easily though it gums up sandpaper faster than normal bondo. My only real complaint is that it starts out yellow, and adding some red hardener makes it slightly less yellow, so eyeballing the right amount of hardener is a pain and a half.

I ran into a problem and maybe one of ya'll can help me. As I was sanding, I broke into the paper at a few points, which is fine, I have two layers of glass and two layers of rondo backing it, but the problem is that the paper shreds, and I can't seem to sand it smooth. I sprayed some primer to show the problem:

Those dark lines are where it's sort of bulging out from frayed paper. Should I spray something, cut something, sand something?

And rawr, did you get a look under your guy's armor for where it's linked?

 

[harican89]

use high grid sandpaper. i know the prob - 240 grid sandpaper and after that the layers of paint should do the rest of it.

 

[TJX62]

Either some really high grit sandpaper or, I believe some people use superglue to fix the paper fraying.

 

[Katsu]

Thanks guys, I'll give both methods a whack tonight.

 

[jhayezr90]

i havent done it myself but i hear a lot of people use superglue for that

 

[SeniorRawr]

And rawr, did you get a look under your guy's armor for where it's linked?

this piece of armor that extends by itself over the shoulder portion of the undersuit it what i was talking about.

 

[Katsu]

I am going to try and do it myself tonight too, but I was more looking to see if you had any idea if it's possible to see the should piece already connected to the shoulder, but I just recently figured out (or rather, bothered to take the time to try) messing around with screencaps and video playback! Hahaha, too bad about file share being down! Bungie should have waited until 343 was ready before cutting it off.

 

[SeniorRawr]

yeah, it totally sucks that bungie just pulled the plug on it and said TOO BAD, kinda pisses me off actually... anyways good luck and let me know if you have any other ideas on attaching the shoulder, i did think screw caps might work btw, slide the bolt through that piece on the shoulder armor or another spot and secure it with a screw cap, idk just an idea, only problem would be perma mounting the screws to the shoulder pieces

 

[Katsu]

Carved details, smoothed out the jaw section pretty heavily. And I started working on the buck!

Going to do a run of these visors tinted silver as a test run. It's obviously not finished with smoothing and fitting!

The helmet!

And a sizing fit:

Boom!

 

[SeniorRawr]

Carved details, smoothed out the jaw section pretty heavily. And I started working on the buck!

Going to do a run of these visors tinted silver as a test run. It's obviously not finished with smoothing and fitting!

The helmet!

And a sizing fit:

Boom!

dude, the work looks awesome, great work with the bondo, quick question though, what's the buck? you mentioned it after you said you were working on the jaw

 

[Katsu]

The buck is the visor with that box built underneath it. Making it a buck makes it more suitable for vacuum forming, where you take a piece of melty acrylic and a big vacuum machine sucks it onto the visor buck, which acts as a template so the acryling bends to the same shape.

The box serves to hold the visor facing up, and to make sure the acrylic doesn't wrap around the visor and get stuck. This will allow me to quickly and easily make many copies of the visor for various testing or selling purposes.

 

[jhayezr90]

The buck is the visor with that box built underneath it. Making it a buck makes it more suitable for vacuum forming, where you take a piece of melty acrylic and a big vacuum machine sucks it onto the visor buck, which acts as a template so the acryling bends to the same shape.

The box serves to hold the visor facing up, and to make sure the acrylic doesn't wrap around the visor and get stuck. This will allow me to quickly and easily make many copies of the visor for various testing or selling purposes.

so your not going to be using a regular motorcycle visor?

 

[Katsu]

I am going to use the buck to test heat forming a motorcycle helmet as well, but if I can mirror the acrylic sheets right, then I can make copies cheaper and easier, since motorcycle visors are lik 10-20$ while a sheet of acrylic runs 1-4$ plus the tinting is like 7$ a yard.

I will post pics of how the motorcycle visor test goes when I get to it this week.

 

[kahnah]

Fantastic job, just one question.
How on earth did you make those two great looking details on the top of the helmet?

 

[Katsu]

Fantastic job, just one question.
How on earth did you make those two great looking details on the top of the helmet?

A lot of frustration and like four different dremel bits...

I took one of the big roller grinder bits and ground out the rough indent, keeping in mind it's apparently at an incline with the inner side deeper than the outer side. Then with the triangular bit, a smaller roller, and the engraving one that looks like a small ball, I dug in and cleaned them up. They still need to be smoothed out a bit more, and then a go through with a needle file to sharpen the corners, but I am happy with them. You can see the temple indents are being fleshed out in the side picture, and I still need to clean up the detail lines, but I had to spray the thing because it looked like a calico cat it was so multi colored from bondo/bondogold/fiberglass/black paint/gray paint.

 

[LilTyrant]

Helmet is looking pretty freakin' awesome!

I know you're still working on that buck (so you may already be planning on doing this), but there are a few things you may want to do to the box part to make your life easier before you make your first pull. I'm no expert, but I have done my share of vacuum forming for work and there are some things I've learned along the way.

It looks like you've got some massive undercuts going on where the bottom of the visor overhangs the box...which means you will not be able to get your formed plastic off easily once it's pulled. Since you're planning on pulling multiple visors, you'll want to be especially sure that the buck slides out easily from the formed plastic...otherwise you'll be wrestling with it after every pull and may even damage your buck trying to get the plastic off (not fun). Removing all undercuts and adding a gentle draft angle to all sides of your buck will definitely help with that. You should also probably add another 1"-ish to the bottom of your box to get your visor off the table. It's generally not recommended to have your desired shape extend all the way to the bottom of the buck...the pulled plastic can sometimes do some funky things around the bottom edges of a pull. Just my 2 cents.

Anyway, keep up the good work and sorry for my blabbin' if you already know all this