UPDATE!!After a long summer break we are BACK.
Official questions that got answered:1. Articulated plates aren't the issue- the issue is if they go from not touching, to touching. Guess what mine did? Yup. So we are still figuring out the whole situation below the knees.
2. If you have a helmet with wings- there are some standards for the shape! Who knew? I didn't. Thankfully I fell within regs. *whew*
Right now it feels like I am just barely chipping away, the list to-do is long, but every task is so tiny!
Attachements:
We are doing the old velcro method. Sewing the loop side on the clothing. Glueing the hook side on the armor.
A few Pro Tips:
- Make sure your hook velcro is industrial grade (still available at Walmart)
- Heat up the hook velcro just a bit to really take advantage of all the stickiness!
- Hot glue the edges of the hook velcro down- just smoothing out the transition from velcro to plate. That is the first place that will pull up when trying to remove pieces.
How it looks so far:
The helmetScratch building a helmet is NO JOKE. But I am actually loving the process.
Fun fact: when you have straight edges on a cheek piece and it tries to meet a rounded helmet - there are extreme gaps. I foresee a lot of bondo in my future.
I wanted to wait and finish all the major gluing BEFORE bondo because I knew I would be manhandling the helmet a LOT to get everything together and I didn't want to accidentally crack my bondo as I worked to stretch and push things into place.
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The cardboard pieces are because once everything was mostly in place and the glue was applied - I heated the front corners of the wings to really sit flush with the helmet and work WITH the glue. But then the plastic was soft- so the cardboard helped the clamps not leave marks.
Stretch? Push? Do you see where those 2 points on the wings aren't level? Yeah. I got everything on the front end of the helmet lined up but forgot to check the back as I was leaving it to set. Bad decision. Cue a LOT of gluing and hand-holding because there is NO WHERE to set a clamp effectively. There was just enough stretch in the Sintra to pull the left side down until it was level, but no easy way to hold it there until the glue set. So much holding!
I'm approaching the final stretch (i think).
Any tips or recommendations for the final sprint to the finish?
