Thanks for the encouragement and tips, all!
Phew!! Three days after the con and I'm still recovering! I caught con crud, so I'll rest up before writing the con retrospective. (My COVID test is officially negative, which means I'm officially a big dummy for not getting my flu shot. Get your flu shot!)
First, a build writeup of the placeholder plates I threw together. Between my less-than-one-week deadline and sudden job interview prep, it was a lot for a newbie!
I decided on iron-heart-shaped half bracers -- not approvable for PI, but approvable for a con! Luckily I had hand plate templates already.
Since these are placeholder plates, I went ahead and used my crummy
Amazon sintra rather than the good stuff. Behold, the quality:
See how the outside layer curls upwards and you have to sand it away? Yeah. Don't buy it from Amazon!
No idea how all the plates heated into different shapes... they're the exact same templates heated the exact same way! Here's hoping the real sintra is better.
Now, about that helmet...
For the delaminating areas, I didn't have resin, but I DID have superglue, and it seemed to do the trick! The print lines were no longer flexible. Since I didn't have enough superglue to reinforce all the delaminations, I used a soldering iron to melt the lines together for some extra safety. In retrospect, doing that on the outside of the helmet added more sanding work.
Sanding with the seedlings! I bondoed the problem areas first.
Covered in bondo...
First round of sanding!
Sanding the bondo is really satisfying. Covering it in bondo, not so much! I did two full rounds of bondo before deciding to move on. The delamination layer and clog layer are still visible, there are print lines in the earcaps, and there's some bondo texture, but given my short time frame and the fact that this is a placeholder helmet, I'm not letting myself be concerned about perfection!
Some tips: Have a toothpick ready for applying bondo to those hard-to-reach areas, and have a metal file for sanding said areas. Bondo tries to fill in details like the lines on the mohawk, so you need something to clean it out of those, too.
While the primer was curing, I put together some open keyslots. (Also got a feel for when paint runs will show up, oops!).
No time for a black basecoat. Straight to Rustoleum Metallic! This is the color I was planning on using for my durasteel plates, so this will be a good way to get a feel for it. Had some rain complicate things, so I set up a painting area in the garage.
Before painting, I made some dents in the sintra using a pen and the back of a paintbrush, getting it a little closer to the texture of the helmet. After painting, I added some light sanding scratches on high points of the plates and helmet before adding a blackwash using watered down raw umber acrylic.
That really took it from "hunk of plastic with silver spray paint" to "worn durasteel!" Got to feel like my favorite guy!
Ultimately, I kept the weathering light since I have no weathering on my soft goods yet, though I really think it'd look better with more washes...
Now to the tricky part... visor, fans, and padding.
I got a
welding visor on Amazon with some good mando reviews, but after comparing it to other helmets at the con, I'm not impressed. It's very dark, and it's so heavily green that I can't see any colors -- I had to remove it to look at merch. This is not the Way! I'm open to recommendations.
The visor is thick / strong enough that I just placed it in the helmet and it stayed without glue. Works for me!
Unfortunately, the slotted keyslots I worked so hard on pushed my face too close to the visor. The helmet is so small that every millimeter counts, and although the keyslots looked nice, they made it uncomfortable to wear. Bummer! I cut some diamonds out of some sintra scrap and duct taped it in.
As for fans, I found some Raspberry Pi fans and some AAA cases in the junk drawer. Time to quickly throw 'em in!
Ultimately, between the helmet's claustrophobic size, the fans' helicopter-sounding rattle, the way the visor dyed everything a Kansas-tornado-apocalypse shade of green, and the duct tape's tendency to unstick and bombard my face with batteries, I decided the extra air flow wasn't worth the terror. Good news though, I found a pocket fan!
Gave it a quick blackwash and a place in my pocket. I'll have to properly swarz it up sometime, it was quite helpful!
Time for some quick soft goods edits. Officers, look away, this isn't for your delicate eyes...
I know, I know, but I have no pouches! I have to carry my stuff SOMEwhere!
I quickly tried coffee dying my sash, but it didn't take any color. I ended up washing it to get the loose coffee grounds out, and oops...!
I was worried about losing this many strings, but the edges actually look kinda nice now...
Alrighty, that's where I got for the con! Mission ac-con-plished! Time to sort through my thoughts and pics, I'll do a writeup on it in the coming days.
