greenyone

New can of paint, different result on the face portion of the helmet. 4 thin coats shows an acceptable amount of orange peel from a rattle can paint job.

No, but the can sitting in a 90 degree shed all day should have had the same effect. I always turn my cans upside down hours before I use them too. Always had good luck when doing that. I stand by the nozzle comment. I miss those old fan tip style can nozzles. Very few brands of paint use them anymore. Krylon seemed to be a holdout with those nozzles but even their paints seem to use the new ones now too.

1st paint attempt was a fail. Had some issues with the nozzle on the rattle can doing that 'spittle' thing. I really miss the old paint can nozzles. I have no luck with these new styled ones. No matter what brand, they just seem to spit and clog. Wet-sanded for a retry with a new can I guess.

I have several pairs of internal rear pocket dress pants that I measured across the pockets (outside to outside). I'm a 32" waist and every pair I've measured looks as though the pockets will still be visible with the flap in place. Like I said before...all searches for rear pocketless mens pants come up empty. Any every pair I've seen online with external pockets seem to be cargo pants. Which would be fine...but most have so many other pockets and extra seams that it seems like it would to too big of a pain to remove them all.

Following. I'm with you. I've been collecting some shirts/pants that may fit the bill also. Biggest issue seems to be finding mens pants with the lack of any kind of complicated/not easy to remove or integrated back pockets.

If anyone is looking for an alternative to wing nuts or any kind of traditional nut for a helmet with 1/4-20 elevator bolt pivot points...these are much less obtrusive. They sit relatively flush with the inside of the helmet and I think you'd be hard pressed to feel them poking through any padding you'd have inside your bucket. https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00RN1MZ98/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o01_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

I've mentioned it before but this particular MonCal bucket is considered a 'B Grade'. Meaning Cal sold them (or is still selling) at a discount due to some casting/molding issues. He addressed the low spots by drawing circles around those areas of the resin casting in permanent marker. I've addressed those larger issues with some body filler (bondo). Roto-Cast parts clearly have a lot of small imperfections too (pinholes, very small high and low spots combined with whatever marks are inherent to the mold itself.) Now the question is, do I put a skim coat of glazing putty over the entire surface of the resin casting and sand till I sneeze filler dust for a week.... or just hit it with high build primer and see what it looks like?

Already been asked this in an earlier post.... But my guess is somewhere between 2.5 and 3 lbs.

Next time you are back in town stop by and watch a game. I have a set of seats from the old barn in my man cave. It's fun to wheel them out in front of the TV and re-live the Civic Arena experience minus the $20 beer and nacho price tag. R2 cheers along too.

No photo...but I never seem to have any luck with painting resin cast parts without at least one fish eye showing up. Somebody in the industry really needs to engineer a mold release agent that has zero wax or silicone. I've been down this road before. Wash with purple degreaser, dish soap, wipe down with denatured alcohol and then prep-sol wax and grease remover right before applying primer or paint and BOOM!!! Never fails. Fish eye in a very visible spot. Ugh!!!

Like Spike said. They make body fillers specific to 'biting into' plastic (for urethane car bumpers etc..) I've used UPOL 706 for actual auto body work. Have not tried is on costume plastics though. If you are just filling small cracks why not just use a tube of Tamiya or Squadron hobby putty? Those are specifically made to bite into plastics also.

All mocked up. Time to tear it down for body and paint.

Wampawear gloves showed up today. Really impressed with the quality. I was expecting 'prop gloves' and got something that is probably nicer than most of my actual motorcycle gloves.

I took apart one of my old motorcycle helmets that has a removable liner and threw it up there in the bucket. Pretty good fit actually.. but I can certainly feel those wing nuts through the padding if I jossle my head around. I think I may take a trip to the hardware store. Maybe a small thin profile knurled brass nut would be less obtrusive. I'll see what I can find and probably just cut the bolt back so the threads don't protrude past the nut.

Helmet is all fitted together. I guess it's time for body work and paint. The MC kit came with what seems to be the common 'elevator bolts' and wing nuts for the visors pivot point. I guess all elevator bolts have a square base? I had to take them to a grinder and carefully knock the corners off to make them fit in a 1/4 hole. Now the big question concerning this attachment method. The wing nuts don't contact the sides of my head when I have the helmet perfectly centered on my noggin...and I realize I'll have some padding in there too...but just the look of it, and the thought of those things in there gives me concern. Is this an issue for anyone? I'm leaning toward using a nylon acorn nut or something that just seems a little less medieval.

Screw in eye lens system installed. Couple of blocks of ABS solvent welded to the inner face shield that will accept small screws. Cut out the tinted plastic with some tabs that match up to the screw holes in the blocks. Should make for any easy swap when this thing gets too hazy/scratched up over time.

Sux that I had to do this, but it looks like it's gonna work. Repair patch solvent welded in then smoothed out with some sanding and a bit of white squadron modeling putty to hide the seam. I'm not sure if it's commonplace to paint the white abs parts on the MC bucket but now that mine has undergone surgery I guess I'll be forced to.

In a previous post I mentioned that I trimmed too much off of the top of my face place on one side....to the point that there was a gap between the visor and the face place when everything was taped together for mock-up. Here is my solution. I cut a 1 inch strip of 1/16th thick ABS sheet and solvent welded it to the underside of the face-plate leaving about a 1/4 inch of plastic extending past the top. This will give me a ledge between the two components to create a solid patch to then whittle back down until it meets the underside of the visor evenly. For those of you who ever need to make a repair to anything of a styrene variant like ABS, solvent welding is 100% permanent unlike traditional adhesives or expoxies. I used SciGrip #3 (formerly Weldon #3) to make this repair. This particular solvent will bond ABS to ABS or HIPS to HIPS, but not ABS to HIPS (high impact polystyrene). Trust me...I tried since I have an abundance of HIPS plastic for R2 building and repairs. The ABS scrap to HIPS scrap solvent weld attempt just pulled apart after curing. The ABS scrap to ABS scrap test was a success though. This should come in handy when I get to the armor portion of the build. I'm sure there will be plenty of places that extra tabs, loops support will be needed on the ABS armor.

As I work through this helmet build I'm left wondering where the idea for a white plastic chin cup come from? Seems most helmet kits come with them but I can't seem to find any movie still images of a TB with this displayed. Best shot I've seen is this one, but I can't see an indication of a strap let alone a chin cup.

The Hobart lens is cheap and from an optical standpoint is 1000% better than the MC included lens. I can't recommend it enough. As far as the visor opening goes, I've played around with it and I don't really care for how I'd have to space the face/visor out from the bucket to gain the necessary clearance for it to open cleanly. My noggin fits in there with it closed so I think I'll just keep the mating lines tight for aesthetics and forego the wide opening

Got the popular Hobart tinted face-shield in the mail today. Traced a template using posterboard and added 1/4 inch to the perimeter. Gonna try to glue some tabs to the inside of the face-plate to accept the lens. I'm trying for something that will make it easy to swap out lenses when/if it gets scratched up. This lens material cuts fairly easy with a pair of Lexan scissors.

In an earlier post I commented on the symmetry issues with the MC bucket. It's reared it's ugly head again. Cal's provided cut marks on the face plate were considerably higher on the on the right side (when looking at the face of the helmet). In my ignorance I adjusted that cut line to be even across the brow. (I assumed this was an error in his provided cut line) Now when everything is dry fit I have a gap where that portion of the face plate meets the visor. It would appear as though the cut line was purposely skewed/uneven to account for the lack of symmetry in the parts as a whole. I guess I'll be making an ABS patch combined with some body work to fix the gap. Ugh!!!

Ears cutout by drilling around the perimeter....followed up with the Dremel to smooth things out. (chin strap slots too)

Got the ABS parts all trimmed up. The eye lens hole was fun. I drilled 3/16 holes all the way around then snipped in between them to pop out it out. Then about an hour of carefully massaging the plastic back with a small Dremel sanding drum. On to the ear cutouts and then bondo-sand-repeat. Having built 2 Astromechs I thought I'd enjoy this part....but I"m ready to get away from sanding dust and back to the soft parts.

Thanks. Figured as much...just asking because I'm new to this and I'm not sure what is considered acceptable in the costuming world. To the naked eye (as was suggested) it looks just fine. But like I said previously, my OCD kicks in sometimes. In addition to my engineering background I also tinker with CNC machining as a hobby. So I obsess about symmetry, tolerances and that sort of thing. Pressing on with the build.