Is there any way to harden/stiffen up a latex mask?

I was thinking of making a helmet from a favorite book, and I have found a kind of cool latex mask that is ~sort of~ the look I was going for.

I am a little stumped about how to make it more armor like, and less latex like.

Basically I'm looking for a way to stiffen it up to be more like armor. It's a skull mask, so it'd look cooler if it actually resembled bone in the thickness and you know, the whole holding it's shape thing that bone tends to do.

Is this possible to do? I am hesitant to try bondo or anything because it seems like that would dissolve the mask...

Any tips are appreciated
Chris

This will probably take a degree of experimentation to get it right-

I'd suggest testing maybe a layer of superglue then 'dusting' it with cotton fibres from ragged cloth to build up a 'composite' like on a fibreglass build.

If you don't mind the 'craft' element- there's always papier mache.

Hmm.. That might work. The only other option I had was sculpy under and over it and boil and pray.

Chris

yeah thats tricky you want to try and reinforce the mask without distorting the shape.

What about contact adhesive and as demoncase said cotton fibre or stripes of cotton or fibre glass mating. Contact adhesive would work as a base to stick things to while flexing with the original mask...

good luck!

I'm back to thinking about this too. What would happen if resin was painted over the mask? I'm thinking that the latex would absorb the resin like a sponge and go solid. I've tested this theory by painting resin onto a kitchen sponge and the resin soaked right in, leaving the exact original shape without building up on top of it. It went hard, worked like a charm. The thing is, would the same happen with latex? I GUESS it would, but haven't tested it. And would the same thing happen with foam latex?