My Early Disasters pt 2 - A Biker Scout Helmet - How hard can it be?

So, it's true that Roughneckone's posting of that video was great in many ways - it will be a terrific help. However, in the short term it really highlighted my shortcomings with regard to this project. My wife often says that I half-arse things, but I'd have to have worked a lot harder and more carefully to get this mess up to the high standard of "Half-arsed". With all my other projects I have simply bumbled along, planning to fix it in the end with more paint or extreme sanding, but this is elemental building, and I'm screwing it up.

I had a complete sense of humour failure about five minutes after I posted that last picture. EVERYTHING was wrong and none of it could be fixed. I was very scared that I would have to give up the project altogether. That may not sound too bad, but from my point of view, if I abandon this one, then I can't start the next one with any optimism.

That bad mood followed me through the whole day, and at work today I found myself doodling the problem area, trying the get that shape into my brain:
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Then I realised that I should have origami'd that damn centre piece. It would have looked like this:
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And THEN I thought, "Well, I can even get those other pieces folded in there..."
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This small act of creation made me happy again. I'm not really going to origami the helmet, and I'll lose my temper with it another few times before I'm done, because it is fiddly and I should have started with some better measurements. But I'll bash on and finish it soon - I hope. In the meantime, I knocked up some other pieces for my origami effort (Don't tell my boss - this WAS worktime!)
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This is my hobby. It's supposed to be fun. I can deal with difficult, with frustrating, with annoying, but this came close to wrecking the fun altogether. I'm going to make sure that the next session doesn't happen until I have time and materials to give it my full attention and best shot.
 
Still haven't got back to this. Been plumbing in more sink units at home. Which meant I found this odd bit of pipe:
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And this odd sink-trap assembly...
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Hmmm...
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Yeah, the Kylo Ren plumbing agency: We make sure you can use the faucet!

(I promise I'll be back to work on the helmet soon. And fewer bad puns.)
 
In the intervening weeks since my last real post here, I've been thinking and planning about that damn nose - well, the whole faceplate. Today was my first day off in ages, a whole day to myself. Except, no, the car has to go in for a service, I have to take down the decorations, post letters etc etc. What I DID make time for was something a little less planned - I added bondo around the base of the neck and across the back of the helmet. I'm hoping to put more across the front of the dome soon too. My final push on the faceplate will likely require more space on the inside, and if I'm taking out the various bits of support left in, I need some structural strength. That's my excuse, anyway.
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It must be wonderful to be the kind of person who performs a careful critical path analysis, then follows each logical step. I swear, I WANT to be that person.

When we last talked, I had slathered on unreasonable amounts of bondo to much of the back and neck of the helmet. This allowed me to take out the shaping materials inside that section. The best plan would then have been to carefully sand the areas until they were smooth, and add in more Bondo to the surrounding areas, making everything the same level. I would then allow that to harden and sand until the different areas were one.

I DID sand the stuff I'd done. I did remove some of the more ornate swirls and huge lumps. The final surface was not glass-smooth, but it was better. There's going to be some more surfacing work for sure. But obviously, I had to get to grips with this faceplate before I lost all my courage.
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That thumbnail looks really good. Don't click on it.
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I put in the pointless detail of the bars down the nose section because it seemed like the right time to do that. The piece at the bottom of the nose is a placeholder, because I think I'm going to sculpt that bit out of modelling clay and right now I don't have any of that.

STILL LEFT TO DO:
The remaining section of the faceplate, which goes under the eyepieces and over the nose. It's insanely complicated even just to think about. Measuring is probably not going to help me, especially if it's ME doing the measuring.
More bondo. Which may mean buying more bondo. I'm not good at the mixing ratio, and my tube of blue activator is more empty than my tin of glop. That's also a metaphor for my life right now.
Removing the side shaping materials and installing the LEDs. This is a final touch that I'm excited about because I think I'm going to make a simple circuit. I may be wrong about that, but right now, that's what I'm thinking.

The end is in sight. Trouble is, the road between here and there is very bumpy. And there are alligators lurking in the bushes, armed with automatic rifles.
 
So many things to do. None of them are building helmets. So I spent two hours actually working on a thing that might pay me money, then went down to the workshop, gritted my teeth and did some very foolish things.
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Firstly I daubed some old and not-very-viable filler onto the worst surfaces of the helmet, thereby actually making them even worse. Then I took a sheet of paper and tried to roughly figure out that last piece of the faceplate. I ought to use a flexible tape measure and a ruler and stuff, but I am so done with this project, I want to draw a line under it. And I have thought so long and hard about this last bit that I have reached the point where doing ANYTHING is better than sitting on my butt trying to work out the right way. Does that make sense?
So, I got that paper shape above, then transferred it to some light plastic. Badly. Which I then tried to hold in place against the helmet which is on a stand, but not secure. I invented some excellent new swearwords during this process.
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I glued and swore and glued and swore and glued and swore.
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And then I took the plastic sheath that was protecting the new windscreen wiper I had to buy for my wife's car (a 2012 Prius C, passenger side, in case you're taking notes) and I cut it in half and glued one half on each side of the nose.
Look, it's a mess, right. It's awful. And I am not done. I have more surfacing to do, and probably have a lot of gaps in the faceplate to fill one way or another, and I have no filler left and I am at my wit's end here (short trip, says my wife). I'm going to be done with this thing by February, because I have a deadline on other projects of a non-buildy nature, and then I am going to hang up my glue gun for a while with a sigh of relief. Not for ever, because we all know that Episode 8 is out in December, which means any day now there'll be a trailer with at least one awesome helmet in it. But for a while. Long enough for the smell of paint to clear from the workshop, long enough to hang all my tools back up where they belong.
What are you guys up to?
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You know that thing, where you paint a wall, and think you've done a really good job? Then you step back and see a little bit that you missed...and another...and another... and another...? Well, this is like that, except I didn't think I'd done a good job in the first place.
WP_20170131_002 1.jpgBUT, happy with the smoothness of the dome, I added the brow band.

WP_20170131_003.jpgThe extra work on the neckroll is paying off too. Smoother.

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The new baseplate for the nose, made from modelling clay, will look better with some silver dry-brushing... And the ends of the neck roll will be covered with more clay shortly.
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There's still work to be done - holes to be filled, surfaces to be smoothed, but the final result is not the complete flustercluck it was looking like a few stages back. I'll be done before the end of Feb, and the new book about this and the other recent builds should be out in March.
 
Time for another big push. I came down to the workroom the other day to find this:
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The brow band had fallen off, despite the application of entire stick of hot glue. Uninterested in WHY, I just jammed it back on, and held it in place with some duct tape. Then I flipped over the helmet and put a cutting tool on my dremel.
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I trimmed around the lower edge of the neckroll, and cut the grey tubes in half. This was partially to open up the inside of the helmet a little, and partially to accommodate the LEDs. Once all the cutting was done, I edged the cut with black duct tape all the way round. It seems ironic that I'm working so hard on the hidden areas of this helmet when the visible ones are so ghastly.
So, I fitted the LED tealights in the ends of the tubes and taped them into place.
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They flicker, which is cool, but they're very faint, which is not. Anyway, tick off "Fit LEDs".
I went over the various surfaces. Despite the last picture I took in the last post, most of the surface is porous, not taking the gloss paint well. I decided I need an undercoat, and went for the chrome paint, just for the fun of it.
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Ok, the next session will be spraying it black again, and photographing the last four helmets together. Having regained my sense of humour and my enjoyment, I will also be taking suggestion on what to screw up next.
 
I love this thread because I think we've all been there. Not to mention, I've noticed some of my own methods in your work. "I can fix it in post" is an unofficial mantra of mine.

My very first attempt at pepakura was a Republic Commando helmet. I thought I would just see what all the fuss is about with pepakura and see how difficult it was to use. I never intended to finish the project so I used printer paper instead of card stock. But, my obsessive compulsive brain kicked in and I had to finish it. I did everything, and I mean everything, wrong with the build. To this day, I have a love/hate relationship with that helmet. It sits there on the shelf mocking me with its non-symmetrical eye slit, its ears that don't line up, and its slightly crooked jaw and chin. But it's also the project that inspired me to keep going and try new things. One day I'll come back to it and (hopefully) make a better looking helmet.
 
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