A few people have expressed an interest in finishing a suit for themselves in time for the May 7th opening of Iron Man 2. I'm trying to finish this tutorial in time for you to do just that. I'm kicking it in to high gear while trying not to neglect my other obligations too much.
That said, the helmet is probably the coolest part of the suit. If you have a cool helmet, you're 90% there. So lets see if we can figure out our options.
This trashcan plastic is too soft to make a helmet. At least I think it is. So, I'm not going to waste my time trying to make a trashcan helmet.
We can buy a helmet but that cost money. We can try to make one out of sintra (but what the heck is sintra) or we can pep a helmet. Pepping involves bondo and fiberglass and sanding, skill, and time.
So being that we are dong a budget build with limited time....
Good-Cheap-Fast <- "Pick Two" as they say
I'm going to try to do a sintra helmet just so you can see if it's something you want to take the time to explore. It kinda lends itself to the plastic theme of this project.
First I pulled up Gemini Khan's page where he made his awesome sintra helmet. I have some experience with sintra from making fett armor so I kinda knew what to expect, but not really. Anyway I downloaded his template and set to work.
Where do you get sintra?
Sign companies. Call the closest sign company and tell them you'd like to buy a sintra remnant. They may refer to it as PVC expanded foam board or expanded PVC Sheet. So throw those words around like you use those terms every day.
Tell them you'd like to buy a remnant (scrap) and it can be dirty, dinged, etc. I got a 2'X3' remnant of 3mm sintra for $15 dollars. Not too bad.
I printed the template out and cut it out of the sintra.
Then I heated up the template where I wanted it to bend and I started shaping it. First, I bent the sides and then heated the face up to give it a bit of a convex shape. I superglue the edges so they would hold.
Then I cut a bunch of 1-2 inch strips and heated them up individually and bowed them to make the crown of the head. If you read Gemini Kahn's page, you'll see what i mean. I didn't take any pictures because I was really moving fast and I forgot.
After I got a bunch of bowed 1-2 inch strips I started supergluing them along the crown of the helmet to form the top.
Once I got the top formed I cut two large strips of plastic to form the back of the helmet.
To make the crown smooth I applied a generous amount of bondo to the top and sanded the crap out of it until it looked half way decent. Then I put more bondo on and sanded. I repeated this about 4 times until it was shaped the way I wanted.
I rattle canned some white paint as on it as a primer and as soon as it was half dry I started spot puttying the edges that were still nasty.
So, I would say that the sintra helmet is doable in the time we have left and it was fairly cheap assuming you have bond, sandpaper, and red spot putty t home.
There were some instances where I wanted to sit this helmet on the ground and drive my foot through it. So it wasn't step 1- cut, step 2 bend, step 3 bondo and enjoy.
I would also explore the option of pep-ing a helmet or even purchasing one even if you plan on trying this method.
I'm trying this method out to hopefully save you some time if you're in a rush to make the Mark V suit. I don't plan on finishing this particular helmet, although I might. This helmet has a long way to go before it looks nice. Gemini Kahn has much more talent than me! :lol After trying this I have so even more respect for him and his project. To think he made that beautiful helmet from sintra blows my mind.
Nice that your putting it in high gear, and saves me from making a tutorial. The material you use are pretty cool "using Rubbermaid plastic", and cheap to buy. Also i see you use a lot of my photos a reference. My MKV was little over 1 month build, but that's with building Potts armors, hulk-buster, upgrading war machine and MKVI armor. Could of done it faster "1.5 weeks". But hop your build goe great,
lol:lol
