Very nice. Does it have a liner and chin strap?
Thanks, guys!
Lost, it doesn't have a liner but I'm going to add a chin strap. I've toyed with the notion of trying to make a liner but that's a project for another day.
Art, yeah, I'm lucky in that I owned a screen-used helmet for about 5 years. I sacrificed it to help the family finances when we discovered our second child was on the way. I really miss it but at least I can claim I had the best reference available. I've been trying to replicate the painted look of it for the past 7 or 8 years. I've got it pretty close though I'm always trying to figure out how to get it closer too... such is the life of the obsessed fan. :$
Firefox, I don't know if I can really boil it down to a number of steps but I can definitely try to outline it.
Of course, in my opinion, the tweaks to the helmet before you paint it are the most important details - particularly attention to the eyes, mouth, fin and neck opening. Those details really make the helmet and for me, account for 90% of the work. After that, I start the painting with primer and a base coat of Testor's gold spray paint. I don't think the exact gold hue is as important for the base coat.
I cover the helmet in Antique gold rub-n-buff (sp?) and then start muddying the surface up with a mix of acrylic paints that just sit on top of the rub-n-buff. Then I work back and forth with the paint and the rub-n-buff until it starts getting the right mottled look. That's the part that's hard to explain... It just needs to have that mottled appearance... it's one of those things that easier to show than explain.
Rub-n-buff is kind of a tough material to work with because it goes on extremely opaque so it's difficult to apply it without completely blowing away the other paint.
Once it's painted, I seal it with a few coats of Testor's dull cote and then Testor's gloss cote. That makes the finish uniform.
Anyway, that's the current technique... I'm always trying to find a better way to do it and this is easier than what I used to do.
