Spcgliders (Gordon) Baltar helmet

[GoldCylon1]

Thanks to the hard work from Spcglider, Baltar's helmets live again. Here is some of the finished work.
Thanks my friend.

 

[roboprop]

Gordon is simply amazing!!!!!

 

[Cooter Davis]

Wow thats some fantastic work........

 

[Apollo]

Very nice! :thumbsup

 

[spcglider@aol.com]

Thank you, fellas! i just discovered this thread!

-Gordon

 

[rickrickrick]

They look amazing!

Pardon my ignorance, but did Spcgliders do the sculpt, or the chroming, or everything?

Great work!

Rick

 

[spcglider@aol.com]

I started with a styrene cylon helmet pull. I tore it down and sculpted it up using sintra and styrene sheet and autobody filler. Then I sent it off to a good friend of mine who owed me a favor and is a whiz at laying up fiberglass. He made the molds and the subsequent copies and then I finished out one for him and tradd two kits to GoldCylon1 for his chrome paint services.

I got mine back the other day and truly finished it out with a red lens behind the grille. I still need to pad the sucker (cuz it's WAY big for a typical human head). But I think they started with an actual cylon head to make John Colicos' helmet for the episode "Living Legend".

-Gordon

 

[rickrickrick]

Again, my apologies if this is an ignorant question, but I've never seen this spelled out anywhere on these boards (people here frequently assume a certain knowledge base which can frustrating to a newbie).

Does a helmet (or prop, or whatever) have to be fibreglass to be chromed? I see all sorts of ungodly cheap toys that are chromed and wonder WHY? HOW? Aren't they mostly polystyrene or some other soft plastic? I would think with all the wearable Threepios out there, ABS must be chromable, too.

R

 

[GoldCylon1]

Again, my apologies if this is an ignorant question, but I've never seen this spelled out anywhere on these boards (people here frequently assume a certain knowledge base which can frustrating to a newbie).

Does a helmet (or prop, or whatever) have to be fibreglass to be chromed? I see all sorts of ungodly cheap toys that are chromed and wonder WHY? HOW? Aren't they mostly polystyrene or some other soft plastic? I would think with all the wearable Threepios out there, ABS must be chromable, too.

R

There are a few different methods of chroming non metallic items. First of this does cost a lot more than your standard hot chrome dip. I method I used was a in layman terms paint, but that is a understatement at best. If short it is 100% pure silver broken down into 3 liquid parts. These 3 parts are then put back together as they hit the object to be chromed. So these are silver plated, not the chrome that you would think it was same on a car bumper. Since silver exposed to air will tarnish, and clear coat is applied over the fresh plated item. Also a color tinting can be added to the clear coat to achieve like the gold helmet. There isn't a limited to the colors at all. A few years ago I chromed a few Star Wars light sabers for Disney World's Star Wars weekends. The pasted the inspections from the Lucas team that reviewed all the items before they were used for public display. The saber I plated was used by Darth Sidious. This saber had a wide range of browns, yellows, and golds. I started of the tinting with yellow, masked off the areas needing to be chrome, then painted the yellow tining. Then darked up the yellow tining a bit more to achieve the gold, or brown, and keep adjusting till I had all the area using a reference that was sent to me by the team that worked for Disney. The photo below isn't my work, but a example of what it look like when finished. I am not sure if I had any photos of the saber anymore. Same method employed on the Cylon helmet for Gordon, but a single color.