foam Iron Man mark 4, with cereal box helmet wip

Re: Ironman foam question...

Thanks for the comments. This is actually my old helmet. It's too small for my big head and the way I hinged the back plate makes the ears stick out funny heh. No contests for me! It's all just for fun, and the pics don't show all the little imperfections. I'm in southern Ontario, between Hamilton and St Catharines.
 
Ironman cereal box helmet

Been working a little bit on another helmet. I didn't think I could handle another 30 hours pepping a helmet that turned out badly, so I used thin cereal box cardboard and foam templates. A few pieces I printed off from the pep, like the edges around the ears so that the ears are inset. The best part was that I could trim the cardboard down close to letter size sheet, so I could still run it through the printer and avoid having to cut templates first. It's missing just a few pieces at the back, and it will be ready for resin once the temperature goes up some outside!

I highly recommend this technique. It may not give the perfect end result as pep might, but I probably have about 6 hours invested in it so far, instead of 26. I had doubts about how well the cardboard would bond, edge-glued with hot glue, but I haven't had any pieces come loose yet.

However, that is an eggos coupon on the forehead that I'll never get back........ oh well.
 
A little further along on the helmet. Finished the cardboard build. It was actually not too cold today so I cranked up some heaters in the garage and put a coat of resin on the helmet. The resin was pretty thick, but I think it went on alright. Used a very simple heater box to help cure the resin. If we get another warm day soon I'll throw a bit of resin and fibreglass inside the helmet.
 
The heater box is working great. I've got a couple rounds of fibreglassing done inside the helmet. It's turning out great, even with the garage temperature hovering around the freezing mark. The resin is a little thick but not bad to work with. I am loving how solid the helmet feels with fibreglass inside. No pictures yet, since it really doesn't look any different from the outside, but I'm very pleased with how it's going so far.
 
hey man loving you helmet wanting to give it a go my self with the mk 47. can you give me any more info on doing it like this. like how did you get endges like the top of the helmet and the sides to stick easily with card being so thing ?. also it looks really think round the ear cups how did you do that with just cerial box card ?
 
The top rear piece of the helmet is one of the few pieces that I didn't just edge-glue. Because it has several slices on both sides to create a curved piece, I would leave some of the cardboard on the tab side, so that I could glue the overlap together, to creat a stronger piece.

But I think you are asking about the joint between the top and the side? That is just edge glued. I use hot glue and I don't do much more than 1 " of the joint at a time. And I'm not shy with the glue. It's not like foam where you have to be clean and careful. You can always clean up the glue later. Before moving on to resin, I went over the big glue blobs with the hot glue gun tip to smooth them out. And I plan to file and sand down any blobular areas before I move on to filler.

For the ear sections and the stepped ridges at the back of the helmet I did use a couple of pieces from the pep file with the tabs, to get that detail. I am going to add ears later, I'll probably just make some out of 1/4" thick mdf.
 
To try to explain my earlier post, the 1st picture shows the joint between the top and sides, and is just edge-glued (with lots of glue!)

The 2nd pic shows the top-rear, where I used the overlaps to hold that curve together.

The 3rd pic shows some of the pep pieces I used for the stepped back and the ears. I also used a paper towel roll cut to length, to give the helmet some sturdiness, and make sure it doesn't end up too narrow for my head. It's a pain to fibreglass around it though. I should be cutting it out soon.
 
Finally some progress, if not very much. I've finally finished fibreglassing the inside. I am really happy with how strong it is now. Sanded and one final coat of resin, and I finally got to slap some bondo on it. Now that the weather is a little warmer and my workshop is in order (we moved last month) I'm hoping to make some steady progress.
 
Hey man. I have for some reason missed this thread since the faceplate issues and I must say I am impressed with your progress. Looking forward to seeing how you find a bondoed piece. :)
 
Little further along in bondo. It's going to be a lot of work. Can't wait to paint but I'm really hoping to get it close to the quality of so many amazing helmets I've seen on this site.
 
Some more update pics. It's a slow process, but there is no rush. Got the faceplate cut off, so some of the detailing will be a little easier to access.

20130525_212231.jpg20130601_220126.jpg20130601_220140.jpg20130601_220152.jpg
 
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