After seeing my finished suit, I’ve had several people ask me to chronicle my build. So, in the hopes of contributing something helpful to anyone else who may be working on their own Masked Rider Iron Man mk 3 armor, here we go!
Masked Rider’s kit is top notch, though I found it took quite a bit of work to get it to the fit and look that I would be happy with. I’m not sure my way was the best way on all of these pieces, so if you have a suggestion, I’d love to hear it!
The armor is all fiberglass with the exception of the neck seal, abdomen, thigh-tops, and fingers which are made from (I believe) PVC vinyl and so they are slightly flexible. The armor comes painted and there is a harnessing system included, but I didn’t care for it and engineered my own solution.
This is my finished suit:
I’m going to go through the build piece by piece, so this is going to get lengthy.
I’ll start from the bottom up with the shoes.
Shoes
The shoes come in 3 pieces, the toe, tongue, and back. I bought a new pair of all-leather, all white, smooth surface sneakers to use as the base for the shoes. I brush-coated these with several coats of acrylic paint. I found that a combination of 2 different shades of red resulted in a pretty close match to the paint Masked Rider used on the armor pieces (it was roughly 2 parts Folk-Art 224 Black Cherry with 1 part Folk-Art 456 True Burgundy). One thing I found was that clear coating the acrylic made HUGE difference in the color and how well it matched the original paint. I used airbrush brand Createx gloss clear coat, which I applied with a sponge brush.
An early shot of a shoe in progress:
Look back under the heel and you can see the difference of clear coated vs. not. Here’s another shot to compare of the underside (more on the underside later):
The shoe armor pieces were far too big for my shoes, so I heated up the toe piece VERY carefully with a heat gun and squeezed it tighter around the toe of the shoe. I then did the same for the heel plate. This took several applications of heat & cooling to get the pieces to come closer to conforming to my specific shoes. Make sure to label your pieces as they will be shoe specific once this process is done.
To attach the toe pieces, I used E6000 on the points where the shoe & armor touched (mostly the toe and some on the sides). The side pieces extend behind the pivot point of my toes, so I did not glue the sides down the whole length of the piece, otherwise it would be prone to failure with each step. Once the toe piece was fairly well secured I realized there would be cavities that could catch on things as I walked which wasn’t a good thing. So I stuffed some of the foam the armor was packed in up into the cavity and coated this with E6000. Once it dried, this gave me a fairly good surface upon which I poured some two part epoxy and then resin to fill up & smooth out the cavity. I repeated much of the same process for the heel plate.
Foam coated in E6000 & left to dry:
The filled with resin to fill the gaps:
I used resin because I had some on hand, though you could use also 2-part epoxy and that may be better because it is easier to mix in small amounts and is not as runny (and prone to messes) as resin is.
The completed underside:
I attached both armor pieces above floor level so they wouldn’t clack on the floor too much with each step. If you look closely from the side, you can spot this while the costume is being worn, but it’s one of those details you really have to look for and it was a tradeoff I was happy to make for the better mobility.
Next I added a tongue cover to ensure the laces of the shoes wouldn’t show while I was walking. This is just a scrap of really soft leather from an old jacket I’d taken apart years ago for another project which I painted with the same acrylic paint mixture I used on the shoes. I glue it down at the base of the tongue so it can be pulled back easily to access the laces.
Here’s a shot of the shoes pre-tongue plate:
The tongue armor is something I’ve tweaked multiple times and am still not completely happy with. I used a piece of leather in an L shape to hinge it to the toe armor, but the downward force of the calf piece when taking a step forward puts a lot of stress on that join. I used 3 different glues before finally getting it to stay with JB weld. I think a rivet through the leather and the toe piece, with JB weld to the underside of the tongue piece would have been the best solution. I wanted it to have some flex so the stresses of walking didn’t cause anything to snap. I cushioned the underside with foam and cut out some at the top (where it was near the top of the tongue of my shoe) to increase comfort and mobility.
Here are some shots of my completed shoes. Once the calves are on, the lace cover and sides of the shoes are pretty much completely covered.
How to get to the laces:
From the front (you can see the wear marks from the calf armor pressing down):
From the back:
Calf:
This is much more straight-forward than the shoe assembly as it is just 2 pieces. I’m a little shorter than the armor is intended for, so I had to cut the top of the calves, especially on the inside of the knee, to get them to fit me properly. I started with a horizontal cut, but it still dug into the inside of my leg. Keeping the cut horizontal would have made the outside look funny, so I opted to cut more on the inside of the leg.
An early shot showing the first amount taken off:
Final with cut lines painted to match:
I padded the heck out of the knee area to get the armor to sit properly on my leg. I also painted the foam so it would be less noticeable in pictures:
Another big piece of foam at the shin:
I cut the calf where it presses on the top of the shoe so it would not dig in as badly. But no matter how smoothly I sanded the cut, it still scraped the paint off the tongue piece after only a few steps. My solution was to take a rubber gasket I had laying around and to glue it over where the cut is & paint it to match. This made a huge difference in how badly the armor pieces scrape each other… it didn’t remove the scraping, but it helped enough. It is visible if you look for it in pictures, but it’s not something that jumps out at you. It was another concession of accuracy for comfort and ease of wear.
The other piece of the calf is the heel plate. I haven’t yet figured out how the best way to attach it. I wanted something that was removable, otherwise getting the shoe on would be incredibly difficult. I tried a leather-backed plastic flap with some Dual Lock (which works like Velcro, only stronger):
But this has a tendency to pop off after only a few steps. It’s flexible, which I like, but the dual lock doesn’t hold up under the stress of walking. I have a few ideas of what to try and will update here once I figure out something better to try.
More to come later!
Masked Rider’s kit is top notch, though I found it took quite a bit of work to get it to the fit and look that I would be happy with. I’m not sure my way was the best way on all of these pieces, so if you have a suggestion, I’d love to hear it!
The armor is all fiberglass with the exception of the neck seal, abdomen, thigh-tops, and fingers which are made from (I believe) PVC vinyl and so they are slightly flexible. The armor comes painted and there is a harnessing system included, but I didn’t care for it and engineered my own solution.
This is my finished suit:
I’m going to go through the build piece by piece, so this is going to get lengthy.
I’ll start from the bottom up with the shoes.
Shoes
The shoes come in 3 pieces, the toe, tongue, and back. I bought a new pair of all-leather, all white, smooth surface sneakers to use as the base for the shoes. I brush-coated these with several coats of acrylic paint. I found that a combination of 2 different shades of red resulted in a pretty close match to the paint Masked Rider used on the armor pieces (it was roughly 2 parts Folk-Art 224 Black Cherry with 1 part Folk-Art 456 True Burgundy). One thing I found was that clear coating the acrylic made HUGE difference in the color and how well it matched the original paint. I used airbrush brand Createx gloss clear coat, which I applied with a sponge brush.
An early shot of a shoe in progress:
Look back under the heel and you can see the difference of clear coated vs. not. Here’s another shot to compare of the underside (more on the underside later):
The shoe armor pieces were far too big for my shoes, so I heated up the toe piece VERY carefully with a heat gun and squeezed it tighter around the toe of the shoe. I then did the same for the heel plate. This took several applications of heat & cooling to get the pieces to come closer to conforming to my specific shoes. Make sure to label your pieces as they will be shoe specific once this process is done.
To attach the toe pieces, I used E6000 on the points where the shoe & armor touched (mostly the toe and some on the sides). The side pieces extend behind the pivot point of my toes, so I did not glue the sides down the whole length of the piece, otherwise it would be prone to failure with each step. Once the toe piece was fairly well secured I realized there would be cavities that could catch on things as I walked which wasn’t a good thing. So I stuffed some of the foam the armor was packed in up into the cavity and coated this with E6000. Once it dried, this gave me a fairly good surface upon which I poured some two part epoxy and then resin to fill up & smooth out the cavity. I repeated much of the same process for the heel plate.
Foam coated in E6000 & left to dry:
The filled with resin to fill the gaps:
I used resin because I had some on hand, though you could use also 2-part epoxy and that may be better because it is easier to mix in small amounts and is not as runny (and prone to messes) as resin is.
The completed underside:
I attached both armor pieces above floor level so they wouldn’t clack on the floor too much with each step. If you look closely from the side, you can spot this while the costume is being worn, but it’s one of those details you really have to look for and it was a tradeoff I was happy to make for the better mobility.
Next I added a tongue cover to ensure the laces of the shoes wouldn’t show while I was walking. This is just a scrap of really soft leather from an old jacket I’d taken apart years ago for another project which I painted with the same acrylic paint mixture I used on the shoes. I glue it down at the base of the tongue so it can be pulled back easily to access the laces.
Here’s a shot of the shoes pre-tongue plate:
The tongue armor is something I’ve tweaked multiple times and am still not completely happy with. I used a piece of leather in an L shape to hinge it to the toe armor, but the downward force of the calf piece when taking a step forward puts a lot of stress on that join. I used 3 different glues before finally getting it to stay with JB weld. I think a rivet through the leather and the toe piece, with JB weld to the underside of the tongue piece would have been the best solution. I wanted it to have some flex so the stresses of walking didn’t cause anything to snap. I cushioned the underside with foam and cut out some at the top (where it was near the top of the tongue of my shoe) to increase comfort and mobility.
Here are some shots of my completed shoes. Once the calves are on, the lace cover and sides of the shoes are pretty much completely covered.
How to get to the laces:
From the front (you can see the wear marks from the calf armor pressing down):
From the back:
Calf:
This is much more straight-forward than the shoe assembly as it is just 2 pieces. I’m a little shorter than the armor is intended for, so I had to cut the top of the calves, especially on the inside of the knee, to get them to fit me properly. I started with a horizontal cut, but it still dug into the inside of my leg. Keeping the cut horizontal would have made the outside look funny, so I opted to cut more on the inside of the leg.
An early shot showing the first amount taken off:
Final with cut lines painted to match:
I padded the heck out of the knee area to get the armor to sit properly on my leg. I also painted the foam so it would be less noticeable in pictures:
Another big piece of foam at the shin:
I cut the calf where it presses on the top of the shoe so it would not dig in as badly. But no matter how smoothly I sanded the cut, it still scraped the paint off the tongue piece after only a few steps. My solution was to take a rubber gasket I had laying around and to glue it over where the cut is & paint it to match. This made a huge difference in how badly the armor pieces scrape each other… it didn’t remove the scraping, but it helped enough. It is visible if you look for it in pictures, but it’s not something that jumps out at you. It was another concession of accuracy for comfort and ease of wear.
The other piece of the calf is the heel plate. I haven’t yet figured out how the best way to attach it. I wanted something that was removable, otherwise getting the shoe on would be incredibly difficult. I tried a leather-backed plastic flap with some Dual Lock (which works like Velcro, only stronger):
But this has a tendency to pop off after only a few steps. It’s flexible, which I like, but the dual lock doesn’t hold up under the stress of walking. I have a few ideas of what to try and will update here once I figure out something better to try.
More to come later!
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