EPISODE III - Revenge of the Sithy Plastic
This polypropylene is my bane. I understand why Hasbro uses it (it's inexpensive and easy to mold quickly), but it's torture to us modders.
It's made me a little crazy.
So, I didn't get as much done yesterday as I had thought I would, so apologies for this abbreviated update. Since I am attempting a Disney graft and accurizing like no one else has attempted yet, this is ALL educated guesswork and unexplored ground. As such, little roadblocks pop up unexpectedly and you need to MacGyver your way through them. That's what yesterdays session turned into instead of welding on the Disney face and bondo-ing the helmet like I had planned. So here is the story of my personal hell:
First thing I did yesterday was start out with something simple. I used a little bit of hot glue and partially filled in the speaker holes so I wouldn't have to pile as much bondo in there and worry about shrinkage or anything. There is adhesion promoter on the glue, but we'll get to that later. I used hot glue because it was cheap and quick, and had a glue gun sitting right next to me. Really anything will work that fills the hole (that's what she said).
I also laid in some glue on the back of the speaker vents in preparation of eventually filling those in as well.
Here's where things start getting tricky, and where I warn you that if you want to go for the full 4 layer look of the face and corrected helmet flair and cheeks, you're in for a LOT of hard work. I would recommend you just take those two top layer, and just slap them onto your BS. It'll look great. However, if you're way too anal retentive like I am, and insist on it being as perfect and accurate as possible, here's the self-imposed torture I'm currently going through.
As shown in a previous episode, I chopped off the little jowl piece from the Disney mask that sits directly under the filigree.
This little a-hole
This is necessary for some vent detail, the little jowls on the ends, and to close a huge gap that's created when you eliminate the BS face. However, getting this to line up and sit on the bottom of the BS filigree, is an exercise in patience and sanding things away a little bit at a time. The BS & Disney plastics are different thicknesses, and the curvature on the piece vary by a tiny amount. This means a LOT of chopping, grinding, and sanding...then later gluing, welding, and filling, and blending, is going to be necessary.
That piece now looks like this:
And to get it to sit more or less flush against the filigree, I had to do a LOT of grinding and sanding and chopping:
After all that, I can get the two parts to dry fit more or less like this:
Now obviously we have an ugly, uneven gap between them. I mean, there's supposed to be a line/separation, but this just looks gnarly. I'm going to have to carfully mask the chrome, and get some filler in there to smooth it out once I have it all glued and welded together. That will come in a later episode.
Next up, all the parts (minus the chrome) were sprayed down with an industry grade automotive paint adhesion promoter. This is what they spray onto plastic bumpers and fenders and such before laying down primer and paint. You can get this stuff at a professional auto body supply shop, and yes, it's expensive. If your budget is tight, I recommend Duplicolor plastic adhesion promoter in a rattle can. It won't go on a smooth or have as much of a bite with the pro stuff, but it'll work if you're not too rough with your helmet and handling it all the time. This layer will allow my resurfacing compound to securely stick when I cover the helmet to eliminate the wavy inaccurate texture, and on the Disney pieces, it will allow primer to securely stick without chipping or peeling on this awful oily plastic.
Here are the parts dry fitted together (with and without flash) to give you an idea of how it's coming along. I still have some mods to make to the bottom layer of the face that also includes the cheeks that will be getting attached to the BS dome, but that will be for the next episode. Stay tuned...