My Custom Build (Armoury Spartan)

[Shadow Of Intent]

Fibreglass mat is supposed to disintegrate when it comes into contact with resin. If you don't like that, you can try fibreglass cloth, where the fibres are woven instead of glued together.

I've read up on the cloth, and it's stronger but about twice as costly. I'll try tomorrow using the fibreglass the other way wound, but I think I can further improve the neatness by stippling rather than "painting" it (As suggested in the sticky threads).

[Toacrabman]

Well so far youve got the easy parts pep'd.
The helmet and arms are easy to scale, but the torso and legs just suck to scale.
Thats why im gonna use EVA foam and scratchbuild.

[Spitfire22V]

I've read up on the cloth, and it's stronger but about twice as costly. I'll try tomorrow using the fibreglass the other way wound, but I think I can further improve the neatness by stippling rather than "painting" it (As suggested in the sticky threads).

Where are you getting your fiberglass from? When I did my suit, I used the Bondo-brand of fiberglass packets available at Wal-Mart and Lowes, etc. As I recall, the cloth packets were the same price as the mat packets. I personally greatly prefer cloth to mat; it's just neater.

When applying resin to the fiberglass, I tend to use short quick, but gentle, jabs at it. Not a lot of painting strokes until the cloth is saturated with resin and I'm evening out the layer.

[Toacrabman]

Yeah dont really try to brush fiberglass after its been put in place, because that will move it. Just dab it, and that actually keeps it in place. I actually like to glue down the corners, then resin, and it all stays in place, so i dont have to position the fiberglass, i can just resin it and im done.

[thorn696]

Yeah dont really try to brush fiberglass after its been put in place, because that will move it. Just dab it, and that actually keeps it in place. I actually like to glue down the corners, then resin, and it all stays in place, so i dont have to position the fiberglass, i can just resin it and im done.

Toacrabman gives very good advice, This is one of the best ways of doing the cloth.

[Shadow Of Intent]

Where are you getting your fiberglass from? When I did my suit, I used the Bondo-brand of fiberglass packets available at Wal-Mart and Lowes, etc. As I recall, the cloth packets were the same price as the mat packets. I personally greatly prefer cloth to mat; it's just neater.

All the stuff I have so far has come from a GRP composites company that molds things like bath tubs (I'm guessing anyway.. I dont actually know what they make), so I'm unable to identify the brand, although the fibreglass seems very low gsm (A 15cm by 500cm section weighs just 24 grams, putting it at just 32 gsm). I'll leave it at one layer for the handplayes, but either get some stronger fibreglass or many layers for the helmet and torso in particular. This is probably why it disintegrates so easily!

The helmet and arms are easy to scale, but the torso and legs just suck to scale.

I re-scaled my old bicep piece, to 85%, and I'd rather have gone with 90% now (It's a bit tight near the elbow). I havent been scaling anything up till now, but luckily the default thigh piece was my exact size! It's a shame not all modellers use the same scale (Ie, everything in its default state is perfect for an average build 6' person). Do you have any tips for scaling the torso, because at 38 pages of A4 (Default size) I do NOT want to have to re-size it!

In the instances where I have scaled things, I've usually uesd my player model to work out the scale factor between pieces I allready know are correct, but this is a bit tricky for the torso.

[Shadow Of Intent]

Another method of scaling that I forgot to mention was to slide the "angle viewer" in pepakura viewer all the way to the right, then zoom out till the model is about 200 pixels across (This reduces the perspective to a minimum while giving a high enought resolution to take following measurements). I then work out the internal diameter in pixels, the overall diameter in pixels, and use the ratio of them both to find the inner diameter in cm.

Once I determine the size I need it to be on the inside, I can scale it appropriately. This means I can be sure it will actually fit me, and not just look the right size on the outside.

On the topic of the torso piece, I haven't been able to find any mention of how to actually put it on. Unless people make their own detachable under-arm segments, it seems it would be very difficult to put it on, as it has no flex in it (Even more difficult with files that have the black "padded" section around the arms as part of the pepakura, eg L3X BLU3R1V3R's model).

[Shadow Of Intent]

Apologies for triple post, but I just thought I'd say I've upscaled L3X BLU3R1V3R's torso V3 from 443 to 470 mm high (Correct scaling for me I think), while managing to reduce the page count from 37 to just 34. Two of the pages have items that can barely be fit on the paper, and throughout the rest of it all pieces border very close to the margins (several mm spare), so may cause printing issues).

If anyone's interested in this send me a message. May save you a couple of hours of resizing and rearranging!

[Shadow Of Intent]

Okay... right bicep and shoulder resized, so the WIP picture is actually correct for now. I've downsized the bicep and enlarged the CQC shoulder, which looks pretty huge now (Although on my arm it matches my spartan perfectly!

What do you fellow 405th'ers do with redundant pep piecs? It seems an awful shame to throw them away given the time that goes into each piece. If there were a local pepakura club it would be great to give random bits to people for free or for a small donation and save them being wasted, but there's nothing like that here. Might put them on Freecycle or something!

[thorn696]

You're new parts look great. As to what to do with all the spare parts. I'm holding out on mine to take a pic on how much work I did to get were I'm at. (and I have allot of them.)