Pepakura Halo 4 Wetworks Rebuild!

[PEPAKURA TURTLE]

Hey 405!
This community played a huge role in my childhood, and I loved every second of it. For someone who was unable to play Halo, making Halo armor was the next best thing. It's been almost 5 years since I've done anything here and currently, I've taken up fountain pen repairs as a general past-time. Just a few months earlier however, in one of my fountain pen servers, I found a fellow 405er and hence why I'm back here!

Anyhow, I was still in 7th grade when I made my suit; I am a graduating senior now. My suit composing of several pieces of armor from different games: A Halo 4 Wetworks helmet with contoured shin armor, Halo Prefect arm guards and elbow guards, as well as several others, including Reach shoulder pads. The biggest mistake I had while creating it was not adding bondo— the fiberglass alone was extremely annoying to polish, and cracked easily. Due to this, the chest plate is completely destroyed, and many of the pieces are now sadly cracked.

So anyhow, I really want to get back into it; this stay-at-home order really allows me to finish what I've always wanted to do. Currently, my main goal is to create a new helmet— I don't think I have enough time to finish a suit of armor before I have a buttload of work pushed upon me.

So here's what my helmet looks like now:

You can see all the cracks and quick foam repairs I had to make due to the mistake in this picture.

The back didn't look so good because I had to break that area just to fit it onto my head. Talk about a pig-headed mistake.

Just some more cracks in detail.

The fiberglass weighed the cardstock down, causing the glue to come undone.

A lot more foam fixes and cracks.

So this time, I wanted to make sure I get all these mistakes fixed- I went ahead and sketched a few small modifications (hopefully you can read it).

I'm planning on either resizing the model or cutting off the base gasket, but I'm not actually sure what to do with it. I have a few ideas, but nothing too special. I feel like magnets are really hard to use, especially since I don't have earth magnets on me and don't plan on buying any soon. With artificial magnets, it seems extremely weak and might not hold up the bottom gasket. Velcro is also a viable option, but with the same problems. To sustain the weight of the gasket, I was thinking of perhaps using clips or hooks- clips seem like a decent way to hold it up if it wasn't impossible taking it out, so I'm not sure how to properly adjust it.

I most likely won't start making it yet (so it might be a while till I actually post anything) but I want to get some ideas from the community. What do you guys think?
Anyhow, any ideas? Suggestions?

(also if you remember me, it'd be awesome if you said hi!)

 

[Coreforge]

Strong magnets would probably be the best option, but since you don't have any, that's not really possible. You could maybe use some small screws (around M3) and hold on the gasket with 2 to 4 of those. You would need some holes in the gasket roughly perpendicular to a surface inside the helmet where you can glue in a nut holder and nut, or if you can, a small piece of metal or plastic with a threaded hole.

 

[PEPAKURA TURTLE]

Hey Coreforge,
I'm trying to make the helmet as easy as possible to put on, mostly due to the innate limited view of a wetworks helmet. That being said though, I might use a few screws to form a base inside the gasket, to hold it in place. Here's a rough sketch of what I'm planning to do, but I doubt the elastic would carry the stress of the gasket so I'll have to figure out a way to inset that into the foam backing.

 

[Coreforge]

I'm not sure what you are trying to do with the elastic, but if your plan is to segment the gasket, back it with foam for flexibility and atttach it with elastic, those wider fabric-like elastic strips should work. They can be strong if you use enough and I don't think the gasket is that heavy. But if you back it with foam anyway, why don't you make it from foam? It would be more flexible that way, so your head should fit through if there are only a few collision points.

 

[PEPAKURA TURTLE]

My plan is cut 2 strips of elastic, attach a clasp to each elastic, and attach an elastic strip to the gasket, and another strip inside the helmet. The elastic inside has to be shorter than the helmet overall, in order to hold the helmet up and reduce the stress put on velcro. I'm planning to apply a total of 8 coats of rhondo to the gasket to prevent the cracking problem with my last helmet, so I'm predicting it'll be at least 2 pounds. I'm using polyester Velcro to line the foam, so the helmet would last longer if the gasket wasn't mostly hoisted on velcro.

The only reason I decided not to use foam completely was because I patched up my old helmet with foam; the foam layering didn't work because I had to stretch its sides to wear it/ take it off, which caused it to rip multiple times throughout its use. The tapering of the wetworks helmet downwards is a huge disadvantage compared to other helmets, especially since the opening hole is much more elliptical than other helmets. I think that a removable gasket would be much cleaner and would require much less repair time, especially because the stress would be put on a more replaceable piece of the helmet, the elastic.

 

[Coreforge]

I think that if you use thick enough elastic and enough velcro to hold it on it should hold pretty good. Velcro can be pretty strong, you just need enough surface area.