Iron Man Mk VI Helmet

[Lord Ned]

Not many Iron Man armors posted around here, but hey

Didn't have my camera during pepping, so the best I have is a low-quality cell-phone picture. They get better from here on out, I promise.

The tape was stripped from the outside after the mask, jaw and rest of helmet were fully glued together. I unfortunately did not remove some of the tape that I had holding together small sections, which turned out to be a huge problem later. Do not, under any circumstances use or leave tape on your pepkura on the inside or the outside!

The model has been hardened and rondo'd on the interior, then hit with a rough coat of 60 grit sanding, primer and a quick layer of bondo. I apologize for skipping all the pictures between pep and here, but I didn't have my camera and wanted to get started.

Disaster strikes. I didn't pep out one of the eyes (and ended up having extra trouble with the one I did pep) and covered it from the inside with blue tape before I rondo'd it. Unfortunately, it looks like it left some gaps underneath the surface around the eye.

I gouged out the nose area with my file (seen below) to try and get the paper up too. I was coming across problems all across the model where I had hit the paper layer and it's edges were not smooth like the parts that had been sanded through. I'm not sure if this is normal or what, but it's been quite problematic and if anyone has tips on that, let me know.

Another spot (with the arrow to it) that I had to gouge up the paper, fill in with bondo and then re-create the line that wrapped around the helmet.

Nice overview as of where it was. It was starting to shape up, but then when I took a closer look at it I had a bunch of issues with symmetry and ill shapes. I took some time at this point to study my references and compare them to it, and noticed that I don't have the jaw line right (upper-part of chin isn't extruded enough, divet in chin shouldn't go into the jaw, just into the upper-chin piece), the top of the faceplate sits flush with the top of the helmet, but in my reference pictures it appears to sit over it.

References:
http://i.imgur.com/zDxPi.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/d911x.png

I'm also having difficulties with the cheek bones and jaw beneath them, as the spots are too small for me to get my square mouse sander in. I'm afraid I'll have to get out a block of wood and sandpaper soon and just do it by hand.

I'm also looking for something that is as round as the ear pucks as they have not been hardened yet. I want to drop a can-lid or something inside the edge to hold it nice and round while it gets hardened, as I fear trying to get those perfectly round after the fact. My biggest suggestion to beginners is: Make your pep as best you can when you harden it, and use the smallest amount of Bondo you can! Bondo is very hard to stand through (Even with 60grit sandpaper and a handheld sander) and you will be hard pressed to make major changes after the fact.

I'll post the next few day's worth of pictures later today - Imgur is having trouble with it's album viewer right now, but these direct links should be ok.

 

[Lord Ned]

I made a pass with bondo over the messed up nose-area, as well as the rest of the spots that I could see were low. The back area is very ugly at the moment due to the paper issue I mentioned earlier, where it doesn't sand smooth and the edges sort of tear up, forcing me to gouge out the paper patch and then fill the hole in with bondo.

I sanded it all down again (after some more bondo patches, etc.). Here you can see some of the issues caused by the tape that I left on the inside - the tape left clear marks in the rondo placed on the inside which then showed up when it was sanded through on the exterior. At this point I used a dremel to trace over some of the lines that were supposed to be there, just because I was losing them throughout all of my sanding/bondoing.

Another area that was fairly messed up. It unfortunately didn't get bondo completely into the interior, so when the top edge of the paper tore off, it left a hollow spot. This was filled with resin (with some popsical sticks on the underside to keep it from sagging any further), and then more bondo/sanding to fix it.

Another set of overview pictures. You can see some blue tape that was on the interior when it was rondo'd - which has been sanded through and is now showing up. It seems to cause less problem than plain white masking tape.

Eep! The lower jaw/cheekbones are NOT symmetrical at all. Not only does the jaw not line up with each other/the mask, the amount of space between the sides of the eye and edge of the mask isn't symmetrical either.

It doesn't look so bad from this angle, but now I know it's there and it'll drive me nuts until I do it. Looks like I have a lot more bondo/sanding to do to slowly move things back into proportion with each other.

One sanding wheel attachment on the dremel later and the ear sections are slowly starting to lose their polygon-like edges and become one smooth thing. Another thing I noticed here is how egg-shaped his head is, with the top of the egg being where the helmet meets the faceplate. It looks like it shouldn't be too bad to fix, just gotta round out some spots with bondo and sand down the top of the egg a bit.

Next spot to work on was the interior edge at the bottom. It was a very thin edge, only sort-of rondo/hardened, so it has aquired a lot of chips and cracks as I've worked. It's also been hard to flaten out the edge there because it's so thin the sander catches it and makes it worse. I thought for a while about how to build up the edge to make it better, and finally decided on some thin foam I found at the dollar store.

 

[Lord Ned]

They were cut into almost-appropriate width strips and then tacked down with some super glue. Then a batch of Rondo was created, and sort of sloppped over all of it.

I don't know how this will turn out. I did some tests earlier (as seen by the two red pieces sticking out of the eye-socket in one photo) to make sure that resin/bondo wouldn't eat the foam, which it doesn't. It doesn't appear to absorb the stuff, nor sand well, so I'm hoping that by putting this on the inside it will give the edge enough strength that I can then take normal bondo to the outside and start leveling out the edge and smoothing it out, as right now it looks pretty terrible.

Some work being done on getting the edges in the back sharper again. They unfortunately lost their crease due to some over-zealous sanding at one point. Lots and lots of work to do.

I apologize for the multi-post due to 15 image forum limit.

 

[Lord Ned]

Had it nice and ready for sanding, bulked up the bondo on the top and top edge of the mask to round out the profile a little which had some flat spots.

The wind surprised me and rolled it off the table while I was inside. I rushed outside to find a crack that runs from one eye, across the top, to the top of the other ear. This has since been patched with blue-tape on the exterior and I poured some more rondo in (with a few pieces of fiber-glass mat embedded within). I think it'll fix up just fine, just leaves me with a bit of extra sanding to do on the outside, not that there was any shortage of that anyways.

 

[kumba]

Nice work, keep on going with details. I'm prety lazy so i dont think my iron man helmet will have them.

 

[Lord Ned]

I did what any one would do in the face of disaster. I fixed it up with tape, rolled some new Rondo inside (as well as some fiberglass mat to add a little strength to it), and it was as good as new!

Some heavy sanding later (and a few hole-fixes in progress) I'm starting to get happy with some of the curves on the top of the helmet, they're getting nice and full and round. I also took a crack at sanding near the jaw, which is a little difficult with my tools so I did it by hand.

This is the result of my foam ledge from earlier - It's a little difficult to see in the photo but it's anywhere between 1/2cm to a little over a cm thick in places. The edge was so buckled when I did it originally it's gotten really thick in parts. Because of that, I will be dremeling it flatter eventually, but it's not too high on the priority list.

I think in future builds, any open-edged places like this will get foam edges nicely created before resin stage so they're nice and flat and when they get hardened/rondo'd they'll just keep the shape and give it a clean, solid edge.