volkov said:
alright, so, heaviness obviously being a problem, I've still always been curious as to how to make detailed metal armor, or at least a mold which could be used to create metal pulls.. I've been thinking, and if you could find something with a low freezing point, and extremely high specific heat, you should be able to freeze it over a fiberglass/plastic piece without damaging it... then if you could cut it in half (or have seperators in place before freezing) and then clamp it together (keeping it at whatever low temperature) you SHOULD be able to dump a metal with a high melting point but a low specific heat into it (something like aluminium?) I'm not really a chemist or anything (duh), and this idea might be retarded, if it is, please tear it apart and let a mod lock it or something, but if someone who thinks this idea borders on the remotely rational and gives me a suggestion, I'd love to try it on a plastic gun or something.
Guns are one thing to try for in cast aluminum or cast magnesium. Here's the main problem with using these materials for armor however:
-Cast Aluminum: Brittle, prone to incredible cracking, very soft (you can carve it with a knife), and overall just not a desirable metal for working with.
-Cast Magnesium: this one should be obvious as its properties are similar to aluminum in durability and magnesium powder is a great fire starter.
I would highly suggest (and I may personally do this as I'm a jeweler and I've been working with metal exclusively for the past 4 years) that you try using these:
-Sheet Brass: It's incredibly easy to work with and very easy to braise (silver solder) together. Very durable, has the ability to be heat treated. Can just as easily be riveted over the top of your resined armor in sections without the need for heat. You can also go over the top of this stuff with a spray rubber base and begin to paint from there. I would suggest an 18 gauge thickness at the very least with a 16 or 14 gauge thickness being the most desirable.
-Sheet Steel: Use the same rivet over the top method as the brass. Again 16-14 gauge thickness most desirable with an 18 gauge minimum!
The up sides to not painting these is that you can get a really cool high polished look when you are done that will last for quite a long time if you use a marine (boat) varnish over the top of it. How friggin' awesome would it be to have a suit of shiny gold or silver armor?
The only downside is the weight factor which isn't very much all things considered. We're talkin' about 60-80 lbs for the full harness (suit), which is about the same weight as the full suits of armor that were worn on the battlefields of medieval Europe.
If you want to save weight, have a lot of money that you are looking to blow, and have the right equipment at your disposal, then you can weld together 16 gauge titanium plates, polish the whole thing up, and anodize them (green, blue, red, gold, any color within the electromagnetic spectrum). This should cut the weight in half and give you something that is totally durable for a few hundred years.
