Pdxhosedragger's 1st Pep Project Wip...

[PdxHosedragger]

So you completely skipped fiberglassing it, just several layers of resin? How many is "Several"?

Sorry I forgot that part. I did use fiberglass cloth on the inside of the helmet to add strength. Key areas were the back of the neck, and anywhere there was an opening, be it the hole for your noggin or the faceshield opening. I also double glassed the transition from the jaw to the helmet just in case... Several was two coats minimum on the outside, and 4 where it needed it to fill intricate voids.

Today: Fine details... I went to home depot and bought some corrugated 1-1/4" flex pipe. It was $1.58 for a 1 foot section. It was available in black for $8.99, but you get 25 feet of it which just adds to the landfills, harder to cut, and it was much less flexible. This white pipe was soft enough to cut with trauma shears and bended easily to fit the opening.

The first step I took was to trim to size. It was nice to have something easy to cut, cause there was a bit of trial and error getting it to fit. But once you have one, theoretically you can mirror it for the other side. It worked in my case. Before I glued it in, I folded some 150 grit sandpaper loosely and sanded the grooves and the crests of the pipe. This will help with the adhesion of the black paint it's going to get and would be very tedious to do after the fact... To attach them I used the Thin CA Superglue, because it penetrates and goes right into the joint.

I am planning on doing something to dress up the visor. I'm going to go more along the route of getting gold window tint film and cutting out a decal and applying it to the faceshield. this will be less expensive, simple, and will only obscure view where the tint is applied vs doubling up the visor.

In response to the firefighter spartan idea, I'm putting it on hold. I really would like one to look like the real deal first. My second one will probably be the fire one that will incorporate a helmet with a mock regulator on the mask, a chrome faceshield, integrated air tanks on the back of the chest piece, pressure gauges, red and blue LED's in the shoulder of the chest piece and the helmet, and the incorporation of perhaps these firefighting nozzles into a NEW weapon. It would be a large rocket launcher type of gun. (The longer tubular nozzle is about 3 feet long) Unfortunately, the distributor for these wants my first born child for these. Any other ideas to pimp my pep would also be taken into consideration.

 

[ilikecats]

Try adding some earth magnets so you can stick your water hoses to the back of the armour.

 

[PdxHosedragger]

I'm going to start the HD Chest this afternoon. I loaded it into Pepakura Designer and it says it is 37.6 cm wide. My question to all of you is what was the overall size of the scale you used vs. your actual width? ie. Are you 40 cm wide, and did a 38 cm wide scaled chest work best? DO you want the chest exactly as wide as the wearer, or slightly narrower for fit, looks and comfort?

I'm trying to avoid building a separate Lo-Fi version just for sizing purposes... Have a great weekend!

 

[Reventorghini]

Is the black thing beside the silver thing (very descriptive, I know) some sort of hose nozzle? Looks kind of like a scope to me.

 

[PdxHosedragger]

Is the black thing beside the silver thing (very descriptive, I know) some sort of hose nozzle? Looks kind of like a scope to me.

The 'black thing' is an Akron 250 gpm 2-1/2" nozzle that we use on bigger fires. The silver tube is a National Foam PC-31 nozzle used to apply retardant foam to flammable liquid spills. I just thought they looked pretty cool and could be used if I decided to go with the fire spartan. Unfortunately these nozzles are pretty damn expensive!

 

[PdxHosedragger]

Today was a lazy day for me. I spent most of my day prepping for the FS HD Chest. I'm really super nit-picky and detail oriented, so I sat down and just color coded and creased all my folds. I printed a cover sheet that details the scale and other vital info since I had to enlarge it a bit for me, then I printed, and prepped all 48 pages. I also reprint all the pages to a .PDF file withOUT the tab numbers which makes it easier to see some of the intricate fold lines on paper. And there are a ton of them on this version. (Thanks Flying Squirrel!) Now All I have to do is zip through them with my x-acto. This will make it seem like the build is going faster because all the grunt work has been done, and I won't be heating my house with the hot glue gun either. Tomorrow, I cut and glue.

 

[PdxHosedragger]

I started the actual gluing process today. My progress has slowed down thanks to my coworkers who have been giving me friendly grief about this 'arts and crafts' project. I normally whip out the glue gun and do a little pepping at work during the evening down-time while we the guys are relaxing, but now I just keep my stuff at home. The chest piece should be done tonight, and ready for resin tomorrow. It's rainy up here so I'll have to do this in my cold garage. Blah. I had to scale this armor up about 4 cm because of my athletic build and this really screwed me up. First of all, I had to rearrange the pieces after the resizing which makes it impossible to locate some of the smaller ones in the 48 page stack of cardstock. The major issue however is that the support struts were pushing the size limits of a page in their original size, and now that I have rescaled them they won't print properly. My thought is to head down to the local Sherwin-Williams Paint store and get a bunch of 1 gallon and 5 gallon wooden stir sticks to trim to what ever size I need them to be.

 

[JangoFett140]

Very nice looks great! The fireman themed spartan would look SICK! hope to see it someday. From what I learned about torso scale is that the "sleeves/arm strap things" need to be 2-3 cm. in from the edge of your shoulder. If its to the edge it gets in the way of your shoulder pieces. btw thanks for that great idea of where to get flextube.

 

[SprayNoob]

So for the helmet, did you just Resin outside then bondo'd? and looking good with the helmet and chest

 

[PdxHosedragger]

Very nice looks great! The fireman themed spartan would look SICK! hope to see it someday. From what I learned about torso scale is that the "sleeves/arm strap things" need to be 2-3 cm. in from the edge of your shoulder. If its to the edge it gets in the way of your shoulder pieces. btw thanks for that great idea of where to get flextube.

Thanks for the sizing tips. I got the pectoral and neck section done, and in front of the mirror it looked spot on with just enough room on either side to allow my shoulders to articulate freely. I totally meant to get someone to take a picture so I could post it for a second opinion, but I got carried away and started framing up the back section and my head won't fit through the hole now. Damn!

SprayNoob: Pretty much everything I've done is in the thread somewhere. I did glass the inside.

Update! I can't wait to glass the inside of this bad boy. I've been messing around with some mockups and have found the simplest way to get a solid fiberglass inner surface. I'll post pics when I start to glass the inside of the chest! I'm stoked about this!

 

[BFDesigns]

As pertaining to the hose idea that you're using, pretty sweet idea. I personally used whole round pieces of Waterfall conduit and bondoed them into place on the inside of the vent cutouts. Then in order to get the motorcycle visor to fit all the way around the front evenly, I used 2 pieces of 1/2 inch acrylic rod and snapped them in between the bottom of the visor and the top of the conduits. It worked and now they're taped in place and not coming out but they gave me an excellent almost seamless fit around the bottom.

 

[BFDesigns]

In response to the firefighter spartan idea, I'm putting it on hold. I really would like one to look like the real deal first. My second one will probably be the fire one that will incorporate a helmet with a mock regulator on the mask, a chrome faceshield, integrated air tanks on the back of the chest piece, pressure gauges, red and blue LED's in the shoulder of the chest piece and the helmet, and the incorporation of perhaps these firefighting nozzles into a NEW weapon. It would be a large rocket launcher type of gun. (The longer tubular nozzle is about 3 feet long) Unfortunately, the distributor for these wants my first born child for these. Any other ideas to pimp my pep would also be taken into consideration.

If you watched that show Prototype This on Discovery last week they had some awesome renovations to standard firefighter compliment that would make anyone feel like a superhero! One was a thermal optic eyepiece that allowed you to see through smoke and the other one was an extinguishing/oxygen backpack that wired the blast from a CO2 extinguisher through a vent on your left wrist. The trigger was on the other side of your wrist. They called the whole thing the pyro pack.

You Tube Link: PyroPack

The arm armor that she's wearing is where the extingusher hose comes out of.

 

[LastSpartan]

I have to say, you work fast and it's awesome!

This should not be in the Noob section since it's too good!

 

[rvb18]

oh wow not bad for a guy who started with great stuff

 

[PdxHosedragger]

As pertaining to the hose idea that you're using, pretty sweet idea. I personally used whole round pieces of Waterfall conduit and bondoed them into place on the inside of the vent cutouts. Then in order to get the motorcycle visor to fit all the way around the front evenly, I used 2 pieces of 1/2 inch acrylic rod and snapped them in between the bottom of the visor and the top of the conduits. It worked and now they're taped in place and not coming out but they gave me an excellent almost seamless fit around the bottom.

Do you have a link to this product? I'm having trouble picturing it in my head.

 

[BFDesigns]

Do you have a link to this product? I'm having trouble picturing it in my head.

Home Depot sells the Waterfall Conduit (I think it's 1 or 1-1/2 inches ID). It's black and kinda glossy. Should be in the garden section where they sell fountain pumps & supplies.

The Acrylic Rod you'll have to look up on Google. I went to Everything Plastics but it's really easy to drive there from where I'm at (Philadelphia Area). I don't know of an online place that will sell it but I'm sure that they're out there.