Wouldn't It Be Easier To.....

[Rebostar]

I hate the word Bondo.... it's body filler!.(<<<UK)

Love the site and have viewed from afar until yesterday, although I joined

to get hold of something none Halo related. :unsure



I have read through a lot of the excellent builds here and come to the conclusion

you are making life harder than it needs to be by body filling the outer shell.



I know I am not building anything right now, but if I was, this is how I would do it....



Build pep and resin coat the outer.

I would then skim the whole inner with about 5-10mm of body filler, pushing it into detailed areas

and smooth out any of sharp bits once set.

Slush resin round the inner (to reinforce).

Start sanding peaks off, body filler is underneath so smoothing will be a lot less work.



I'm not saying you won't need to do spot here and there on the outer with filler.

I would say this way would help most here struggling with keeping detail while smoothing.



But hey, I'm a noob (to Halo armour) so what do I know. :cool

 

[SPARTAN II]

First off, let me welcome you to the 405th! Always nice to see more people join the ranks



As for your proposed step-by-step approach to reinforcing the armour, that's one of the great things about this hobby. Though most people do use the standard techniques for their builds, it's always encouraged to demonstrate new techniques in an attempt to help make others' builds easier.



After all, part of being in this community is sharing our knowledge with others, to help everyone's builds be the best they can be.



I don't know if anyone here has used the same approach as you suggested, but I'm sure it'll prove helpful to some. So, thanks

 

[TurboHeart]

my Team did this for the hand pieces, we just used bondo on the inside of the hand pieces and it worked great.

 

[Atharion]

I did something very similar to this on my helmet, but instead used a 1:1 body filler resin mix on the inside, it sands easier and you can put fiberglass down on the inside as well for added stability.

 

[AngelVirusX]

Yup, I'll swear by the mudglassing method as it is so called. 1:1 resin:bondo. Slush it around getting all the little cracks like you say and for added stability mat down your fibre glass cloth.



The only think I would suggest, from one noob to another, is do it in sections. My mix wasn't as slushy as I thought so I moved from the top of the helmet to the side. The result was, pretty obvious to me now, that the top was slowly sliding down to the sides, ruining the work I had just done. I ended up having to leave it settle and dry on the helmet's top, which is annoyingly giving it more weight on the top than it should if done right.



But that's how we learn right? By making mistakes.



Patience is always key.

 

[ImaGonnaGetYou]

You'll still need fiberglass to support it. Bondo is not a friend of flexibility. Unless there's already some sort of completely sturdy base (resin isn't very sturdy), the bondo will crack and fall apart. And once you have fiberglass on the inside, bondo really doesn't accomplish anything.



It's an interesting idea though. Look into mudglassing, it's a similar concept, and works extremely well with reinforcing pep pieces.

 

[j0ker11]

not a bad idea rebo, this way you dont have to worry too much about sanding through the paper, you can just smooth right through it, but you would use an awful lot of bondo doing this...