giftshopduane

wher in new england are you? i have a great hobby store here in marlboro, spare time hobbies on rte 20 they have plastic sheets, also home depot sells white for sale sign in pretty good thicknesses. i picked up a large handicap sign for $4 will work just fine, plus ata supplied me with 2 sheets of hips with my build. try evergreen plastics on line, you can order whatever you want. try ------

yeah, silly. i just got my tk boots for my birthday, pretty surprised by the quality. cant beat them.

I always try to do multiple thin coats, I found that if I let each coat set up for an hour or so I can get 3 coats on and thats plenty. Paint it then set it down for a day, I put mine on top of the refridgerator, it keeps the kids away, its up high in the warm air, and I figure that the fridge fan must be circulating decent air. Also typically (for some reason..) darker colors take longer to dry, this was true in school with our oil paints too. I found the traps dried really quick, but it took one or two days before i was comfortable with the black. The pickling you see might be an incompatability with your base paint, what did you paint the helmet with (assuming you did and thats the pickling your seeing. Might need to let it cure and "off gas" longer.

oh.. start with the side with the biggest gap, that way they will all come in to be the same thickness, did mine once the first time.

screw the caps on, redrill if needed, no big deal. then with a pencil lay it against the side of the helmet, put the tip of the pencil against the earpiece at the widest gap, take note, now run the pencil down the side of the piece keeping the tip at the relative position of the gap, trim off the plastic. what your basically doing is scribing the contour of the helmet onto the piece. make sense? it does in my head.

I used permatex 5min plastic epoxy, glued the top left the gap at the bottom for circulation. Rough trim the lenses,hold the up against the inside, then from the outside trace the opening with a pencil, then trim the lens just a bit larger. Remember thicker lenses will not flex as much as uncut welders shields.

Thanks, colors and sizes noted, I picked up Humbrol blue but got the wrong color, I have Fusion True Blue in spray, I might try this, looks closer, I want to spray the stripes as the bleed under the tape with the brush is too much, haven't an airbrush kit. Working on it tonight. Yes I'm going for TD. Will build a TK helmet at some time soon.

Made a few changes last night, I fixed the vocoder (had too many stripes 9 not 7) trimmed the brow, painted the tube stripes. I the the stripes are too dark and short, possibly not enough curve? You be the judge do I need to change them? The flash made them lighter than they are. I'm thinking they need to be closer to the color of blue painters tape? This is an ATA "B" grade pull, minor areas didn't pull as sharp, but overall I am more than happy with the quality and finished product. Thanks T for the helmet.