NotRookie

It must have been too much paint, then. I waited a few days before applying the clear coat, and it was all Rustoleum brand. That makes sense, since there must be 20+ layers on that thing. At this point, I think the helmet is mostly made of paint Thank you!

I sort of fell down the perfectionist rabbit hole and painted this helmet many, many times. I managed to pull myself out of it, but I don’t like how the paint ended up. There were at least 2 times when I’ve painted it better, but redid it because of minor imperfections. I guess I should’ve quit while I was ahead. Regardless, I’m counting this paint job as done unless I get it kicked back from my GML for being too sloppy. I had a weird issue when I put on the clear coat where it sort of crinkled up in places, and when I sanded it down, the crinkles were still there, even though the helmet was perfectly smooth to the touch. (Shrug) If anyone can tell what this is (and how to avoid it with the rest of the armor), I’d be very grateful. I realized after taking the photos that I forgot to do the ear bars/outline, but this is what the helmet looks like now. I took the pics from 3 feet away, so hopefully the paint looks acceptable.

It’s been a couple of days of bad painting weather, so I figured I’d post pics of the taped off helmet for you all to peruse (and point out if I made an error). This is all with the vinyl tape recommended by Firedog (Thanks!)

While I’ve been sanding, filling, sanding, priming, and sanding, I’ve redone the tears/traps with a fine point sharpie (as compared to the ultra-fine sharpie I used before). I think it’s gotten a bit better. It doesn’t look great up close, but from 3 feet out it looks acceptable, IMO. I’ll use the new tape I purchased to tape off the grey and repaint the rest of the helmet white around it. Hopefully it looks decent. I’ve also done the rank bars, but I forgot to take of picture of it afterwards, so just use your imagination here. They’re currently taped off.

I haven’t actually tried to cut resin with it. I just sort of assumed it would be a pain in the an impolite person. did you also resin the forearms and shins? I never even considered those because they kind of need to be flexible. How did they work out?

Hmmm.... I sort of washed it in that I was wet sanding the armor, but I was not aware of the release agent. That explains the crud that kept coming off as I sanded it. Hopefully the next few pieces will go by more quickly after I use degreaser on them.

Almost forgot, I also plan to resin the cod and butt plate, but I’m waiting until I get them sized right, since they’ll almost certainly need to be cut down some. I think the shoulder bells and (maybe) the thighs might be good candidates for resin, too. What do you all think?

I wanted to put the helmet out of mind for a while, so I spent a couple of days working on the chest plate, backplate, and abdomen. I resin-ed the inside of the chest and backplate for extra durability, since I’m about 100% sure I won’t be cutting them down later. Then I spent about two days sanding all the crud and tacky stuff off of the outside until the chest and back were smooth - the abdomen still needs more sanding, but my arm was about to fall off at that point. I then put primer on the chest and back. I found surprisingly few pinholes, but I haven’t fixed them yet. I found a bizarre depression in the little trapezoid above the O II box, which should be fun to sand down once I fill it in. My plan is to fit the abdomen and chest/back (with some soon-to-be-ordered urethane shoulderstraps) before extending outward to the thighs and shins. I’ll hold off on actually painting them white until I’m pretty confident in the fit. Although I’ll be sanding and priming for a week or so at this rate.

Thanks for the advice, all. I’ve ordered the masking tape and spent some time sanding the bleeds smooth. I took the opportunity to test my paint pen for drawing the black outlines on the traps/tears. It doesn’t look great. I think a thin black sharpie might be better. Either way, I’d rather find out now that it didn’t work than ruin a nearly-finished helmet, so at least there’s a silver lining to this. I sanded off some of the black paint, so it didn’t look QUITE this bad originally, but it was really uneven and tough to make into a neat straight line.

Well, I spent about an hour taping off the grey areas on the helmet, including taping off in between each individual tooth. Unfortunately, the results came out like hot garbage, especially around the last tooth. Edit: For the record, I did the first layer in white in case of it bleeding under the tape. It didn’t help. I know what I have to do to fix this (basically sand and start all over), but I’m getting really ^*%#ing sick of painting this helmet over and over again. I’m going to take a few days off from this project to get my head right.

I’ve gotten the white paint on the helmet to the point where it’s “good enough”. It has some imperfections, but I doubt anyone will see them besides me in normal life. I’ve been looking for admiral grey to paint the traps/tears/teeth, but I can only seem to find the paint in bottles meant to be painted on with a brush or using an airbrush. No proper grey spraypaint. Does anyone know where to get the proper color? edit: Also, I have some T-nuts to hold the visor in place, but I’m unsure how to bolt them in. Do I glue a bolt to the inside of the helmet around the edges of the visor?

A minor update: I’ve been painting and sanding the helmet in Gloss white for about a week (not as many coats as you’d think, since it’s been hot and rainy most of the week). I’m slowly getting better at painting, and the layers have been building up, so once I get a pretty good coat on it with few runs, I’ll sand it down with something like 600-800 grit sandpaper to fix whatever issues the surface has, then polish the hell out of it with 1k+ grit sandpaper. I think that should take care of the white. I’ve also attached the shins in the front, and done some test fitting and trimming of the forearms. I’ve got snaps in place on the abdomen, but I realized I should probably do all my test fittings with the undersuit, gloves, and boots on at a minimum so I don’t end up having to re-trim. I’ve got a (level 1) undersuit coming via Amazon, and I’ve had the Imperial Boots boot and glove combo for a while, so I’m just waiting on that to come in so I can start making my harness for the abdominal plate. Slow and steady progress is being made.

Thanks for the advice. This is my first time painting something in white. A black, textured Kylo helmet is very forgiving compared to most other projects. In contrast, this shiny, gloss white TK helmet makes every imperfection just blindingly obvious. I’ve ordered the bolts and wingnuts (and some washers to increase the surface area). Once I’m done with the helmet, I plan to start on the ab/back/chest area.

I’ve been thinking of how to attach the belt boxes, and I plan to steal 11b30b4’s idea of attaching them via wingnut to the belt. However, I was wondering if it would be a good idea to go one step further and just attach the belt to the ab plate with the same wingnut/bolt that’s attaching the box to the belt. It seems like it would be easier in the long run, since I wouldn’t have to worry about positioning the belt properly every single time I put it on, and won’t have to worry about the Velcro coming apart mid-troop and having my belt fall apart. Has anyone tried this? Is there a downside I’m not thinking of here?

I painted the whole helmet gloss white, and managed to somehow get the paint to be powdery right next to a run, which I consider to be a rather impressive feat. I had planned to move forward even if I found a couple pinholes, because I don’t want to fall into the perfection trap and never actually move forward, but I found WAY too many pinholes once the gloss white was in. Good thing I botched that other stuff above, because now I have two excuses to sand and fill again before moving forward. Oh well. If it was easy, it wouldn’t be satisfying to finish. Edit: Also, the FiberGlast resin came in today. I plan on applying it to basically everything but the shins, forearms, and biceps once I’m satisfied with my fitting. If it seems relatively flexible in the other parts, I may use it there, too. I just don’t want to make them so rigid I can’t put them on.