Airhead

Well.
It's been a while.
What can I say.
I have a proper job.
And a family.
And a wife who likes to think of lists of jobs for me to do around the house.


So sue me.

Following on from my last AWESOME update on the Rocketeer helmet, I'd like to indulge on the details of how I created the air vents at the top of the helmet which at present are just some unsightly holes....and believe me, I have seen some unsightly holes in my time and these are up there with the worst of them!

What's the point of an air vent if the air doesn't get to your head, right?!

I LOVE the smell of resin

Seeing as how this is a pepakura project where I decided at the beginning to go "back to basics" with paper, fibre glass and body filler, I fabricated the original pep file templates and coated them with fibre glass resin and put matting on the inside of the paper "form" ready to lay onto the helmet for fibreglassing into place.

I guess that once the vent is fixed in place and the inside painted black, it would look fine but for some reason I decided that the vent "hole" could probably be closed off with a piece of EVA foam fixed to the inner surface.

Also, at this stage, I was not comfortable with the thickness of the paper vent and also the eye sockets and mouthpiece. I figure that at some stage I will need to add some EVA foam to these edges to get a uniform thickness.

BUT WAIT!!!! I HAVE (a rare) IDEA

all of my very own!

What if....

I push the piece of foam I was going to use to "face" the inside of the vent, through.
This creates it's own curve and would just need gluing into place giving a nice smooth curve and a uniform thickness at the front edge.

Note two things however...
1. The vent hole needs to be trimmed to give a better transition between the two surfaces.
2. The underside of the foam "vent" is uneven due to the pattern on one side.


So. Using my trusty Dremel I trimmed the vent hole to give a better contour and sanded the leading edges of the foam to give a flatter surface on the front and underside. After which I used a heat gun to slightly melt the surface to seal it prior to painting.

A fairly clean cut but you can see the structure of the foam is quite rough.

After sanding but prior to heat gun treatment.

It is now just a simple case of positioning the foam on the inside of the helmet and pushing it through to the shape that I want it. 

TOP TIP: Give it a short blast with a heat gun to pre-form the shape all little.

Now it just needs a bit of glue.

Let the battle of the glues commence!

Up until now, I have always used either hot glue or superglue to fix my foam projects. I'm always looking for ideas to steal inspiration from other sources and a couple of my top "go-to" places are The Evil Ted Smith Website or The RPF. One both, it is often recommended to use "Barge" cement which from what I can work out is pretty much only available in the good old U.S of A.
I've tried Evostik Contact Adhesive but so far, I've not quite got the knack of using it consistently so I tend to just go with superglue most of the time. Especially as it is often available in Lidl and BM Stores in multipacks for only a couple of pounds.

However....

I do like to experiment a bit from time to time so I went and bought a couple different types of glue to attach the foam vent to the primer coated body filler on the helmet. The first is a brand of Leather glue which I was hoping would be an equivalent to Barge cement,

Why oh why is glue so expensive?!

and the other was a promising looking candidate in a sexy black colour scheme which looked manly and strong.

In the interests of science, I used Bostik Leather Adhesive on the left vent and Unibond 100% Power Glue on the right vent.

Which one won?!

Well.

Actually.

Maybe it's just me.

Maybe I'm just not a patient man.

Maybe there is just something fundamentally wrong with me.

The glue that held the best was...

...neither.

The leather adhesive "almost" kept a permanent bond but began to lift slightly and the 100% manly POWER glue just took too long to cure to a point that I could get an instant bond on contact.

I actually ended up reinforcing the bond using a hot glue gun....

I guess for now I'll just have to stick with the super/hot glue combo. (I did a pun there, did you spot it? Clever eh?)

Starting to look pretty damned good to me!

The end result, I am pretty happy with. I'm not completely happy with the "welds" but I'll keep them as they are for now. Who knows, once painted you probably won't notice them being a bit "rough".

So what next...

Well, first I think I need to add another bit of "piping" around the base at the back of the helmet and add some thickness to the eye and mouth holes. Then some lenses and it will just be a simple matter of painting it (the best bit).

Once I figure out how to shape and install some lenses I'll let you know!