Becoming Master Chief; Part 6

A.K.A. "Why Halfords should introduce a loyalty card scheme"

Another busy Saturday round Dads trying to get the helmet (a.k.a. that fucking bastard thing) completed. Last weekend saw major progress, as you may have read - the helmet is completely fibreglassed and a lot tidier now the initial batch of Davids p38 sealant has been sanded down.

This week has seen me ordering some more stuff, namely what will be worn underneath this own thing. After various recommendations, I've gone for underarmour stuff from Progear. But, enough of me thinking on how the expense of this project would have probably made it more straightforward (and just as cheap) for me to buy a finished costume, how's the project coming along?

Yesterday was the tidy up operation; to neaten up the sanding, cleaning up some of the messier areas and trying to get the thing to a reasonable state.

This is the helmet in the state it was in yesterday morning after a bit more sanding. The shape is definitely starting to appear, but it's still very messy. Certain edges aren't well enough defined and it's a complete mess around the edges of the visor. Even the precision of the dremel struggles to make neat lines - just seems to end up carving little trenches in everything.

On the plus side though, the helmet is rock solid. The combination of fibreglass and p38 means I could happily kick it around the garden and it wouldn't get damaged. It's fairly light too - getting lighter the more I sand away. It's strong even in the parts where I've sanded so much and the p38 is so thin you can see sunlight through the helmet. After many, many hours of sanding I decided to try the primer. As it's acrylic, it'll hide a lot of sins and cover all the elements where the sanding isn't 100%. I timed this bit perfectly as it started to tip down with rain and I didn't fancy lurking in the garage doing it. Some photographs were taken (click on the ones below for a bigger shot).

It's still not quite there; lots of detailing is needed with me carving some straight lines into it to break up the surface, and that visor area (despite being a lot smoother now) is still scruffy. But thats the aim for today; get some lines carved into it, tidy up the visor area and add some detailing. Then for the final paint job and weathering. Time will tell how much I have to report in the update I'll do later today.