MOW Gauntlets for beginners (like me!)

Mr Surfacer is a liquid gap-filler product made by Gunze-Sanguyo for filling small gaps and scrapes in the surfaces in plastic models. You can probably find it at your local hobby store that deals with plastic model kits. It is a bunch of acrylic plastic micro-spheres suspended in a lacquer-based paint. It comes in 3 different grades: 500 (thickest), 1000 (medium), and 1200 (thinnest).
I have used the 500-grade for filling in any unsightly scrapes and scratches in the finish of my gauntlets. However, I have found great success using the 1200 grade mixed with a little lacquer thinner to fill in the micro-bubbles. I dip my brush into some lacquer thinner, brush out any excess on the side of the jar, dip the brush into the Mr Surfacer 1200, and brush off the excess on the side of the jar. This mix tends to fill in the micro-bubbles:
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On the left is an application of Mr Surfacer 1200 with some lacquer thinner, while the dot on the right is a brush of Mr Surfacer 500.
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Most of the bubbles on the gauntlets tend to be on the bottom half. They tend to concentrate themselves around these rectangular indents.
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I had to apply 3 coats of Mr Surfacer with sandings of 400 grit wet sandpaper inbetween to fill all the micro-bubbles. Don't sand too deep, you'll end up sanding away the Mr Surfacer and creating a divot in the resin.
 
Mr Surfacer is meant to be sanded away after an application. I used 400-grit wet/dry sandpaper for this task.
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Pretty simple. Wet the sandpaper, rub it back and forth over the Mr Surfacer to flatten it out, then scrub it clean with a soft brush.
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Let it dry in the dish rack after a cleaning and scrubbing to get rid of any sanding residue.

No pics for this, but I did a final coat of primer and waited 30 min before applying two coats of Tremclad Bright Silver.
 
Back again. Look, I painted my gauntlets silver! :rolleyes
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I have also masked my gauntlets. I spent two nights doing this, but it's really only a 1-hour job at the absolute most. RPF, TDH and all related sites have been going down during a server change, so no reliable access to reference pics. I have been using Winsor & Newton masking fluid. Good stuff!
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Here I am mixing up some Humbrol 78: Cockpit Green for painting the gauntlets. I airbrushed it on after masking off all the silver damage.

I really should have taken pics of the next step, but I didn't. Before removing the masking fluid (and accessing TDH galleries for reference whenever I could during the server changeover) I applied Humbrol 79, which is a dark gray. In some parts, I applied deliberately painted 'chips' while in other areas I applied lightly drybrushed streaks.
 
AAAND Ta Da! They should look like this!
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Note all of the subtle brown, gray, and rusty tones in Humbrol 78! :D JK, look for my thread on using oil paints to weather armor.
 
So far it looks great, but the color is a bit too dark (it might be from the artificial light or the camera). The ESB gauntlet/jetpack color is lighter than the helmet dome/lower cheek color, which is also lighter than the armor base color:

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Gauntlets are now almost finished. Here's what I've been up to on them...
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This is the calculator pad that RKD was kind enough to send to me free with my recently completed armor. It's a pressure cast bubble-free resin piece, and has been painted with an undercoat of DupliColor's adhesion promoter, a coat of primer, and two coats of Tremclad Silver. I used Tamiya Clear Acrylic Red and Blue for the colored buttons. Beside it is my metal cast dental expander. I snipped short the finishing nail so it won't penetrate into the insides of the gauntlet.
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I scratched off the paint, the primer, scratch filler coats, all the way down to the bare resin. I also drilled a hole for the dental expander post. I then applied some JB Weld...
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...and clamped it into place. Finally, I used some thin plastic card, cut it to shape, painted it with some Humbrol black enamel, and Krazy Glued it onto the gauntlets between the dental expander and the calculator pad.
 
Moving onto the right gauntlet...
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I cannibalized a pocket LED flashlight and wired in a slide switch. This will be the light inside the right gauntlet front.
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With some spare wire and heat-shrink, I isolated the LED, the watch battery case from the flashlight body, and wired in the slide switch. With the trusty JB Weld, I epoxied the switch into the recess I had carved out for it over the winter.
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Here is the switch sticking out of the gauntlet body. The 'button' that came with the gauntlets will be epoxied onto this later.
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Back inside the gauntlet, I cut, fit, and painted a piece of plastic card to act as the face that the LED will be glued into. I also attempted to reinforce all these pieces with a polyurethane glue called PL Premium Ultra by LePage. This product will work fine in areas far from the surface of the costume, but don't use it for any pieces that might show. This glue foams up and expands as it dries. I had to cut away a whole bunch that had leaked into the front and expanded all over the place, then repaint the face of the plastic plate.
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To prevent any light leak out of the inside of the gauntlet all over my gloves and hands, I painted the glue black. You can see where I glued the light battery body with the PL Premium glue (works fine here :rolleyes ). I have also hot-glued in a set of gauntlet darts from Mojo Fett.
 
Moving onto the plastic tube...
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I took a lag bolt of appropriate thickness, cut it to an appropriate length (5 cm), and slimmed down one half of it by putting it into a drill press and filing the thread off as it spun. I did this to fit into a hole in the plastic hose block at the back of the gauntlet I had drilled ages ago.
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There was still a little thread left on the skinny side of the bolt. I was able to thread this into the hole (with a little effort). I then gave the bolt a couple coats of black enamel.
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This is a piece of plastic hose that I picked up as part of a kit for the extendable sprayer for your kitchen sink. I did away with the excess hose and drilled a small hole in one end of the tube. This will hook onto a cheap carabiner in the outer sleeve of my flightsuit. The carabiner slips through a couple loops of stretchy elastic material sewn into the shoulder of my flightsuit and pulled through a grommet in the sleeve.
I applied some JB Weld onto a recess I had drilled onto the bolt while I was filing it down in the shop. I then threaded the hose onto the bolt. A length of microphone/instrument cable slid down the hose and secured to the dollop onto the JB Weld previously applied finished it off.
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Here's the finished product. I slipped a keyring through the holes I drilled at the end of the hose. This should be a quick, easy, and secure connection to the carabiner inside the sleeve of my flightsuit.
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To finish off this post, I did a couple enamel washes over the Alco switches and the gauntlet darts. I use AK Interactive washes (made for realistically weathering model kits) for weathering the metal parts. This worked really well for my toe spikes on my boots. I used NATO Tank wash (thinned black enamel paint) and Rust Streaks (Thinned reddish-brown enamel paint).
 
great tutorial for another beginner... ME! Have book marked this thread.

Although it is dormant now, it has and will continue to help me construct my gauntlets.

Thank you!
 
Thanks for the comments, everyone! The only thing left to do on these things is to put the wires in behind the flamethrower, and maybe throw another pair of magnets on the flamethrower & gauntlet. With all the metal I put on the flamethrower, it's kinda heavy and needs a little more sticking power if I'm gonna troop in it.
 
I actually went with fiberglass cloth on the bottom of my left gauntlet. My original one had warped beyond repair after laying in some fiberglass mat, so Christian sent me a replacement. The nice thing about mat is that the glue holding the strands together dissolves in resin, so it can conform to unusual contours and shapes. I'd say use that on the gauntlet uppers, but maybe use cloth on the lower halves.

I don't know if 2 full layers is actually necessary, to be honest. I did it just to be sure they'd be durable and resistant to cracking or warping. And they now weigh almost 2 pounds each! After 1 layer, the gauntlets stiffen up substantially.
 
I followed necronauts instructions for fiberglassing and laid 3 layers of mat on the tops and bottoms. They came out great, although that is a bunch of fiberglass to cut through for wiring/batteries/switches and buttons/darts..... Haha.
 
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