might want to sign up to the 405th forums - lots of nice tutorials on how to strengthen pep. (in fact, you may not even need to sign up to look at the tutorials)
multiple methods
- paper pep in card stock
- use a polyester resin (ie the liquid component of fibreglassing) to paint on the cardstock OUTSIDE just to make it a little stiffer
- reinforced the inside with fibgreglass, aqua resin, jesmonite, polyurethan resin, hotglue, rondo what ever you prefer
- bondo the outside and smooth/sand till you develop lung cancer
Fibreglass is nasty stuff, but cheap. And the smell does eventually go away.
aqua resin is water based fibreglass like material - good alternative to polyester resin, and it has non-toxic fumes, but it is expensive
the 40th guys like using "rondo" - mixing bondo with polyester resin so its a little runny and slush abt on the inside.
btw the jeans and smooth cast resin is just a variant of a method Stormtrooper costuemrs have been using for years, they soak strips of cloth with CA glue and stick into the helmets to repair em
their aint a definitive method of correctness. just what ever you are happy to experiment with. problem with papermache - its too wet to begin with - resulting in lots of warpage. once dry its too brittle.