My First Helmet

Joelight

Jr Hunter
This is my first helmet. It is being made out of 24 gauge sheet steel, the same steel used by ford for car bodies, and it has some kind of oil or rust resistant coating on it. I am using the WOF templates. I cut out most of the parts already and I am welding stuff together. Once I'm finished welding I will grind down everything nice and smooth.

A warning, I am a beginner welder so my welds look very bad.
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I am still thinking about that. I want to make the entire helmet out of the same material so I'm thinking about using the WOF dome template and just hammering it until its smooth.
 
Thanks for the compliments.

Here is an update, I got the cheek parts welded together. Everything still needs to be cleaned up a bit.
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Cool. I've always wanted to know how to weld, I'm jealous. It looks like theres a bit of excess material on the upper cheek corners sticking out over the visor area. I know you haven't cleaned it up yet but I wanted to make sure you saw it. :) It's a nice helmet, keep up the good work!
 
I finally got around to working on my helmet again today and thought I would post a quick update. All I had time to do was blend the cheek parts and the face together. I think it looks pretty good. It is not at all perfect but it'll do.


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Thanks, it was a little bit easier to blend the parts together than I thought it would be.

Today I had a couple of hours of free time and decided to work on the left ear piece. The first layer of bondo I had already applied a couple of days ago to hold the parts together. Today I sanded the extra bondo off and put a second layer on to fill in the gaps. It should turn out looking pretty good once it's all sanded down.
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Another quick update. I finished the left ear piece, I think it turned out pretty good. There are still some small spots around the edges that need to be fixed but I will take care of that when I attach it to the helmet.

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Hey thanks a ton. It does take a lot of time, the worst part is that I'm learning how to do most of the fabrication stuff as I go, so it's taking me a lot longer than it would somebody who knows what they are doing.

Quick update (unfortunately no pictures). I started on the dome today. To make it easier to fit I cut the 3 sections of the WOF dome template into all of the separate triangle parts. They need more shaping before they will fit good enough to be welded together. I will post some pics after I get them to fit together right.
 
I'm no metal worker myself, so maybe Novall could enlighten us better, but, for the dome, wouldn't it be easier to dish it out of 1 piece of metal instead of welding small pieces together?

Or, if the metal is thin enough, perhaps you should mould it around a template, like a skateboarding helmet?
 
Thanks Ordeyn.

Yes dishing out a single piece of metal would be easier, but I didn't have enough material to do that. I could fit all of the pieces on the sheet metal I had though like a puzzle. I'm just short on cash at the moment and didn't want to go buy more stuff if I didn't have to. So I'll figure this out just to save money.
 
As a piece of advice, I know money is tight, but if you want it done properly, I urge you to splash out on a small sheet of metal.

I appreciate tight budgets, but this is your bucket man, done right it will be your companion for life.

It is your project and entirely your decision and I'm sure some would say loads of weld marks might look cool. I have a slight love affair with making helmets and if you are putting effort into those earpieces, the dome should look just as awesome :)

Would perhaps going to a scrap merchant and seeing if you could get some on the cheap help?
 
Thanks Zuka.

Saz, I actually started a little bit on forming the pieces to thier right shapes this afternoon and I think it will turn out good, especially after I grind it smooth and bondo the thing up nice. If it turns out that it just doesn't look right I will go and get more of the steel I'm using but I'm going to at least try it this way first, it can't hurt anything but time, and to do it right I'm not in any hurry.
 
I've been working a lot on my helmet. And I haven't updated in a while so I thought I would post a bunch of pics.

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The first 2 are the dome that I have been working on. I doesn't look very good in the picture but in person it turned out really nice. I still need to take a grinder to it an smooth out the outside before I attach it to the helmet, I need to cut off about 3/4 of an inch off the bottom, and some bondo will take care of the rest. Could be made a little more symmetrical too.

The right ear piece is half way complete. The top part is done, not shown is the guide for the stalk, cut out of some 1/4" thick Plexiglas in 2 pieces to be layered together.

The range finder is almost done. 1 more layer of bondo to fill in the smaller holes and it will be finished. The stalk is cut out of the same 1/4" Plexiglass. The range finder parts are made from some thin aluminum.

Sorry I haven't posted in a while, I've been busy with school and some other stuff. I will try to update more often. Thanks for looking.
 
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