NikNak's SgtFang Progress Thread (PIC Intensive)

You could always get some fiberglass and cloth and brush in some fiberglass gel and lay the swatch of cloth in and then brush a little more fiberglass on top. This will give an excellent reiforcement inside. But do this process out doors. Its stinky but very strong.

Devilstar2k2 said:

JB Weld on the inside, Bondo on the outside.

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Couldn't agree more......there's no such thing as building something too strong.

Steve

I am pretty sure that I am gonna end up fiberglassing the inside of the bucket but I wont be able to until after I move. The mandible is stable now at least with the CA glue and filler on both sides. I have some really good industrial strength Expoy that I am gonna throw on the inside after I sand down the filler.

I also started squaring the "cheeks" with my exacto knife. You can see it a little bit in the pics with the broken mandible. I need to add some filler so that I can make the detail just a little bit sharper.

Are you going to add missing details or just go straight onto paint? The corner you have shown looks good! I'm really looking forward to the rest of the progress.

Man that sucks, I'm sorry that happend! That is the bad part about resin helmets VS. Fiberglass, it tends to be alittle less durable.

Ouch! Fibre glass tissue would be an ideal re- inforcement, a very fine layer; this would make the area effected as good as new with minimum bulk, laminated inside....

zombierepellent said:

Are you going to add missing details or just go straight onto paint? The corner you have shown looks good! I'm really looking forward to the rest of the progress.

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I am still deciding weather or not to add more of the nicks and deeper scratches or not. Considering I am not 100% on what was there during filming and what has happened while the buckets were on tour. I dont think anyone can really have a 100% solid answer.

As far as the wavy brow goes I am not really sure how to go about doing that other than really carefully sanding and puttying. I do not know if I have the patience to do that.

After all its my first bucket and I am really excited to get paint on her. I am trying not to rush as I want it to be good but its hard to be patient all the time.

Nice progress so far!

That crack can be fixed! Fiberglasss it! You can buy fiberglass repair kits at Walmart in the automotive section for $10. Their is probably enough in one kit to do most of the inside of your helmet.

NikNak_aka said:

A disaster almost just happened. I was getting ready to go look at apartments and I had my bucket sitting on my bed. When I went to grab my jacket off the bed it knocked the bucket onto the ground right on to the mandible. It made a pretty nasty crack from the corner of the tvisor area to the rear of the bucket. Thank fully I was able to put some CA glue on it right away. I'll putty it up after the CA dries to cover the crack up.

Do you guys think I need to reinforce this any more than just the CA glue and putty?

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I fiberglassed Batninja SgFang and it seemed to fix the issue and made it a sturdy helmet. I have to say that I would not troop with that bucket without fiberglassing it simply due to how fragile the resin used to make it is. Its a great helmet but the resin used is one of the more brittle resins.

You want to get a bondo fiberglass repair kit and buy the larger size one. Cut the strips in small 1.5" by 4" strips and take your time. The instructions say to use one big peice but that is for filling a hole on a car hood or boat! Use strips... it will work better.

UPDATE 2/28:

So I managed to squeeze out some time last weekend to work on my bucket a little bit. I've finished most of the prep work and now only few things remain before I can start to put paint on it.

First I fixed the crack:




I worked the cheek corners just a little bit with a sharp exacto knife and then filled them a little bit with putty. I plan on going back and adding a little bondo to sharpen the detail a bit.:



The I tackled the Key slots:

Here I put the bucket up to a light to see when I needed to cut through the inside of the bucket to get the long sections of the key holes I then marked off the areas with sharpie.


Then I trimmed out the longer sections just enough so I could fit in some of my slimmer files:


For the top parts of the key slots I used a very small cutting bit to get the general shape there. I then went back with my files to clean them up:


Here is where I left of the the Key slots. I added some putty to try to fix some of the areas that are just bad in the cast but its not an easy area to work. I am not 100% happy with this area and I will go back to it before I go to paint it.:


I then went back and added some of the signature dremel details that can be found on the ESB buckets:


This part was a little bit scary. I marked off areas on the rf ear where I planned to sand it off to:





I then took the plunge and started going to town with the dremel. I did get away from me a few times but it did not cause any major damage that wont be fixed with putty and bondo.



I got a little worried that I had taken too much off so I started to fill the area with a few layers of bondo.



After looking at my references again I am not not sure if I went far enough on the bottom part of the RF ear. I think this weekend I am going to grind some more off of it and see how the RS ear cap fits on it.

Once I figure out the proper height of the earcap base all that is left is to coat the inside with fiberglass using this kit:


After that I will install my Visor using Spideyfett's super cool removable visor method using t-nuts.

After that some priming, some sanding, possibly some filling(if needed) and some more priming.

and then... PAINT!

Update May 1st 2007:

I know its been a while since my last update but I have been working on my bucket among other things over the last few months.

This is kinda of a teaser for a more thorough update when I transfer the rest of the pics off of my camera.


Yes, those are rouge studios ears on a sgt fang bucket



Here's some teasers of the other things I've been working on, appropriate threads to follow in the future.







8)

Very nice...can't wait to see more!

Looks awesome, can't wait to see more! And that gaunt looks perfect

wow is that cold cast?

The Jango? Yes, it is cold cast. It is in fact #5 of the Fettpride "Scratch and dent" ILM buckets that were on the cargo hold a few months ago. I actually just put a coat of primer on the mandibles and will paint the blue on tomorrow evening... but the rest is for another thread

i gotta stop looking at helmet progress threads, it makes me want to go and order another fangs when i don't have the first one anywhere near finished. it's barely started.

NikNak_aka said:

The Jango? Yes, it is cold cast. It is in fact #5 of the Fettpride "Scratch and dent" ILM buckets that were on the cargo hold a few months ago. I actually just put a coat of primer on the mandibles and with paint the blue on tomorrow evening... but the rest is for another thread

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Looks good Rob....

NikNak_aka said:

Do you guys think I need to reinforce this any more than just the CA glue and putty?

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I've had a similar accident. I have a couple cracks in mine and want to reinforce mine too. This is my first bucket and I got a few questioins...

What is CA glue? What kind of putty did you use? Allso What do you use to do a fiberglass reinforcement of the inside of the helm? I saw a resin coating and was told to use fiberglass cloth with it? Would that work? If you got any name brands that you like can you list them?

Thanks for your help!

CA glue is a think clear glue that can be used to fill small gaps. The brand I used is "Zap a Gap" it can be found at any hobby shop.

The putty is white squadron, its available at almost any hobby shop as well.

As for fiber glassing I used the kit pictured at the bottom of post #31. The kit comes with the fiberglass resin and the cloth. Here's a pic of the kit:


I bought this kit at the Autozone down the street from me. It was really easy to use. Just mix small amounts of the fiberglass resin and the hardener at a time. I mistakenly mixed the whole bottle of resin and tube of hardener and ended up with it becoming solid in about 5 minutes. (I had to get a second kit )