Budget Scratch Build

madmanmoe64

Jr Hunter
I've poured over this site a few times, especially Antman's work. Some of the stuff people come up with is pretty cool. And you can tell a lot of effort and expense has gone into this stuff.
This is for the most part following Antman's tutorial, so all credit to him and WOF, except that I have no money and few tools.


In Short: This is a bucket build on the cheap, lets see how it goes.
 
Sady this is before I started taking loads of pictures. For the full method check both Antmans posts.
For making my helmet I'm using 2mm Fibreboard type stuff, which is actually the stuff on the back of sketch books. So for these first pieces I just printed out the templates and began cutting out the pieces.

The primer was a solvent based primer I found in my shed claiming ' good for wood and metal'
Unless you're picky I reckon almost any primer will work on cardboard with fairly good results, and definatly anything made for mdf will work.


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Very nice mate!

I dont have a RF for my lid... how difficult is that to do? Might just try it :)

More pics please!

Dave

This part ( as I will explain ) I managed to do without spending any money. When lookin at the whole build these bits are easiest, because they're just flat shapes.
If you have a sketchbook lying around give it a go you'll soon get a feel for how easy/ or not it's going to be.
 
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As you can see the edges aren't quite as sharp as they could have been. In my constant refusal to buy any proper stuff I was sanding these using a fairly rough file, and some old sanding blocks I found.

The biggest problem I had was when I was clamping layers together. It was hard to find a flat surface in my room, and they often skewed during drying. (I have a workbench in my shed, but this is England I'm not freezing my arse off out there all day)

thomas141et5.jpg
 
My favourite thing about this method is that, however bad it initially looks, you just cover it in polyfiller and get a nice smooth finish.
Again whilst rooting around the shed I found some old polyfiller, from the 80's, it was grainy, had lumps and came in a tub not a tube. But it seemed alright and has served me well so far.

thomas142qo4.jpg
 
Unfortunatley the largest helmet pieces won't fit onto the A3 bits of card I salvaged from sketch books, so I went to an art shop and bought a large A1 piece ( 4x size of A3 ) of cardboard (£2) and some more, stronger PVA (£3).

Which meant I could make the main helmet piece.

thomas135cj4.jpg
 
I don't really have a set of clamps so to hold this together while drying I used a combination of Quick Grips (yellow things), G - clamps, rubber bands, and for the hard to reach spot at the bottom I clamped it with a pair of rare earth magnets. :D

Basically whatever you can find.


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PVA is definatly the best glue for this, easy to use, strong and inexpensive.
As long as you don't get the watered down stuff, meant only for paper.


thomas136aw4.jpg
 
nice start, did mine on a budget to, but i made my helmet with 1 large sheet of styrene. i think in total the whole helmet cost me about £18 including all the necessary glue, the visor (clear acrylic sheet)and buying a kids bmx helmet to make the dome part of the helmet (from t k max (£3)
alot easier than making it from scratch.

keep up the good work nice to see a fellow Londoner

Jason
 
The next part is poorley documented because I was frantically trying to get the mask to stick.

This shows the mask attached to the helmet and the wooden blocks clamped to flatten out the ear areas.

As I've said the hardest part was getting the mask to stick on evenly. The clamps I have only allow you to reach about 10cm from each edge, I needed more magnets really, but I had to make do.


thomas146kj1.jpg
 
Several steps missing here.
Cut out cheek areas and added the plates. Then added the dome arches.


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The cheeks took some time but I followed Antman's instructions and am very pleased with how they came out. If you're trying this leave a good couple of hours, as you need to hold each section, letting it dry before moving along the line.

Also the top visor part has been cut out (cos I wanted to try it on)


thomas152vd5.jpg
 
The dome was pretty much like applying the curved cheek sections. It was fine as long as you took your time.

thomas156wi2.jpg





I was farily happy with how the whole thing was going, all praise to WOF and his flawless templates.


thomas155dg3.jpg
 
Looks pretty good right?


thomas158pz0.jpg





Until you look at it from above.

thomas159pm6.jpg



Hmm.....

Could WOF have got it wrong? Is he in fact, not perfect?

NO, he is.


It seems I printed out the wrong templates, how was I to know there were different ones for European printers.



Nothing that can't be solved with a bit of newspaper ;)

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