Don Post '95 Refurbish

girlattorney

New Hunter
Hello! I've been using tdh for a few months as reference for working on my Don Post '95 and now I think it's time to share what I've got so far. I bought the helmet around 12 years ago at a local costume shop with the intention of making a full suit. Being 10 at the time it didn't really go anywhere beyond putting a little bit of paint the wrong paint on it, and poorly. It's been sitting in my closet until late August when I decided to finally get back to work on it. I'm currently painting it and it's slow going being that I've never used an airbrush before but I'm learning quickly and it's looking good so far. I will post a walk through of what I've done to it later this week when I have more time. For now here's what it was like before I put any new work into it.
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Thanks for the advice! I took a similar approach with heating it up, holding it in the right shape and fiber glassing the interior. Made the whole helmet feel a lot sturdier as well. There is also a small crack just behind the right ear that has been fairly troublesome. IMG_0739.JPG I ended up gluing a thin piece of metal to the inside before the fiber glassing and that has fixed it except for the outside where I bondo'ed it but it keeps becoming visible. IMG_0763.JPG However that should stop when the stresses of being held at awkward angles for painting have stopped. As of right now I have finished painting the back panels and while I did the ears also I kind of learned with them so they will need to be redone. image.jpeg image (1).jpeg When I cut out the t-visor I also cut off the right ear and tried to rebuild it more accurate but that didn't really work as I had hoped, here it is before and after painting. IMG_0777.JPG IMG_0856.JPG IMG_0857.JPG I am currently grinding/sanding down the whole top of the right ear in order to put a new "real" one on. So this is where I have some questions for you all. I would like to buy a whole top right ear assembly and new range finder with a hollow stalk. This being a don post they would need to be on the smaller side. I would appreciate any advice with who to talk to in order to get these items. Thanks!



Also how do the lower right and left ear look shape wise? Do they look ok or should I replace them with separate ears? It would kind of be a pain to do but I do want it took look as good as I can make it. What do you guys think?
 
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I like it so far! I've always been a fan of the old Don Post lids.

As far as the ear questions, I'll let others answer that. I'm sure it's been done before, and they would know better than I.

I did want to make one suggestion, though. When painting the rest of the helmet, I think you should try and make the weathering a little more subtle. The colors looks great, but some of the scratches/damages look a little too loud. I think that the smaller you make the damage marks, the more convincing it looks. That's just my opinion.

Keep up the good work!
 
Thanks! I know what you mean about the "loudness", it's a by-product of my stenciling technique. Still worked on refining that for the rest of the helmet. Starting on the lower cheeks now.
 
Just finished up peeling masking fluid off the cheeks, need a little touching up and they will be done! Now off to the hobby store for more paint and masking fluid. Next up are the mandibles.
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Your paint work is looking very good, I like how you use aluminum foil as "masking paper" it holds a shape better than new paper.
 
So if you really want a frustrating challenge then removing cast on ears and replacing them is what you should do. Took a while but I got that all done with some nice cold cast ears supplied by Asok and I built an rf circuit into a new range finder supplied by Terminal Fettler. So then back to painting. For some reason that I still don't quite understand I thought that instead of using the carbon paper method I would use a heat gun to cut plastic stencils and spray on masking fluid. That's how I did the back panels and cheeks. It sort of works but it's so much more work and does not capture fine detail very well. So I decided to try doing the mandibles with carbon paper stenciling and hand painting masking fluid. Learned a lot about how applying too thin of masking fluid is a bad thing to do. However this method obviously works so much better. So now that I think I've got my painting techniques down I have decided to strip all the paint off and re-do the whole thing and hopefully maintain my sanity in the process. :cheers
 
Small update. Working on the back panels, slowly. Getting so much better detail on this time though so should come out much nicer. Also I have started painting my MOW boots following Spideyfett's great tutorial. So far so good. Should be receiving gloves from saint_nasty, a MOW flight suit and the new Mojo toe spikes in the mail this week. All in all I think I'm now at around $850 spent on this project. A lot of that is from mistakes and re-do's though. :cry
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looking good. I am a fellow colo dude. I live in fountain south of colo springs. Hang in there trial and error makes the build worth it in the end.
 
Just peeled the last masking fluid layer off the cheeks. They look waaay better than my first attempt as seen above. Gonna start on my 4th *face palm* back panel attempt tomorrow. I hope I will remember to apply the masking fluid thick enough this time.
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So that took forever but I'm just about done with my helmet. I still have a bit of touching up and weathering to do but I thought I would share a photo. I'm quite pleased with the results especially considering what I started with and that I learned to paint with this bucket. Not perfect but as close as I can get while keeping my sanity.
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Here's the sides. The only really glaring issue I can see is right ear size but not a whole lot I can do about that so oh well. I am also in the process of painting my RKD armor and MOW jetpack, I can see the finish line Denver Comic Con here I come!
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looks good! I hope that when I get around to my painting,it looks just as good. I'm also in colorado but down in the southwest. At somepoint, all of us colorado guys should get together for an armor party. that'd be cool.
 
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