Dark Helmet – Final Prep (pt. 1)

The deadline is rapidly approaching:  I need to have the helmet in paint by bedtime on Wednesday night and the face mask attached by Thursday afternoon.  The first step in getting to that deadline met is to mate the face mask with the shell.  Good news:

The top of the face mask will need to be trimmed down a little bit for sure, and I may need to trim the sides as well, but even with the bracing the rear of the mask, it fits between the hat and the shell.  This is great news, so I can move forward with the rest of the project!  With that sorted, I added some fiberglass along the bottom so that I can straighten out the edge.

Finally, I put a couple layers of gesso on the mask to seal it up so I can give it a quick sanding and then put the resin on it before paint.

Getting in to the home stretch now!  Tonight, my tasks are:

Sand the shell as smooth as it will get
Apply any additional fiberglass necessary
Sand the face mask
Apply resin to the face mask

Tomorrow night I have to get the paint applied (in this case, it will be Plasti Dip of course!).  If additional fiberglassing is required tonight, then tomorrow morning I will need to get up early to sand down the fiberglass and put filler on those spots.  If additional fiberglass is not required, though, I can go ahead and trim it down, sand it, get the filler put on and probably have time to give it a final sand and maybe some coats of plastidip yet tonight.  It’ll all be based on the fiberglass requirements.