Those are looking good, mate!

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MSgt, UKCM 42nd Reg., 1st Batt. : Hadrian's Wall. UKCM

Wasteland Workshop
Props, cosplay pieces, upcycled ornamentation, and miscellanea;
For the discerning survivor of the apocalypse.
Steve Fletcher : Maker, Scavenger, and Junksmith.
linktr.ee/wastelandworkshop

Now…back to the “fun” stuff. (The super duper PITA that causes me question why I started this project in the first place.)

Breastplate continues!

So when we last left the “pepakura/fiberglass” phase, I realized; 1 - If you tape your pep together, the fiberglass doesn’t penetrate the tape, meaning you don’t get good joining of paper and fiberglass, and 2 - When you try to suspend your pep for the initial fiberglass coat, it gets quite heavy and paper supports collapse.

What I was left with was a misshapen, flaky mess. Recovery was (and still is) lots of hard work.

I went ahead and pulled off as much paper as I could (nearly all of it) leaving behind only the initial inside coat of fiberglass. Then I took a heat gun to it and reshaped as much as I could to fit my own body. Finally I trimmed up the edges to produce a new “starting point”.



So I basically am starting all over, only instead of a “pep” paper piece, I have a raw fiberglass piece.
As I mentioned, rather than auto parts store “cloth” or “matt” I went for a 6x10 ft welding blanket (uncoated fiberglass). Its pretty heavy, and due to its size, I can use one solid piece to cover it all.


It went much smoother this round (sturdier base and some knowledge in the process). VERY rigid. Some might say ‘too rigid’ I caked it on pretty good trying to avoid the ‘poor wetting’ I had earlier and now it has quite a bit of weight to it.


Some sagging still occurred and the rib cage area on the back is again a bit tight. I will have to continue to re-heat and reshape. But now I have a substantial piece. Its time to unleash the fury with an angle grinder (too thick for a dremel) and belt sander and hopefully come up with something usable!

BTW – even in its paper form, I knew going in I would be modifying the bottom of the pep HEAVILY. I don’t know about you guys, but I don’t quite rock a “V-shaped” torso to that extreme! Was the pep file built for a young Ricco Ross or what?! The waist has been heavily reworked in all phases attempting to make it comfortable, including but not limitied to completely leaving out the front plate lower “rib section’ which I will re-add later using spare plastic.

I had the same problem with the thin waist, I just removed about 5cm from each side and it seemed to fit allot better.

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AKA: Simon

Well, still wrestling with chest plate, but the "little things" are starting to come together.

I ended up scrapping the cardboard knee pads seen earlier in the thread all together. The fiberglassing over them proved nearly useless and even stripped back down to simple resin coated cardboard, they didnt look right.

Instead i revisited the PVC pipe leftover from my shin guards. Using my heat gun, i heated, stretched/bent, sanded, repeat.

Probably 3 different heat-stretch sessions and heavy sanding left me with this. Pretty pleased with it.


I also took the tin-snips to some spare duct metal I had laying around and snipped out 6 of these bad boys for the shin guards (im gonna just us fastex buckles on the knee pads too. I know "cam lock" is the real deal for the knee pads...but eh. Its not THAT big a deal to me at this point)


I just picked up a pop rivet gun and am sorting out the webbing. As soon as i can trim the breastplate to my liking, things may really start coming together quickly.

Looking good so far looking to rip you off on the shoulder covers what did you use to glue them together?

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Reformed Pacifist

Wildone: 10 bucks says he used Liquid Nails!

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My entry-level prop and costume tutorials: viewtopic.php?f=3&t=12751

Bigbisont, what are you using the pop rivet gun for? Like what are you riveting?

Basically the whole armour is built and held together using pop rivets.

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Martin 'Victim' Victory
A86/TQ3.4.49421E3
UKCM 13th Regt. 1st Batt. Freebooters


you can't take the PUNK outa Spunkmeyer

How??? I thought glue and straps held it together.

All the strapping (which holds all the armour together) is held in place with rivets.

Have a look at some pics and builds of the armour on here.

Martin

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Martin 'Victim' Victory
A86/TQ3.4.49421E3
UKCM 13th Regt. 1st Batt. Freebooters


you can't take the PUNK outa Spunkmeyer

I have but I've never seen rivets :/ guess I just havent look hard enough.

To save you the trouble

Have a look here at Nickatrons excellent build guide

viewtopic.php?f=3&t=9621&start=25

Martin

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Martin 'Victim' Victory
A86/TQ3.4.49421E3
UKCM 13th Regt. 1st Batt. Freebooters


you can't take the PUNK outa Spunkmeyer

Actually, thats a great thread I somehow missed. Ive been hand drawing diagrams on notebook paper trying to figure my plan of attack, and that is as clean as it gets right there.

Thanks guys.


And Retro nailed it (no pun intended). You would think im sponsored by liquid nails with how much I keep using it for various purposes...


And all this strap talk is the perfect segway to my only real update. Ive started sorting out my straps and accessory gear.
Full disclosure, I have the wrong stuff. I have a butt load of 3/4" fastex buckles and webbing laying around, so Im going to use it (rather than buy new "correct" 1 inch stuff). Also I have some 2" stuff for the body armor (not the correct 1.5"). I think it will be fine when everything is together, I think (hope?) no one really notices.

Anything in black I dusted with "OD" paint. Anything I had in "OD" got dusted with black paint! A boring 'spray' pic is all i have for now. My pulse re-spray has provided a nice distraction, but today/tonight I need to get back to cutting and sanding fiberglass bits.



(yes...those are old backback straps I 'recycled' off an old backpack. Im not worried about grenades because I have something else in mind. Also...yes...those are indeed dog collars! had a bunch laying around from a few years ago, and the nylon is strong as hell, so I figured why not?)

Thanks again for the words of encouragement guys. Hopefully I'll have something actually interesting to say/show soon!

looks good! The pep armour is so mutch pain to built....but if you finish it will be the graitest feeling because YOU build it with your own skills. Looking forward about your project

im going to make foam armor then try pep on my second set.

It's funny, I was using all black webbing for my armor build (except for the grenade straps), but since I'm scratch building mine too I had to "web up" early on in the process so that I could refine the fit. Now that I'm in the painting phase I keep accidentally spraying my straps and so in the end they're going to look a lot like yours!
I work for L.L. Bean so backpack straps are what I went with too. A lot of styles now have a waist strap too which is the perfect size backle for the sides of the armor. Checking at Goodwill/Salvation Army is a great way to save some cash compared to buying these new.

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My entry-level prop and costume tutorials: viewtopic.php?f=3&t=12751

We have a sewing store right down the road so buckles will be like ¢25 for us and a roll of webing will be like $5 to $10 at the most.

Quality craftsmanship, cant wait to see the finished product. Keep it going!!!

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All right, sweethearts, what are you waiting for? Breakfast in bed? Another glorious day in the Corps! A day in the Marine Corps is like a day on the farm. Every meal's a banquet! Every paycheck a fortune! Every formation a parade! I LOVE the Corps!

Well, my progress has slowed to a crawl here of late, but I'm finally back on the horse and on the verge of a breakthrough.

First up, the heavy hacking is 'done' on the breastplate. I have a lot of refining (low grit sanding) but the cutting and reshaping (heat gun) is about wrapped up.


The back kind of looks creepily organic. I assume/hope that the camo point will hide the very uneven amateur fiberglass job! Im tired of sanding and refuse to invest any more effort into the damn breastplate! Im done....



This is how I plan to address the "ribbing" effect on the bottom of the front plate. I left them out of the pep on purpose to account for my waist size, and will just re-establish them like so... (Strips of the garbage can)



Also I think ive got my paint sorted out. I am going with a combo of what I already had and some stuff I picked up cheap. As great as the Tamiya color crossover charts are on this board, I feel all colors can look good or bad depending on lighting and weathering, so I am keeping it simple. I can always repaint later

What can I say: Great job! Looking forward to see you at a Con in 2013.

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Sgt. Frank Peters 'reload' Smartgun Operator
A03/TQ3.0.12136E1 "It will be no picknick!"
AL Colonial Admin. - Sergeant at Arms (SgtA) -- 2020-2022
GERCM - Executive Officer (XO)
UKCM Foreign Legion: The Deviant Dragoons

I'm confused as of how you made the small part for the shoulder. The little piece that goes in the shoulder armor.

Yeah I guess i did skip over that part. Sorry. Its actually the last little bit of PVC pipe i had leftover from the shin guards/knee pads.

I used the heat gun to soften up the PVC (an oven would work too) and just smashed it flat sandwiching it between two bits of cardboard (so as to press evenly, but not burn myself!).

Then i just used a belt sander to clean up the edges and tilted it to an angle to make the beveled edge. Finally just drilled & dremeled the slot of the webbing, glued on the same padding to the back, and sprayed the front.

ohhhhhh. thank you.

So this weekend I finally got some serious work hammered out (and pissed my wife off in the process by "spending all day in the basement").

But I finally cleaned up the plates as good as I could/was willing to get them, and got the paint laid down!!!

After the base coat of hunter green on the last bits, I cut up random patterns into the leftover card stock to use as templates and went to town on everything with the rattle cans.


Layer by layer, color by color, move, twist, angle, redo, repeat. Left with this.


When I felt the camo effect was decent, i took them inside for some hand brushing of the gray (mixed up some little testors paints I had laying around) and silver (for weathering effect).

Post-gray and weathering


Then back outside to finish "smoking" and dull coating


I wish i had better "before" and after pics of the smoking process, but i was pretty pleased. All I did was get about 12-18" away with the black rattle can and gave everything a healthy dusting.

Two layers of dullcoat, and all the 'satin' and 'gloss' paints used were irrelevant. The only drawback is I lost some weathering because the silver lost its shine and turned gray. I had to go back in and redo the silver a bit, which may have "over silvered" things in my opinion, but I cant complain.

Oh...almost forgot to put the finishing touch that matters!


Is it weird to not feel any satisfaction until my name was on it??? I feel good now though! Time to strap it up!!!

That is a massive update! Great work all around. With the paint done your "organic" backplate looks just fine.

Any grafitti planned?

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My entry-level prop and costume tutorials: viewtopic.php?f=3&t=12751