Power Sanding

Smoothing it out

Nice surface

So today i saw in my cupboard that I had a power sander. Only problem was there was no sand paper on it and i had been hand sanding with the wrong kind making my life hard :P. So after checking that the sander worked.(Because we have a habit of keeping broken power tools) I drove down to Wickes and grabbed a pack of assorted grit sandpaper.

I started at 60 grit move to 80 and finally fished with 120. This gave a very smooth finish but left some of the deeper indentations in the foam.

 

As you can see from the images above the surface is a lot smoother than it originally was. The Indentations marks and scuffs I intend to use as ware and tear/ battle damage. This will be done with paint to make it blend in and give it a more realistic feel.(As realistic as a 7ft Space marine in power armor can be anyway)

Reinforcements

On another not i have started to reinforce pieces of armor so they keep there shape better by adding a skeleton. This uses wire coat hangers and hot glue to hold it in place. See below.

Must not flex!

Must not flex!

So one of the things i noticed about the suit so far is that there is a slight issue with its flexibility in the fact that it flexes so much it kinda reminds me of my friend Aldo. So the suit is flimsy and will bend to most shapes.

So to fix this I did a bit of research and discovered people use things like PVA glue. One trip to Wickes latter i had acquired this....

I mean if this doesn't make you think art-attack i don't know what will. So the idea is that covering the amour in PVA glue will seal it, Harden it & possibly smooth it out so there are lest bumps in it. 

I gave the right shoe 3 coats of the glue over several days and it became much harder and retained it shape. Which is what i wanted but there was still the problem with the fact that the foam had an uneven surface to it. 

The next step was to fill the gaps in the suit were the join marks were. This was done will silicone filler. I have established now this was a bad idea due to the fact 1 it smelt like vinegar in one room for 3 days and 2 that it is resistant to water making it difficult to put glue or primer on. I realized it was supposed to be latex caulk but hay ho i think i can make it work out in the end. 

Next step to smooth the surface even further. To do this i used Gesso acrylic canvas covering. This has worked very well on the boot 3 coats with some sanding in between layers has made the boot harder but also created a much smother working area.

Filled Holes on the left un sanded Gesso on the right. 

Toughen Up

Toughen it up!

Progress so far:

Thighs 

Both thighs are completed despite me not having a picture of both at the same time. 

Despite being only one thigh piece in the image there is in fact 2 as stated above. After this part there are only about 10 more pieces to make, These pieces how ever are the largest ones in the entire build.

I feel the most time consuming piece to make will be the chest piece. 

Paint testing

Here is a before and after shot of me spray painting directly on to the foam just to get an idea of what will happen. I did this because many people have said that the spray can will eat away at the foam and destroy it.  I felt that i must see for my self on a  test piece before spraying a major piece and causing a lot of pain and hard work to fix it. 

Turns out this does not have the same results. Foam still very much intact just bluerr.

Before                                                                         After

The colour is good how ever the texture isn't great so i must work out away to improve this.