Scout_Troop3R

Hey there, been a little while! Not much to say about my absence other than it's been a busy 2 months, but now I'm back with a quick question. I wanted to start painting the vocoder today and I'm just unsure if I should use the glossy or satin black (I think it's satin but I'm still not sure after looking around some other posts), so I figured I should get some answers.

And huzzah! I think functionally it is complete! (aside from paint and fixes of course) Yes it's a bit of a mess but hey it works, and I can make it pretty after comic-con. Really happy with it, it's a good fit, and it stays on my head properly. That other velcro patch is for a battery pack that I have charging currently, and I definitely need a new microphone, the current one is crap.

I got the left ear installed in record time with zero problems, good day! I also got the visor finally installed, no more tape, better day! And man is this awesome. Aside from painting and fixing the right ear piece all that's left is installing padding, electronics, and the s-type neck trim.

looking at these now I see where I need to trim more trim trim trim

I did some trimming and I think it helped but I'm not sure. For tonight it's good enough.

I was just planning to cut a piece to fit that gap and ABS paste it on but trimming and then doing that (if I need to) is probably a better idea lol. I don't mind having the little gaps, it's just that big one which bothers me.

I got the last screw and rivet in for the right ear and it looks great with only a small thing or two to be fixed, mostly just that gap by the ear, which will be easy to mend. Tomorrow I'll see about getting the left ear and the visor done, then all the basics will be ready for Comic-Con and I can spend the last two days on the extras. (Audio, padding, etc.) Painting will come later when I actually get my paints in the mail.

Today I got started on the screws, and got the right ear piece screws countersunk and it is looking quite nice! I'm having lunch now but I'm going to trim some more off the back helmet piece so the ear sits more flush, and get started on the rest of the rivets/screws.

Update time! The past two days I've hardly been able to do anything because of work, and a visit to my grandfolks, but I'm very satisfied with what I got done in that time. I finally got those rivets secured thanks to a little advice from my grandpa, and it really looks way better now. Now that the rivets are secured I can also get started on the screws, which means I can also now get the visor secured, which means hopefully I can actually get it mostly done (minus the paint) before Saturday.

I'll do some more testing and read those threads again when I get home for sure.

Today has been less than productive, I think I'm a bit burnt out. Only thing I managed to get done today was practice on countersinking some screws which went great That was as close as I managed to get with various methods, so that means I'll probably have to go to home depot again and get a countersink drill bit.

Yeah I didn't mention this but on Thursday I put it together with the brow strip and electronics and showed it off, there was enough room for the brow to sit nice and snug, and even with the electronics there was still plenty of room I wasn't able to put the foam in though lol, that definitely needs some shaving down.

Right so I've figured out where I want to have the ears placed, and I'm going to cut the back plate to the profile which I'm outlining in pencil once I get my nerve up. then hopefully everything will sit much more flush and I can start putting the rest of the screws/rivets

Hello again! No update yesterday because I had a gamenight, and worked on my bucket right up to it. I assembled the front and back halves with loose-ish rivets so that I could take it apart if I needed to, and the visor anchor also works quite well, for the ends of the visor I'm just gonna have the ear screws hold them in place because that's easy and secure. Today I want to try and get the ears situated (or started on that), and considering these pieces do not line up at all I have a lot of reading and testing to do. Hopefully I can get something successfully done before work.

Not too much progress today, which sucks, but I have to wait for glue to continue. The visor anchor finished gluing together, so I drilled a hole in that and the visor for the screw. Now I'm just waiting for the anchor to glue to the faceplate, and I can't do any helmet adjustments of the front and back together, so I also marked out a line with a ruler from the traps for the screws. Once the helmet is situated properly I'll get to work on the ears. Also I figure my paints aren't coming until after comic con considering they're in LA right now, so oh well.

After lunch I got back and drilled the ear holes with a 3/32 drill bit in the faceplate and rear bucket, to then discover I didn't have the right size attachment for my terrible rivet tool, which thankfully hasn't been used, so I'm gonna return that and get better one that can actually fit these rivets While waiting for the visor anchor piece to glue I figured I could get something else done, and I want to wait until it's assembled to paint the stripes, so I installed the hovi tips. The ones I have are ukswrath's hovi tip speakers so I had to drill rather than just glue them. I think in the end they turned out pretty good, even if drilling the holes was worrisome and less clean than I would like, a good washer and nut shores everything up nice and tight.

Yeah that was just a rough slap it together kind of thing to show it off to the people at home.

That is perfect, and definitely helped me today. I started by removing the mesh magnets, and marking out where I wanted to trim from the faceplate ear edges, I opted for 10mm from the rivet/screw guides that AM put in, and did a dry fit which was so much better than before, and it comfortably sits inside the rear bucket piece now. Everything has gone quite smoothly today. I would have started with the visor today too, but I needed to add slightly more layers to the anchor which now sits flush, and I also found some nice little screws from the depths which (with slight trimming) will work perfectly. Right now it's lunch time so I'm gonna take a small break and get back to it after.

I was looking over my helmet pieces and just wondering, "how the heck do these go together?" so I figured I'd get some answers. As you can see these don't go together very well yet, enough so that I wasn't able to get it with tape, I'd have needed to be general grievous to hold everything in place. So I'm wondering, I know the ear pieces go over the overlapping pieces and that the bottom trims of the two pieces are at different angles, but I'm also wondering which side to trim, I know the back of the faceplate needs trimming, but I'm not sure about the sides on the back of the helmet. AM has also pointed out very helpfully where the rivets (I think?? it might be screws there) go on both pieces. That's the big thing that I don't know about making this bucket.

Yeah I figured I'd need to trim some screws, and even with the anchor the gaps at the corners of the eyes, as small as they are, are unavoidable with this method, but I don't think it'll matter much because it still looks great. I've made sure to get me some of Henry's Helmet Fans too, those little things are push a lot of air.

Started working on the visor today and as much as I would like lenses, I don't have a bandsaw or anything to cut it as clean as I'd like, and something would probably go wrong so I'm just gonna stick with the full strip visor. I did however cut a ridge for the ol' sniffer in the middle of the visor, just a nice small cut, and I'll probably leave everything else the way it is. I also glued the mesh with some E-6000, once that's done gluing I'm going to put the visor in, and I'm also going to fill in the gap between the eyes with some scrap ABS so the visor has an anchor in the middle so it can sit (mostly) flush for sure. I want to have a screw for the middle but I'm not sure about whether the ears should be screwed or glued, depends how far they are from the ears.

you know, I was thinking all day "Man, I wish I had something to help clean up those edges" and I never thought of a toothpick, it's perfect I'll definitely go back and do some touch-ups later... once I get some toothpicks (because somehow we're all out)

After that earlier post and a little more research I painted most of the frown successfully before I had to go to work, just missing two "teeth", overall it took me about two and a half hours, although after I got back from work the last two only took me like 10 minutes so I'm not quite sure how that happened lol. Anyway, here they are, and for someone who hasn't painted in years I'd say that's pretty good! Tomorrow I'll probably wind up attempting some lenses, but for now, my hot tub calls to me.

Back again and this time working on more of the face stuff. I cut out a simple mesh frown and did a simple fit with some tape which looks good, I'll hold it down with E6000 once the frown is painted. Speaking of paint, while I wait for the rest of mine to come in the mail (mainly black) I figure I'll paint with what I do have right now and get the frown done with some good ol' Humbrol No. 5. Also I've been looking at ways to do lenses, and ideally I would like to have them as two separate pieces rather than one big strip, but I'm not sure how I would do them and I'm a little worried about drilling mounts in. AJ Hamler used a mound of JB weld with drywall anchors (+ screws) and I saw someone make a stack of ABS plates glued together for mounts with a simple screw (the latter doesn't seem too tricky, that might be what I end up doing) with a simple screw, I won't do anything until I'm 100% sure about which way I'm gonna do it though. Anyway, painting time.

Gotcha, thanks for the tips! I'll probably paint after I'm done fitting/adjusted everything, and while I like to think I have a steady hand I'll see about getting some stencils.