How to bring that insane shine to the helmet?

[LittleOne]

Hi all,

 

How did you bring the shine or super glossy look to your helmet?

 

discuss,

 

cheers!

Edited May 11, 2011 by LittleOne

[BananoPower22[TK]]

I just keep rubbing a cloth until i get tired I think others use car wax

[LittleOne]

Hi all,

 

How did you bring the shine or super glossy look to your helmet?

 

discuss,

 

cheers!

 

 

reason i am asking this is that a lot of people make their bucket super shinny which gives it that hard finish reflective quality that you find in some real helmets...it just makes the helmet look more solid to the eye. I know that the real screen used helmets are somewhat matte looking but some have this shiny look to them too...

 

just wanted tricks and opinions...

 

cheers

Edited May 11, 2011 by LittleOne

[LittleOne]

I just keep rubbing a cloth until i get tired I think others use car wax

 

well i wanted to use Novus, but this seems like a rare thing to find...so does anyone else know a good non destructive alternative to novus that is easy to find?

[sith_241]

well i wanted to use Novus, but this seems like a rare thing to find...so does anyone else know a good non destructive alternative to novus that is easy to find?

 

You can get Novus on Amazon.

[pandatrooper[TK]]

Polish + elbow grease or a buffer. Be careful if your lid is painted white. If the coats are thin and you over polish, you can wear the high spots down.

[LittleOne]

Polish + elbow grease or a buffer. Be careful if your lid is painted white. If the coats are thin and you over polish, you can wear the high spots down.

 

 

what do you recommend from canadian tire or wall mart Panda for polish or wax?

[LittleOne]

You can get Novus on Amazon.

 

lol id pay more for shipping than the bottle is worth.... ehehehhe

[matt black]

I found T-cut to be fantastic. Not sure if you can get it in the States or in Canada though. It really is good.

[TK6466[TK]]

I use car wax but the real troopers in the movie wasen't so shinny ;-)

Edited May 11, 2011 by TK6466

[TROOPER 138[501st]]

sometimes i spray liquid ,armorall on my tx with a cloth

 

looks great only problem is later after it dries it looks greassy -oily

 

and you have to wipe it down again ..then it looks great and shiny ..crapload of hassle but looks presentable

 

i have found the non shiny verion spray is easier to do .. cleans and protects ....lololol

[JoeR]

Keith posted a tutorial on here somewhere. He managed to paint a HIPS helmet and get it so shiny it looked like ABS and felt like ABS to the touch.

 

Edit here it is:

 

Here is my painting method again for any newer memebers who might have missed it years ago....

 

Mask off the inside of the helmet parts if you are fussy and want it to look like an unpainted helmet.

 

Prime the parts with white primer. The best primer to use is Tamiya fine surface white primer in an aerosol.

You can use normal automotive white primer, but you will probably have to wet sand it when it is dry, which means unmasking and remasking the inside of the parts again and this takes a while. You don't have to wet sand the Tamiya stuff.

 

Stand the can of primer in hot water for a few minutes before spraying it on the parts.

 

When the primer is dry, check for any dust particles that may be on the helmet and remove them.

 

For the gloss white, i use Halfords automotive spray paints. This paint is fantastic, but i don't think it will be available outisde the UK.

A really nice white is Mercedes polar white. Its very white, but a sort of brown white and not a blue white if you know what i mean.

This paint is in 300ml cans and you will need three of them for one stormtrooper helmet.

 

Again, stand the gloss white paint can in hot water for a few minutes. If you are not very good at spray painting and always seem to get paint runs, you might want to skip the standing the paint in hot water part.

 

Spray the helmet fast to keep the paint wet and avoid overspray as much as possible. Thats the hardest part of the job. You want to find a sort of spraying path around the parts that keeps the paint as wet and glossy with as little overspray as possible. Make sure you get paint all around the eyes and inside the mic tip wells.

 

As soon as you are done with each coat, get a hairdryer set on warm on the part quick. The paint can get conensation on it otherwise and it will leave little dimples in the paint.

 

You also want to avoid paint runs. If you do see the paint start to run, stop spraying and get the hairdryer on the part, holding it at an angle so the run won't get any worse. You should be able to sand away the paint run later, so just keep coating the part with paint trying to avoid anymore runs.

 

Do not sand the paint between coats.

 

If you have any dust particles in the paint, dry the area a bit more with the hairdryer (don't over heat the plastic though) and sand it out with very fine wet and dry paper. Take great care doing this, as the paint will be far from set.

 

For the final two coats, i always change the aerosol for a new one, as they spray the paint better when full.

 

You want to avoid overspray on the hard to sand areas on the final coats. So get the paint nice and glossy inside the tears, traps, mic tip wells, frown, around the eyes, around the vocoder and so on and have the overspray on the open, less detailed areas of the part you are painting.

 

Let the paint set for a week or so and then, using very fine wet and dry paper, wet sand the paint smooth. Take care sanding where there are high spots or edges, you don't want to sand all the way through the paint, as you will have to start again.

 

Sand an area, give it a quick wipe with a towel to dry it and you will see lots of glossy dots. This is the texture of the paint. The high spots of the texture have been sanded and the lower spots have still not been touched by the wet and dry paper. You need to keep going until there are no glossy dots and the surface is flat and smooth. Try and sand the parts until you only just get rid of the texture/glossy dots. Sanding more than this will just make the coat thinner and you will be at more risk of sanding through to the plastic.

Now you have sanded away the top layers of paint, you will probably find that the paint is soft again in these lower layers, so take care how you hold the part, or you will leave fingerprints in the paint. It will take weeks to fully harden, so just watch how you handle it for a while.

 

Use a cutting compound like T-Cut on a soft cloth to polish the paint to the finish you want. You can get a mirror finish if you want. Do not use polish or car wax of any kind, as this will slow down or even stop the paint from fully setting.

Thats it!

 

Keith.

[LittleOne]

from yahoo answers:

 

T-cut is a cutting compound which contains tiny abrasive particles in a creamy solution that effectively finely sands your paint down, but it only removes microscopic layers and dead pigments within the paint. Actually T-Cut is by no means the best product of it's kind anymore, I find on the consumer market now that Auto Glym Paint Restorer works rather well, much better than T-Cut. The professionals use products made by a company called Farecla, which are much better than that available on the shelf at Halfords and the like, Their compound, G3, is just plain awesome, removes more or less all surface defects from paint, but like all of these things, it removes paint, they all do. T-Cut is not a polish like is commonly thought, polish adds layers of wax protection to the paint to make it repel water, and you should use a proper polish after using a cutting compound because it can leave modern water based finishes soft and more easily damaged. But the mark on your car should be easily removed by using a cutting compound and then polish, removed light damage like that from loads of cars using that method. I hate when morons like that rub your car and dissappear without leaving so much as a note, I've seen cars really seriously damaged in car parks by other drivers who then scarper rather rapidly without so much as a backward glance. Good luck anyway, you can give your car a nice treat this weekend!

[dashrazor]

this may sound silly, but a trick i have used for a mirror finish is to use a piece of brown paper bag to sand. It does work. but as always, test it out first. i sand very lightly in a small circular motion

[LittleOne]

found this, wonder what it would do to the bucket....

expensive stuff though...

 

 

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Edited December 4, 2020 by gmrhodes13
link not working, removed gmrhodes13 2020

[JoeR]

The whole point of T cut is that is is abrasive, think you have missed the point, it is not a polish at all.

 

Well here's what Keith did with his method.

 

From a matt hips kit-----

Edited December 4, 2020 by gmrhodes13
link not working, removed gmrhodes13 2020

[LittleOne]

lol, now i am more confused than ever....

[firebladejedi[TK]]

As an alternative - buy acrylic capped abs

 

 

[BananoPower22[TK]]

My usual 'polish until arm gets tired' technique with my new ATA ABS backplate didn't work out. I also tried with car wax.. it shines but not enough shine to match the AM armor.

 

I'm doomed 

[TK bondservnt[501st]]

novus polish.

[john danter]

Toothpaste

 

Works for removing scratches on DVDs etc too

[dashrazor]

Toothpaste

 

Works for removing scratches on DVDs etc too

oh yea i forgot about that this does work for both polishing and CD's.. (paste with tarter control seems to work best for some reason)