Hi all,
I'm a newbie on Prop Den, but have been a member of other boards for quite some time. I wanted to show some pics of the alterations I made to my MR CE Stormie helmet. Now, I'm not a trooper-head by any means, but I wanted a nice full size TK helmet to add to my collection. The price of the MR was right, and once I heard they were available thru US retailers, I had to get one.
There were some issues I wanted to fix, and I realized it would mean doing a repaint, but I went ahead and made the changes. I'm sure a lot of you are familiar with the big seam around the front of the face. I filled it with some white DAP kitchen and bath sealant. I carefully removed the rubber brow and neck trim, and the crepe paper inside the frown cutouts, unscrewed the lenses to remove them, and Dremeled from the inside of the helmet to allow me to remove the Hovi tips.
I then used a fine sanding sponge to remove the smaller mold parting seams on the face and dome.
After all that, I got some Duplicolor spray paint in Classic White. It was the whitest white I could find. Here are some pics of the completed conversion.
The Duplicolor white cured very nicely, and once I had polished it a bit, I used some Duplicolor clear to protect it. This was also polished with some rubbing compound and that brought it up to a very nice, natural looking shine. It's not like a mirror finish, but I think it closely approximates the gloss white-painted look of the original stunt helmets.
Here's an overall shot.
I repainted the frown, tears, trapezoids, and ears with Testors Gray 1138. My excellent hobby shop, which normally has anything I could ever want, doesn't carry any gloss Humbrol colors. (From some trooper boards I had read that the "accepted" gray is Humbrol Admiralty Gray #5, with Testors 1138 a very close second.)
But comparing the Testors to the original color, I think it's a great match.
Below, you can also see that I added screws to the ear pieces to mimic the stunt helmets.
The black stripes inside the rear trapezoids and tears, and the vocoder, were painted by hand with a Testors gloss black paint marker. In all my years of modeling, I had never used one of these things before! Sooooooo easy to use!!
The black outlines of each trapezoid were done with auto pinstriping tape. I just wanted to have those lines very smooth to define the shapes.
The replacement tube stripe decals I bought are terrific! Very vibrant shade of blue, but not too light like I've seen on some TK buckets. I took care to make sure they matched the curve of the tubes.
Once I was sure I wouldn't have to respray anything, I reattached the Hovi tips with CA glue and added some black mesh inside the frown. I got a 1-foot roll of the stuff for like $3.00. . . I have enough left over to do about 200 more helmets. I just tacked it down with a few drops of CA, just in case I ever have to remove it for anything. I also put some of the black mesh inside the Hovi tips because they're basically see-thru.
I re-tacked the brow trim, again just using a drop of CA on either temple, and put the neck trim back on, then the very last thing I did was add some clear smoky PVC sheet to each lense. It makes them look much darker than the stock lenses, which were pretty light.
So that's it. My "cheap" MR bucket wound up costing a little more, but I'm glad I made the alterations. Would I do this again? Probably not!
Thanks for looking!
Eric
