At long last, RESIN!

So-

Way back in December I started messing around with Pepakura, specifically helmets from Games Workshop's Space Marine™ universe. After hacking together a Mark III and a Terminator helmet, I finally did it right with the Mark VII:

The other two are perched on my computer room window sill as a testament to my rather pedantic manual dexterity skills.

Finally today, only 6 months later, I finally got around to taking the next step, applying fiberglass resin!

 Mk VII and equipment in ready mode

As I said when I blogged about this the first time, I got sucked into this after stumbling across Shawn Thorsson's blog When My Brain Leaks, the Drops Drip Here. Shawn has a wonderful step by step walkthrough of this process here. I'm going to give you the Reader's Digest version...

In the picture above, you'll see everything you need:

• Pepakura model, in this case the Mark VII helmet
• Fiberglass resin with hardener (which is hiding under the white cap)
• Graduated mixing cup
• Chip brush. Pro tip - buy the cheap ones, because the resin is really hard on brushes
• Gloves - you don't want this stuff on your hands. Nitrile gloves are cheap, impervious and  and grippy
• Wax paper coating the work surface. The resin sticks to everything, and once hard doesn't like to let go. The wax paper will keep you from wrecking your model when you try to pry it off the table.

You'll want to perform this job outside, or in a really well ventilated space. Huffing resin fumes is a great way of killing brain cells.

The process is pretty straightforward. Measure out the amount of resin you'll need. In this case I ended up using about 6 ounces to coat the whole helmet inside and out. Then add the hardener. #M resin asks for 10 drops of hardener to one ounce of resin. Be sure to read the instructions and use the right amount for your resin brand. Too little and it'll never harden right. Too much and you'll have a mixing cup resin popsicle. Mix the resin and the hardener thoroughly, and then brush onto the model.

Some folks do just the inside, some just out. I did both sides because I had enough, and I really wanted to make sure the paper was impregnated. The point of this step is to make the model stiff enough to take the Rondo mixture that comes next without deforming.

The result should look something like this:

See, I told you the hardener was hiding in the cap...

Note the mottled appearance. That's good, as it means the resin is soaking into the paper.

Now it hardens, and puts the lotion on its skin, or it gets the... oops! Wrong blog.

Once it's hardened completely, the next step is to coat the innards with Rondo, a mix of resin and Bondo body putty. So stay tuned for more mess!