Painting and waxing the helmets.

I had a spare few hours between my lecture and seminar today so I thought I’d go paint my helmets. However before painting them they had to be prepped.

1. Using wet and dry, medium rough sandpaper we sanded the helmet under the cold tap, this works better and stops too much dust becoming airborne, until the iron powder had come to the surface and made the helmet look silvery.

2. Next we alternated rubbing wire wool and T-cut in a circular motion to bring up any scratches and give the helmet a nice finish. This was done about 3 times each in total.

3. After that had dried we applied a thin layer of Covent Garden primer to both helmets to help the paint to adhere to the surface better. However before I did this with the plastic helmet I used plastic weld to bond together the cracks around the edge of the helmet where I had a struggle getting the fibreglass out of this mould.

4. Once the primer had fully dried we could then paint the helmets.

I decided to paint the inside of both helmets a khaki brown colour so they would look of similar manufacture and then for the Fiberglassing helmet I mixed a deep forest green colour and applied that all over the top and then once it had dried applied some brown that I smeared and rubbed in using tissue into some choice areas to show a bit or wear and plot to the helmet. For the plastic one I used the green I had made for the first helmet but made it darker by adding a bit more dark brown to the mix. I applied one coat of this then allowed it to dry and the applied another. Once the second coat had just started to dry, a tacky texture, I used a dry brush and stippled the paint to create rough, sandpaper like texture. I am really happy with the way this texture looks and my choice to not sand or fill the dimples and cracks in my helmet smooth, I feel, really add to the final look.

They seem to have photographed brighter than they look.
Something to think about for future reference?