next week I want to start with my own scratch build of a proton pack, at first the gun body and the spacer (stencils are finished). As I can get wood and some foam for free and tubing almost free, I’d like to start with those materials to see how it’ll come out. Anyway, I worry about the possibilities to work with these materials, esp. foam (Cutting, drilling, etc. you know what I mean). I’ve seen some foam packs made by members of this community and they came out great.
But I have in mind to coat the finished piece with some kind of resin or other materials for a clean sanding afterwards and to make painting easier. And there my question comes in: What to use for this and has already somebody done this? Something that is easily available and fairly cheap would be best.
Searching Google and Youtube, I came up with this video:
It says that the finished product is fairly hard covered and can be sanded and/or painted (the result in black in this video is too bumpy, I don’t like this very much), but the product itself is rather expensive and not easy to get.
So, has anyone already made experience with this product or does someone know an alternative to that? That’s a question for the foam builders in this forum. A comment in this video recommends mixing up glue with water which can be brushed on top of the foam to get the same result. Is this true or would I just be disappointed? I saw a similar technique in childrens television years ago but they used toilet paper and glue for paper maché and I never tried that on foam.
I have sample sitting around somewhere of hard-coated foam, and it’s fairly smooth. The only problem i see with it is that it’s pretty thick, and would soften your detail a bit.
There are two types of coatings out there that won’t eat the foam. The cheap stuff would be something like Latex paint or PVA (white) glue, neither of which supply a hard coating and don’t sand well. The expensive stuff would be either an epoxy resin or professional hardcoat.
In general if you want a durable pack it’s cheaper in the long run to just not use foam at all as the cost of stuff to make it durable will be higher than just making it out of something better in the first place.
Actually, if you use a finbe grit, you can sand latex paint pretty well once completely cured. I did that with the grips I did on our throwers, and it gives you a perfect flat painted covering that looks exactly like black rubber
Its is possible to coat foam in bondo if you seal it first with something like wood glue. I used 3 coats of wood glue on my cyclotron then I was able to spray paint and bondo it. Check out my build in my signature to see what I did. You could also use whats called Bondo-resin which is just bondo and resin combined into a mixture with their appropriate hardeners. I used to use it on projects there were foam and I wanted to make them more durable.
The foam type I want to use is something like that used for insulation. Those are big 2 inch thick foamboards which are pretty sturdy, but also harder to work on, but I built a wire cutter for foam and as soon as the wire arrives, I’ll test it out if it works on that foam. On the picure you can see the foam, it’s pretty sturdy, but softer than the one in the background which isn’t smooth at all.
I tried it yesterday with wood glue and attached 2 coats of it onto a small piece of soft white foam. For the other half I used a mixture of water and glue, now that went pretty wrong cause it was like nothing at all on the foam.
Today, it was still soft though somehow. I dissolved the foam out of the glue. Out came a very soft shell which will rupture on the edges quite fast. Guess I let the shell harden for another day to see what’ll come out. Normally wood glue always seemed pretty hard to me. Perhaps it was the wrong wood glue (cheap one for testing). See the pictures for the shell:
That bondo stuff is interesting, I see what I can find out about it and where to get it.
Well, just now I only plan using foam for the spacer, nothing else. Would you think details are crucial on the spacer when those little plates I plan making out of wood on the bottom would be attached to it?
