Spaceball Helmet
I made this helmet as a 2008 Christmas present for a friend. Later I made another for myself with some additions which is shown farther down this page. I started by purchasing a 12" opal acrylic lamp dome from Home Depot. For some reason Lowes doesn't carry them and only certain Home Depots have them.
I started by marking out the area I needed to cut. I measured my own face to find the width and it's seemed to work for most people that have tried it on. The "face hole" is 6" wide and 6" up from the base of the globe. The bottom hole is widened to 8".
I cut the bulk of the material out with a dremel cutting wheel then trimmed it with some sanding drums and an X-acto knife. To paint it I first lightly sanding the dome with some 200 grit paper then started with two coats of flat white spraypaint followed by two coats of gloss white then two coats of gloss clear coat. The dome does have a join line running around it and a dimple on the top of the dome but with multiple coats of paint it disappears pretty much.
To finish I hot glued in some 2" upholstery foam. A chin strap of black elastic was added by gluing it in with Devcon Plastic Welder. The microphone was some cheap computer headset microphone I found in the trash.
For my personal helmet I wanted to have the drop down eye shield. I bought an acetate face shield from a welding supply store and some rectangular plastic tubing from the hobby store.
I cut the short edge off of one side of the rectangular tube creating a U-channel. These were then carefully bent into a curve. The face shield was cut into a strip.
The two U-channels were attached together with some strip styrene. Make sure the styrene is slightly shorter than the width of the face shield so as to give the shield some curve. The bottom of the channel was blocked with some styrene so the shield can't slide out. Styrene was then cut to shape for the inside of the helmet (a real pain in the ass) and used to mount the track inside the helmet. I also used strips cut from the removed section of the globe (as these already have the correct curve of the helmet) as mounting brackets. The whole thing was tacked in with Krazy Glue initially then attached permanently with plastic welder.
Completed helmet pics:
Major Asshole reporting for duty. Hail Scroob!
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