Life In Plastic, It's Fantastic - Hardening a Foam Iron Man Costume...

So, busy week here in the treehouse!  I bit the bullet and articulated the armor.  The shoulder was a bit tricky because of all the parts involved and the degrees of freedom required.  I think I found a decent compromise, considering there's only one buckled strap per joint.

The knee has been hanging over my head, so to speak.  I tackled it by using the buckles themselves to provide the freedom.  I tried it on and there's plenty of movement, just not a lot to pull the knee back into perfect alignment.  I think I'll be able to live with that.

I bought some flexible, sandable caulk at work and smoothed the rather ugly intersection between the forearm and the wrist.  It took a few days to cure, but I took it outside and sanded the transition pretty smooth with 150 grit.  I was worried that the Styrospray wouldn't take to the caulk, but it evidently worked out OK.

Since I've already got $300 and 300 man hours into this project, I decided to go all the way and use Styrospray 1000 to harden the foam armor.  It's a two-part polymer that cures with the moisture in the air.  Finally, living in the PNW pays off!  It's a 1:1 mix ratio, so even I can do it.  The fumes weren't too bad, kind of like freshly painted walls.  I've got two coats on about 40% of the armor and it makes a HUGE difference!  I'll do a sanding and then apply a third coat.  So far, I've used about 20% of my kit, so I should have some left over after I do three coats on the whole suit.  I can definitely see another costume in the very near future, once I recover from this one.

The Styrospray over the BoatLife Life Caulk actually looks like welded metal!

For some weird reason, the Styrospray on the red foam parts bubbled up a lot more than the white foam parts.  Sigh...  Of course the tradeoff is that it's much easier to see where you've already painted the off-white Styrospray on the red parts than the white.  Sigh...

The hardening of the armor is substantial!  The third coat should make this feel much more like toy plastic than costume flimsy plastic, if that makes any sense.  The styrospray is very glossy, in fact it still looks wet.

NOTE!  I didn't use gloves because I needed the manual dexterity to hold the parts while painting them.  Spraying would definitely be preferable.  I have basically plasticized my hands and it's extremely tough to get off.  Also, building a PVC drip drying rack is much better than letting them sit on a plastic drop cloth to cure.  Where the Styrospray contacts the plastic, you get "flash".

Based on XRobots.co.uk videos, I cast my hands in order to be able to sculpt the gloves perfectly.  Of course the $22 sculpt didn't turn out perfectly, but it will most likely be better than some sloppy foam construct.  A couple of fingers broke off in the demolding process.  I'm going to use Sculpey clay and then oven bake it to save from having to make molds.  I'll let you know how that turns out.

Here's the helmet after 2 coats.  While not DOT approved, it certainly is a lot more rigid than just the foam.  Sanding and at least one more coat, then I have to decide whether to cut the faceplate off and build the swingarm mechanism.

Captain Skully Out...