I just finished this for a friend of mine, and I was kinda pleased with the results. So I thought I would share it with the group.

So what we started with was a very pitted and flaky Bride of Pinbot helmet assembly. Here is the before shot. As you can tell, the finish has come off it in several places. My goal is to put a new silver-chrome finish on it.

Here is the starting point

So first off I will talk a little bit about the paint system I will be using. It is call Alclad, and was developed for use on scale models. I have used it many times over the years, and the stuff is great. Here is a P-51c I did years ago that is now the gate guardian to my work bench.

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This Alclad comes in many shades of silver that can be used for the paneling effects on model aircraft. For this job I chose the Chrome color.
Alclad is a very hot laquer, and can only be applied with an airbrush. I have a Paasche dual action airbrush that I use in scale modeling, and sometimes to touch up playfields. The paint comes in small 1 oz bottles, and cost about $9 per bottle. It can be purchased as better hobby shops, and on Amazon.

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So I started off removing the old finish. It came off very easily with 800 grit wet-dry sand paper. You want to get the surface as smooth as possible before putting on the base coat.

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All Alclad finishes require a base coat. For Chrome, the suggested base coat is an oil based enamel gloss black. Alclad sells a quality gloss black that you can usually pick up a the hobby shop when you get paint.

Spraying gloss enamel is tricky. If you spray with too much pressure, or are too far away from the model when you spray, it will flash before it gets to the subject, and look dull. To get a good coat, you have to put it on thick and wet. One way to get around this problem is to sand and polish the base coat before you put on the chrome top coat.

So here is the helmet after the first base coat.
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To be continued.....

As you can see, the base coat did not go on glossy like I had hoped, but there is still a way to fix this. Wait for the paint to cure for a couple of days, and then polish it out to a shine. For this project, I started with a 2500 grit, and then went to polishing cloths of 4000 grit, 6000 grit and finally 12000 grit. Use lot of water when you sand to keep the sand paper from gumming up.

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After a good polishing, you cant quite see yourself in it, but it looks a lot better.

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Not it is time to apply the top coat. The color is supsended in the paint, so shake it up well before starting. The directions state it should be sprayed at 15 to 12 psi. This worked out well for me.

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The laquer is IMO easier to spray than oil based enamel. It is much thinner, and as long as you spray it a little on the heavy side, it won't flash until it gets to the subject. it also lays down very well. The bad part is the stuff goes on very thin, and you don't really want to use this stuff anywhere it will get rubbed against. Also because it is very thin, every surface imperfection will show. This is why it is so important that your base coat be sanded and polished.

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the end result does not look as shiny as the original, but I kinda dig the almost steel look it has. It certainly looks better than what I started with.

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--The Uncivil Engineer

Well thanks for the compliments. Given that this part is pretty much unobtainum these days, I figured someone might be able to use this information to restore their old helmet.

Well I finished reinstalling it this evening, and it looks pretty good.5FB2CD02-2A5B-4223-933C-77ED60A0C632 (resized).jpeg

Repos are available from marco.