freefalle

My pet peeve is people who refuse to secure or put their helmets on during take off. I used to be guilty of it, until the first time I read about a jump plane crash. The thought of surviving the crash and being killed by the camera flyers 9 pound camera helmet hitting my skull kinda sucks. There's nothing wrong with looking around on an aircraft and checking chest straps. Im not sure why anyone would leave their rig sitting for a week, or even a day between jumps and not have someone check their pin before exit. Some people take a lot of safety issues for granted....

How you doin'????

Kind of a cross post from the Wing Suit forum, but is anyone else thinking about going to this boogie??? Has anybody been? How is it, How much were the rooms renting for? I'm considering going the photos Matt Hoover took last year make the place look amazing!

We will just pie you for GP mouth, so you might as well just give it up and tell us

The question should be how long do you think it will take for the people of pittsburg to stop talking about those two damn skydiver chicks that came to visit.....

your heart still belongs to the sky, you sir, are a skydiver.

I will hit my 600th as well

Fuckin Dublin who???? ass jacks.

I was just catching up on loging my jumps in the computer, It looks like I am going to hit my 2000 jump mark at the hog flop! thats cool.

I dunno man, you've already been paid once for the photo, I guess I can see it both ways. I kinda think in this circumstance it wouldn't hurt to show a little professional courtesy and toss the TM the pic. However, if he wants the print, he should at least offer to buy you a beer or something for printing it out. Ink isn't cheap. Now if the same TM was asking for a picture every time you turned around, that in my opinion is taking advantage of you and thats not cool.

This ain't fucking Dublin! hell yea there's gonna be beer there

Chuck, don't add the microballoons now, before the other 3 layers. Having filler in between laminates can really decrease the overall strength of the composite structure. After all 6 layers have been laid up, then you can add filler or fairing compound to smooth the surface. That makes sense. I'm going to get the plate for setting up the crown band hopefully tomorrow, I have to figure out where to get it, theres a metal fab. shop in deland Im going to check there. I have to get the angle brackets to attach the band to the plate. I'm trying to get those from Wes. I don't know where else to get them. Im hoping to get the band attached to the helmet next week, I'm taking off next thursday through the weekend for the hog flop. So, If I can get all the part and pieces, I'm sure I'll be calling you.

The mold will not be used again in the process of making this helmet, however, If I decided to build another one at some point, having salvaged this mold will save me about 100.00 in materials and about 5 hours worth of labor building another one. Good idea on the gorilla glue, I think that might work better than super glue. Although the superglue held the two halves together very well I may use the gorilla glue when puting together the crown.. DSE to answer your question, getting the fiberglass shell off of the foam mold without cuting the shell is just not possible. Its kind of like getting a walnut out of its shell without cracking the shell. Then only way to do it would be to cut the foam mold out piece by piece and pull it out of the bottom of the fiber glass shell. I suppose it could be done but it would be alot of work. Although you are correct the shell would be alot stronger. However, before this process is complete, I will be adding more coats of resin, microballoons and at least three more layers of fiberglass. I think that should be enough to fill in the seam and bring the integrity of the shell back to standard

I'm too busy looking at your avatar to watch anything.... sorry

Today, I removed the fiberglass shell from the mold. All I can say is what a pain in the ass that was. It was tough to get the shell off the mold without tearing up the mold. I got it off with a great deal of work and the mold isn't too worse off for the experience. I've sanded down the outer surface of the mold and it looks pretty good. I've glued the two halves of the shell back together and its drying now. I have some parts I need to get for the next step which is constructing the grown so I think it going to be next week before I can even start that task as I have to work the next 4 days. My biggest thought/concern right now is how well the shell is going to hold together while I'm working on the crown and getting ready for the final layers of fiberglass. I suppose the super glue is going to hold well enough but it doesn't seen like its that strong. However, Ive never really worked with it on a project like this. Anybody have any thoughts on that?

Today I added the first three layers of fiberglass. It really wasn't as difficult as I expected. I used a bit of a different technique when laying up the fiberglass that worked well for me. The directions said to lay the cut sheets of fiberglass out and the to coat the sheet with resin and the take the resin coated sheet and lay it up on the foam mold. What I did was coat the foam mold in resin, take the fiber glass material lay it over the foam mold cut in the overlaps and spread more resin on the material. after the material was completely covered with resin, I used the spreader to make sure that the material was flat against the mold before adding the next sheet of material. I am pretty happy with the way the fiberglass lay up turned out tomorrow, I will sand the resin down and then I will cut the hardened fiberglass shell away from the mold. After that it will be time to start the lay up of the crown portion. That may take some time as I still have some hardware I have to order along with the carbon fiber sheet I need for the top plate. I will take some more photos tomorrow after I have the shell separated from the foam mold. I put about 8 coats of wax on the foam mold so hopefully getting the shell off of the mold won't be too much of a pain in the ass. we shall see. Photos are of the first 3 layers of the fiberglass shell.

Yea, the surface I took the photo on wasn't exactly level. I'm going to start fiberglassing today. More photos tonight.

Nice, very nice!

heres some photos of the foam mold about finished and ready for fiber glass. I'll be starting that tomorrow

sound like the hard drive froze up. Google reseting the ipod hard drive and follow the directions. You may be, well, screwed

My foam mold is finished!!! I just completed sanding down the last layer of resin and it looks good. So far I'm guessing I'm into this for a total of probably 6 hours of actual work and lots of waiting for this to dry. I think Tuesday afternoon I'm going to start the fiberglass layers I can't find my CF card, I think its in my car I'll post photos of the foam mold before I start layering fiberglass and I'll take photos of the fiberglass lay up as well. My thought today is this I hope I have completed all the steps up to now correctly, there is little room for error when making the plaster cast. It is also important to make sure that you don't alter the shape of the foam mold as you put the resin on. Also, when making the plaster cast, you obviously have to wear a scuba hood. You have to cover the open area of the scuba hood ( the mouth, eyes and top of the nose) with a plastic bag. When you put tuck the plastic bag into the the scuba hood try your best to get all the wrinkles out, if you don't the plaster cast will have wrinkles in it and the foam mold may have wrinkles in it. If the foam mold has wrinkles in it the fiberglass shell will have wrinkle in it. Its not a big deal because you are going to cut that area out to make the face opening. However, its alot easier to cut that area and form the glass if you don't have wrinkles in it. This project has been a learning experience. I think its going well but I wont know for sure until the fiberglass shell is complete.

so Last night I added another coat of resin mixed with a small amount of micro balloons, this coating filled in some of the minor imperfections that were left after sanding the last layers off. The foam mold is really looking good. Today I added the last coating of resin and hardener mixed with the coloring agent. It is drying right now so by tonight I should be able to sand it and coat it with wax. Its been a fair amount of work preparing this foam mold but its almost done!

Okay, so heres what I learned today. let me regress for a moment. So far, I made the plaster cast of my head, then I filled it with the expanding foam. Now Im preparing the foam mold to be covered with fiber glass by coating it with resin. Here's where I ran into some misunderstading of the directions that I want to share with you. The directions said coat the foam mold with resin, once it dries lightly sand the resin, well what I did was just that. I lightly sanded the resin, all I did was scuff the surface of the resin I then cleaned off the dust and the I put the second coat of resin on. Again, after it dried I lightly scuffed the resin with sand paper. Again I cleaned off the dust. The third coats was resin mixed with micro balloons. The balloons were added to make it thick, like body filler. I coated the entire foam mold with the filler making it even. after it dried, I still had an uneven coating. Looking at the mold I knew I was doing something wrong. Fortunately, I live in deland, so I took the foam mold over to Wes's shop and asked him what I was doing wrong. He told me that the mold looked great but it needed to be sanded way down. which brings me to todays progress notes and lessons learned. I took the mold home and set to sanding it after about 20 minutes I came to realize that hand sanding this thing (A) sucks and (B) was going to take a long damn time. So, I borrowed an variable orbital sander and went back to work, in about 15 minutes I had the foam mold sanded down to a thin smooth surface It had a couple of low points which I wanted to fix so I mixed a small amount of resin with micro balloons and filled in the low spots. thats drying right now, tonight I have to add another coat of resin, sand it add 1 more coat of resin, sand it and its ready for fiber glass! It will be ready for fiber glass Monday, But I have to work Monday and Tuesday, I'm off Wednesday so I'm going to plan on starting my fiber glass then . Okay So lessons I've learned today. When you put a coat of resin on, let it dry and sand it. When you sand the resin, sand it carefully but it has to be sanded down smooth. sand it to the point where the foam is just covered by the resin, if the foam is exposed you sanded too much. Do that after each coat of resin is put on. Preparing the foam mold is the most important part of the process, if the foam mold is not right the fiberglass shell for the helmet will not fit right. So be careful when you sand that you don't go into the foam. After the third layer with the micro balloons is added the foam mold looks really good. If its done correctly it is smooth and even. Some people might be tempted to say screw it and not add the last two coats of resin to finish the mold out and start fiber glassing it. I caution you not to do that, The last layers really finish the foam mold off nicely and ensure that the foam is ready for fiber glass. After I finish the resin coatings, I have to coat the mold with several layers of wax. the wax helps prevent the fiberglass from sticking to the foam The directions call for at least four layers so I'll be sure to use at least that many. No point in doing this much work to prepare the foam mold to have it destroyed when I take the the fiberglass shell off. I want to use it again for my next helmet, I'm going to try to build a free fly helmet when I'm done with my CCM but thats another story. So by tomorrow I should have all the resin coats done. the photos I took today came out a little blurry so Ill take some more when I'm done with all the resin coats and I'll post them tomorrow

thats crap, so does it work both ways? I have custody of a child, I start dating a woman, we get married, we get divorced lets say after 10 years or whatever, do you think a judge is going to court order her to pay child support..... I doubt it.

Im at work tonight, I'll post it in the morning when I get home. Along with updates and photos of my foam mold, spent lots and lots of time sanding today, Im going to buy a orbital sander in the morning on my way home! learned some lessons today I'll share them tomorrow all and all my foam mold is comming along nicely, I should be ready to start fiber glassing it on Monday!