This particular helmet has a few particularities which made the surface preparation hard
to do. Fist the original surface is like a rubber surface and a classical sanding stage with
320 dry grit sandpaper don’t produce any result. The sandpaper became dirty in short
order and the rubber protection stay in perfect shape. The solution is to sand it very hard
with at least 100 dry grit paper. It takes a long time to do but it’s the only way I’ve found to
remove it. The second problem is that the rubber trim joint is not glued onto the helmet
as usual but rather stitched onto the helmet, so it’s impossible to remove the trim for the
paint work.The final design will be base black with one large stripe down the center of the
helmet and two smaller stripes on each side of the center stripe and finally a name written
in script lettering. Supplies used on this project where: Harder Stenbeck Evoulotion Aair-
brush, mini spray gun, masking tape, House of Kolor, water based primier/sealer.
Here is a picture of the helmet with rubber type material removed. After the 100 grip
sandpaper I continue with 180, 240 and finish with 320 grit sandpaper’s until I get a
perfectly smooth surface.
Here a picture of the rubber trim after I have masked it off with masking tape. Because
you want a very clean job and you have to be sure that there will be not paint or clear
over the rubber trim, you have to fold the stitched part and fix it with masking tape. You
might have to add another layer of masking tape to ensure you have the trim completed
masked off. Using this technique all the paint and clear will be under the stitched part of
the trim when the helmet is finished.
To eliminate any paint adhesion is-
I spray a black base coat over the entire helmet. After the black base has dried I protect
sues a primer/sealer is used be-
both sides with tape and spray a white base coat in the center area of the helmet which will
tween the helmet surface and the
server as a big stripe down the center of the helmet. I want to keep the sides of the helmet
paint work, I‘ve choosen to use a
black and so the masking is applied. This white base coat will be my base color for the blue
water base acrylic primer/sealer
pearl which will be the final color for that stripe. Here is a picture of the black and the blue
for this helmet.
pearl colors after I have applied them. When applying the white followed by the pearl blue
keep in mind you do not want to use a great deal of paint as it will result it a big ridge down
along the tape edge. That ridge of paint might be hard to cover with the final clear coats so
it’s best to keep that in mind while applying your colors.
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