I allow my base coat to flash or in common terms dry about 45 minutes before going any further with the project. Please refer to the tech sheet for the product you are using. This next step is purely personal preference really; personally I like to clear coat over just about all-base coats I apply before adding artwork or graphics. You certainly can get away most of the time with using a PPG intercoat clear or House of Kolor SG-100, its that occasional time you can’t that drives me to better protect the base colors. I use House of Kolor UC 35 clear and apply several coats of clear to the helmet allowing it to dry twenty-four hours before moving on with the artwork. Again the clear is best applied with a mini or touch up spray gun rather than an airbrush. If you clear enough projects sooner or later you’re going to get sag as I did with this helmet. An easy fix is to break off a small piece of wooden paint stir stick, use 600 grit wet sand paper (wet) wrapped around the stick to sand the sag out. Make sure you soak the 600 grit for ten minutes or so before you use it other wise it might well scratch the surface rather than sand it. With the sag no longer a problem I use the Scotch Brite pad to once again scuff the entire surface of the helmet to a dull finish.


Now comes the fun part, design layout and for this I use one eight- inch fine line tape. I like to take advantage of the design molded into the helmet when laying out my artwork or graphics; they should flow with the helmet design. For this metal plate design you could get away with just using one piece of fine line tape and apply your seam color, to me that works great on a baseball helmet or a low end design (one which your are not getting paid well to do) For this helmet we’ll make it look a little more high end, custom and spend just a little more time in our lay out.


I pull all the basic lines for my design making sure they all look even side to side and front and back of the helmet. What’s real nice about us- ing the fine line tape is you can adjust the design as much as you want by just repositioning the tape.


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