Buckets

[Ang]

If it helps, I believe mine is a DP recast of sorts...it's pretty thin resin and fiberglass...and I'm one of the VERY FEW people I know who can fit it in okay. DP's run small for an average head.

[stripes]

I have a DP that I have been hard at work modifying since the board went down. I started by cutting out the visor area and filing it smooth. I then took some sand paper (10 different grits from 320 all the way to 20,000) and sanded the whole helmet. I then primed it and am now in the process of painting it with Tremclad Fire Red High Gloss. I am at 4 layers now and I will be adding one more for sure, if not two more in order to get my desired look. Once I have that completed I'm going to let it cure for at least a couple of days before waxing and polishing the helmet for that ultra high glossy look. Once that is completed I can finally glue my new visor in place (nice and dark red). I'll hopefully post some pics of the finalized project in the near future (maybe as soon as the weekend).

[inxsone]

I own a Don Post, a "SA" helmet and another resin bucket of unknown pedigree (I originally thought it was an "SA" but it's not)... I used to have a "SFP" helmet too (I got rid of it after I found out about the owner's past and their practice of "recasting" others work), it was clearly based on a Don Post but was stretched in a funky sort of way to make it bigger... It looked OK head on but from the side just looked "strange"... Of all those helmets the ONLY one that fit me "out of the box" was the SFP... I have a size 7 5/8 head or (61 in euro)... NONE of the others fit until I did a "Sir Ken" style mod on them which is basically halving them then fiberglassing and bondoing them back to together as seen in the photos below...




Bottom line though is IF you have a head BIGGER than a 7 1/2 size you are gonna have fit problems and will probably have to just modify one to work like I did... It was REAL easy to do and looks great when you are done, just take your time and do it right...

[Ang]

Very nicely done!

[stripes]

Nice work. Fortunately for me the DP helmet fits so I didn't need to worry about such extreme modifications!

[McHale]

I've ordered a South American bucket, and it just arrived at the Norwegian customs today, so hopefully i get it sometime tomorrow or friday at latest. and i'll get some pics up if anyone is interested

[Darth Skellington]

We'd love to see some pictures. I'm also curious as to who you bought yours from....."F" or "T". That's a pretty fast turnaround compared to mine....but I had to wait for mine to be painted.

[MagnaPrime]

Hi,

I'm new at this so I'm just going to dive right in here. I recently bought my bucket off ebay from a guy selling his collection in florida. It's a DP helmet that I don't think I'll have to mod for size (little hard to put on and pull of a bunch but once on it's fine). I've got a couple questions. Whats the recommended procedure for cutting the visor portion out is the first one. The best I've come up with is using my dremel and sanding it out slowly so that I don't cut anything without meaning too. Is there a better method? Secondly if I recall I remember reading somewhere that the visor mounts inside the helmet is this correct. And third, what is the reason for putting bondo on the entire helmet. I've never worked with bondo and am nervous about messing up my bucket. Also, if I do bondo it do I need to sand it beforehand or is that a direct application material? Thanks for any tips.

[stripes]

Hi,

I'm new at this so I'm just going to dive right in here. I recently bought my bucket off ebay from a guy selling his collection in florida. It's a DP helmet that I don't think I'll have to mod for size (little hard to put on and pull of a bunch but once on it's fine). I've got a couple questions. Whats the recommended procedure for cutting the visor portion out is the first one. The best I've come up with is using my dremel and sanding it out slowly so that I don't cut anything without meaning too. Is there a better method? Secondly if I recall I remember reading somewhere that the visor mounts inside the helmet is this correct. And third, what is the reason for putting bondo on the entire helmet. I've never worked with bondo and am nervous about messing up my bucket. Also, if I do bondo it do I need to sand it beforehand or is that a direct application material? Thanks for any tips.

Well, I just went through modifying my own DP helmet only a couple months ago so I can give you a run down of what I did.

First I removed the thin plastic visor of the original DP helmet using a hobby knife. I then used some files to slowly sand/cut out the visor area as I didn't have a dremel at my disposal. The next thing I did was sand down the entire outside of the helmet starting with about a 320 grit sandpaper and working through several grades all the way up to about a 20,000 grit sand paper (usually found at hobby shops for models) to remove the original finish of the helmet from the factory. I then filled in the Don Post stamp on the "tail" of the helmet with modellers putty (much easier to use than bondo, and a lot less of a worry of screwing up), let it dry and cure, and then sanded it down until it was flush with the rest of the helmet. Once I had all this done I got rustoleum grey primer, stuffed the inside of the helmet with paper, and sprayed the whole helmet. I let the primer cure a full 72 hours. After the primer had cured I painted the helmet with rustoleum fire red, in thin coats. By the time it was all said and done I think I had 9 or 10 coats of the fire red paint on the helmet (basically 2 full cans worth of spray paint). The final thing I did before installing my new red visor was to spray the helmet with the rustoleum clear coat. I ended up with 4 layers of clearcoat just to help solidify the paint job so that hopefully any scatches will end up being minimal to fix in the long run. Finally I glued the visor in inside the helmet (yes you are correct with that, it does go inside the helmet). I am quite pleased with how it turned out. It's a time consuming process, but well worth it once it's done. I hope this helps you out and if you need any clarification on any of my steps send me a message and I'll try to help out.

Stripes