A gift for a good friend, the seals were printed on my Form2, sanded, airbrushed, and given a dirtying pass with some muddy black paint. The flag of the seal was made from a disused work shirt with an iron-on print then stained with coffee. This was then hot-glued onto the back of the seal itself. May make some more of these in the future, they were fun to make.
WW2 Captain America Shield
To be updated with more info and photos, but this is about a WW2 Captain America ‘heater shield’.
My good friend Jack asked about making one for his Captain America cosplay / airsoft outfit, and I figured “why not?”, and went about it. Jack helped source some great reference material (mental note, dig that up and link it here).
I had just enough leftover 1/8″ thick aluminum sheet metal at work that I was able to CNC machine out the shield shape. The grade of aluminum (I want to recall 6061) proved too difficult to roll / bend by hand, even with myself and another friend literally leaning over each half. I ended up getting the sheet metal shop that my work does business with to put it through a manual roller which proved to do the trick.
Then came the longest part to tackle – the design. We looked into paint, powdercoat (whole shield’s got a base coat of white powdercoat), ‘dry’ cerakote, wet cerakote, vinyl decals, vinyl masking… everything either ended up taking too much skill, space, or free time. We ended up contracting with a friend-of-a-friend who does custom vinyl work as a business, and he printed and placed the design as seen on the shield. Between the durable vinyl and the powdercoat base, it’ll take a beating no problem should it ever see action on an airsoft field.
As of posting this I still have to fabricate and adhere on the arm strap mounting strips. I’ll update the post as that moves forward.