Prop: Shop - Strapping Your Foam Armor

[Music] hello everybody and welcome to the prop shop I am Builder and foamsmith prop maker costume guy and I'm here to bring you some more foam armor making tips we've had this trend over the last few weeks of doing some really cool foam tips like bevels and edges and intricate cuts and all that sort of stuff and those videos are linked down below if you want to go check those out but today I want to talk about straps you can't build all of this foam armor and then wish it to stick to your body you've got to strap it to yourself somehow and I'll show you some of my favorite techniques one of my favorite materials for strapping my armor is nylon webbing and plastic buckles these are available at a lot of craft or sewing stores and also on the internet links will be provided down below as you can see on my Lord Shack's armor right here the sides of the Torso armor are held together with a pair of these straps it's really easy to attach and really easy to get in and out of and I will show you how to attach them first of all if you're using floor mats for your armor like I tend to do you'll probably have to get rid of that nasty texture if it's on the back of your armor where you will be attaching those straps you want to sand it off using something like your rotary tool like a Dremel or a big old belt sander like I've got this gives your glue a much better surface to attach to then you can trace out a piece of your nylon webbing on the foam so that you know where you're going to glue it down and to add a little bit more structure and support for your glue you can carve in some lines with a sharp knife now just score them don't cut all the way through but once you've done that you can hit it with a heat gun those lines will open up and they provide some really great grooves for your glue to go into and add a little bit more grip then you can glue it down now for this I really like hot glue cuz it's fast and easy I just bathe the area in hot glue smash my piece of nylon webbing right down into the area and then once it's sort of held its place there I'll go around the edge of the nylon webbing with some more hot glue to help keep the edges down and then on the outer edge of the armor I'll put another bead of hot glue over it just to kind of help keep that part down since it's the area that's most likely pull away from your armor once the hot glue has cool down you've got a super solid attachment for your straps on your armor but wait there's more there's plenty of other ways and materials that you might use to put your armor on you so again on my thigh armor here for Lord Shacks is attached using both velcro and some elastic both of these materials can provide a little bit of a challenge to attach it to foam but fear not I've got the answer for you now elastic can be glued down just like you would be doing the nylon webbing straps the only issue is over time that stretchiness can actually cause the hot glue to pull apart a little bit if you're worried about the durability you can sort of up the game a bit and cut off a little piece of nylon webbing and sew it to your elastic this provides a small area of your elastic strap that will not stretch and the nylon webbing glues so well to the foam using your hot glue that part will act just like a nylon webbing strap Velcro on the other hand sure you can get away with not attaching it to something but I found over time the velro doesn't Bond as well to the hot glue so again we do that same thing cut off a little piece of nylon webbing and then Stitch your piece of velcro to it and then hot glue that down to your foam all three of these methods are great for getting your Armor All strapped up and especially and they are especially durable for a costume that will withstand the test of time and now you are armed with a whole bunch of ways to strap your armor to your person these techniques and more can be found of course in my book the foamsmith book how to create foam armor costumes by Builder and this book and a whole bunch more really great tutorial content can be found over at punish props.com this comes in both an ebook and this wonderful print version thanks for checking out the video this week you guys uh we've been doing this foam home armor making tip thing for the last couple weeks so if you want to go check out the previous ones they are right over here for your viewing pleasure and we're going to BlizzCon yay that means I have two more days to finish my costume if you want to check out the progress on that you'll check out uh Twitter twitter.com chin beard and also over on Facebook look up punished props thanks again you guys and we'll see you all at Bliss gon

Channel: Punished Props Academy

Views: 209,668

Keywords: bill doran, chinbeard, punished props, foamsmith, eva foam, armor, costume, cosplay, straps, elastic, nylon webbing, how to, tutorial, help

Id: 8_qxMULsR1c

Length: 4min 59sec (299 seconds)

Published: Mon Nov 02 2015