All of the hard work paid off!

My submission was received and came back with one thing: the elastic on the back of the knee guards need weathering. That was a bit of an adventure.

I laid own the massive trunk I use to store the costume inside and tried to open it. No luck. The lock was down. Odd thing — I never locked it. The keys are still taped inside the thing. Apparently the lock hook was loose and fell down and locked itself which was quickly remedied with a screwdriver sliding it out of the way.

So I took them outside to paint:

Of course I wasn’t going to simply splash some black paint on them like some rookie schlub. No, they needed to look like I had been crawling through a garage service pit and sewer so I used light grey, medium grey, black and brown. Which is all well and good until the brown can wouldn’t spray a thing. After some tinkering with it with a needle in the nozzle, soaking it in lacquer thinner for about 10 minutes and connecting the can to a bicycle air pump to try to loosen the can nozzle it broke free and sprayed my right hand with a nice coat of brown. Fortunately the lacquer thinner the nozzle was floating inside took care of it. I could then get down to business painting the elastic which took about 30 seconds. Masking them up took much longer (as is typical).

I had actually hoped the knee guards would have stuck on with just the elastic but no. These are made from heavy plastic. Resin tends to crack when bending down. I am also working on a spare set in case anything happens to these.