Before we get started I just wanted to let you know there's a claymation version of the intro
you just saw at the end of my video made by my son and it's pretty spectacular. So be sure to stick around.
Today I'm gonna revisit an old video
I did where I made a Wonder Woman shield from foam using the Sun and a hot car to form it into its
magnificent dome shape. Of course
I got a lot of feedback from people who didn't have a Sun or a hot car because some of us live in places like this.
So I tried a bit of a different technique with a different shield and I ended up with this
It's a shield for an American
Anyways, I'm gonna show you how I made the shield without using a hot Sun or a hot car.
I grabbed two ten millimeter thick EVA foam floor mats and marked their centers. I marked my ruler at the
1, 9, 15.5, 22, 27 and 29 centimeter marks and drilled a hole in each of those marks.
that was just big enough to allow the tip of my pen through.
I enlarged the hole at the 1 centimeter mark so I could skewer it.
I lined my two mats up perfectly with each other and skewered through both of them right in the middle.
I did a fancy pen spinning around with a ruler stuck in some foam with a skewer trick,
creating a circle for every hole drilled in my ruler except the 27 millimeter one.
I then swapped my sheets of foam and, that's right, used the 27 millimeter hole.
I grabbed my super sharp knife and cut out the larger of the foam disks. For the smaller disc
I tilted my knife at a little bit of an outward angle while I cut it out.
I cut along the three remaining circles of the larger disc, making sure to only cut about a millimeter deep into the foam.
I put on my respirator and ran outside,
cranked up my Furno 700 heat gun and applied heat to the front of the shield.
This does two things: One, it magically opens up all the score cuts
I made. Two, it seals the top surface of the shield.
You can tell when it's sealed because it turns kind of shiny and that's pretty
cool.
I blew up a big old exercise ball,
grabbed some cling wrap and started wrapping the shield parts on to the ball:
the big one with the score lines smooth side out
and the smaller one smooth side in.
Gave it a little spin for luck and then continued covering it with cling wrap.
My goal is to get all the flappy little edges compressed down nice and smooth against the ball.
I found the best way to do this was to hold the little flappy part down with my hand
and then stretch the cling wrap
tight over top of it.
I grabbed some clear packing tape out of my tape drawer
and used a number of straight strips to wrap all the way around the outside
perimeter of the shield.
The reason I'm doing this is because the cling wrap could stretch whereas the packing tape definitely won't.
Now here's the part where I don't use the Sun and a hot car. Instead, I'm gonna use a hot gun.
A heat gun!
I attached the flare nozzle to my Ferno 700, set the temperature at 800 degrees
Fahrenheit and carefully heated each foam disc for 13 minutes.
Which would be really boring to watch
So instead I'm gonna take some time to thank Wagner for sponsoring this video and sending me the
Ferno 700 heat gun to try out
I've had the Ferno 700 for a couple of months now and to be honest, it's become one of my favoritest tools.
I think one of the things that makes it so great for me is I can adjust the temperature anywhere from 120 to
1,300 degrees Fahrenheit
Which means I can use it for drying some paint without having to worry about it getting too hot and bubbling,
removing a hot glued piece of foam 
without overheating it,
or I could turn it all the way up and start a fire without matches or paper.
It heats up really fast and you know when it's up to temperature cuz the little bars stop flashing.
And when you go to turn it off, it has an automatic cooldown mode,
so I just like to pretend it's telling me I'm cool.
Oh, and it looks like a
spaceship which means those little fins are gonna keep it standing upright
if you happen to forget it in a bowling alley.
I love that I can set the Ferno down and have both my hands-free
whether I'm molding thermoplastic to make Thor's hammer,
safely bending PVC,
or melting plastic toys back together 
to keep everyone happy.
>Yeah!
I also repaired some old rubber seals on our camper,
made some non marking pliers using heat shrink,
and fixed my son's clarinet
Never had one lesson
Of course it works fantastic for all the standard foam smithery type things like heat sealing foam,
opening up score lines,
adding textures for leather effects,
and removing creases from foam props 
that have had a hard life.
And we're about to find out if it's any good 
for forming shields
I'm gonna leave this ball overnight to cool down and check it in the morning.
In the morning, I excitedly opened it up to see if the foam had kept its shape.
I was super happy to find out that it did.
That was a successful experiment. Now, let's finish this off.
I made some paper templates for the back of the shield, cut them from some 2 millimeter craft foam and
glued them down.
Found an old belt and cut some slots the same width so I could push it through the back of the shield
for a handle.
Bent the belt over and glued it down, making sure to sand both the belt and the foam before doing so.
In hindsight, I should have made a shallow cutout 
in the foam,
so the belt would be able to fold down into it and stay flush with the back surface.
Though I tried to thin it out with my knife, in the end
it still left some little lumps on the shield where those pieces were underneath.
I spread some water-based contact cement on the textured side of both of the pieces and let them dry.
I used some cardboard strips to separate the two halves
so the glue wouldn't stick them together before they were properly lined up. Once lined up
I pulled out the strips and pressed the two halves together.
I used some two-part epoxy to make some rivets on the
backplate. If you want more information about making rivets from two-part epoxy
you can check out some of my other videos.
For the center star
I made a template and 
marked all the points with a little pin.
I then cut score lines between the points and hit them with my heat gun for a few seconds to open up the lines.
Now all I had to do was change it from foam into vibranium
with some metallic silver paint. My goal here was to kind of recreate the spun metal look of the shield,
so I tried to apply the paint following the curve of the circle,
cleaning out any paint that got into the lines of the design with a barbecue skewer. At the end of painting each section
I would try to go over the paint one more time with one long spiraling brushstroke.
I used a fairly coarse paintbrush so it would 
leave some texture.
After a couple coats of silver came the red and the blue,
with a little protective clear coat to finish it off.
And that is a sweet shield.
So the shield turned out great and I guess that answers the question:
Can you make a domed shield 
without a hot car or hot Sun?
And the answer is yes.
If you want to grab the template for this star 
or these back thingamajiggers
I'll put a link at the end of the video and in the description
And as always, I would love to hear from you in the comments
Let me know what you liked, what you didn't like,
whether your partner would let you mow a star in the front lawn...
mine did. In fact, she even mowed it.
Thanks for watching. See ya.
And now for some claymation
>Daddy, but why did you tape up my big ball?
>Ummm...I taped it up because I'm making a shield
>When will you un-tape it?
>Later today.
>Okay.
>Is that Alright?
>Yes
