APR 10, 2016

I Made A Captain America Shield From A Sled

So this is a long drawn out, full of elbow grease process, but once you get the hang of it, its pretty cheap and not really that difficult. This is made from a metal saucer sled which is kind of hard to find because its a popular sled AND popular amongst cap types like myself. Its a blast for me to see how it goes from solid red sled, to something that could be in the movies.

I'm doing a full, long tutorial on my blog so that just about anybody could pick one up and do it themselves.

More info: mywaytonormal.blogspot.com

Finished Product

Here's what you get at the end

The sled I started with

boring red sled, gotta get rid of that paint, its solid and not the right color

Red paint stripped off and rings sanded into surface

Here's the sled once its stripped and cleaned up. You have to sand those rings into it so it has the spun aluminum look the movie shields have.

Taped out, red rings ready for paint

Once you tape the whole shield you've got to draw all the rings on and then carefully cut the red rings out. Pull them off, that leaves the metal ring and the blue circle. At this point you take anodized paint and spray the red.

Post painting, wet sanding to smooth it out to a glassy surface

Once the red dries, spray the blue, pull the last ring and spray it all with a bunch of gloss coats. After that dries you've got to even it out and smooth things to get a finish as smooth as glass.

After wet sanding, you need to use rubbing compound to fill in the scratches and buff it up.

BUT OH NO! you wrecked your finish. Yeah you kind of did. But rubbing compound fills in all these marks and brings the finish back to the shine you had before. It just takes some elbow grease and the smoothness you get is totally worth the extra work.

After buffing, gloss surface like a car

Once its all buffed up you get a pretty reflective surface

Don't forget the straps on the back

Lots of metal cutting and some leather working if you do the back the same as the movies, if you don't care, there are a lot of other ways to finish the back.