Got the second chest piece cut out, glued up, and shaped!
Seams have been sanded, I’ll get started filling and smoothing later today. For the first piece, I used contact cement to glue it up and it worked really well. But, there were 2 problems - first, the fumes were pretty intense and my basement workspace isn’t ventilated (that’s on my list of summer projects). Second, the contact cement doesn’t bond instantly and takes around an hour to fully cure. Once it’s cured, it’s rock solid. But, the curved pieces of the armor had a lot of tension in them and wanted to pull apart. I had ended up using hot glue in a few spots just to keep it all together while the cement cured.
For this piece (and a few of the other pieces) I’m using CA superglue. Works great, bonds very quickly, sands down easily, but I HATE how it feels on my fingers! Oh well, we’re supposed to suffer for our art or something like that.