Lots of little parts of the Vader Helmet Project in motion today... Very Productive Day..

Here we have some foam-core molding from Lowes. Its like the wooden stuff but made from foam this particular piece was several feet long and 1 1/8 inch wide. I cut it down to 1 inch wide with a utility knife and straightedge.

Mohawk

Next i used the heat gun to soften it up a bit and mold it to the shape of my helmet to recreate the 'mohawk'. It took a few tries. Too much pressure will snap the hard foam.

Shortened the Helmet skirt extension

Jumping a bit forward here. I decided 1 inch longer in the back was TOO much of an extension of the helmet, so i cut off about 3/8 of an inch. It looks just about right now.

Sorry for the blurry pic here and there. I'm taking these pictures with my Phone, I have a much better camera but i don't want to subject it to the conditions in my workshop while I'm doing this stuff. Lots of dust and such.

Sanding

Sanded the eyebrows, Sanded the paint off the center so the mohawk glue would actually stick, and Sanded quite a bit of material off the back side so that the sides would match.

Gluing the Mohawk On

Here we see the mohawk glued in place with gel superglue.

Rear Side sanding, Mohawk

Here is another view of the mohawk attached, and the rear 'left' sanded down a bit.

Mohawk

Last shot of the mohawk You can see here its two pieces. I'll be puttying in the space between the curved and straight piece.

Kids Beach Buckets!!

Here's an ordinary plastic bucket for the beach.  I got a few red ones to destroy for this project.

The bottom of these are about the right size, and they have n indentation that allows them to 'stack' without turning.

I'm going to use these to make the mount for the mask to the helmet.

The Inner and Outer forms

Here on the left is the one that i am going to fiberglass the INSIDE of, and on the right I'm going to fiberglass OUTSIDE. then fiberglass one to the mask and one to the helmet.

This is my plan for a hopefully successful way to mount the mask to the helmet. I think I will add super strong 'rare earth magnets' afterwards to make it stay on.

Here's the fiberglassing of the inner form..

And here we have cut the plastic bucket off the inner form with the dremel. its quite a sturdy piece.

Here it is again, ready to be possibly shaped/ shortened and then attached.

The inside of the Eyelids

Here are the inside of the eyelids. These were a lot rougher looking in the last update. Here i have used the dremel sanding bit to remove a lot of material and smooth it out so i can add some fiberglass. I want this surface to be good and solid for mounting the lenses to.

Precut fiberglass pieces

I pre-cut a bunch of pieces of fiberglass as i knew i needed small pieces to do this area around the eyes without adding a ton of weight and resin.

Here's the inside with the pieces put in, I'll be cutting the eyeholes out again but this time there is enough structure in here to add some more evercoat filler  and make those eye lenses really fit like a glove.

And finally...

So here are the inside and outside forms of the mount. Very pleased with the progress so far... Got a LOT done today.