May 17, 2001 NOTE: This link is jumping in in the middle of the blog. NEWEST UPDATE is HERE: http://mu5a5hi.blogspot.com


TIME MACHINE

THIS IS A LONG POST. It is all copied from posts I made elsewhere and consolidated here to catch up to date..

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Thought I would go back and catch up to the present day. I originally started this helmet project by posting on the 501st Sith Lords Boards. Not everyone i know who MIGHT be interested is a member there so this post will hopefully catch everyone up.

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First off, for some reason, I forgot to take pictures of the Rubie's before i started, but if you search for 'Rubie's Supreme Vader Helmet on google you should find it.

It begain with of my trusty (and dangerously powerfun) heat gun, a red paint pen, and my multispeed dremel (80's vintage i think! I remember dad using it when I was in late high school)


One of the few pics I have of Rubies vader before any sanding or mods.


Dr. Vader says to always be safe when working with power tools.


Trimming off 1/2 inch of the left (from front)



After dremelling that extra half inch off, I got out the heat gun and got to work. The goals were to reduce the crazy neck flare on the right (again all mentions of right and left are me LOOKING AT the mask in my hands..)
fix the sunken in side on the right, and to make the side pipes more uniform, specifically following my movie observation that the upper pipes were concave (bowed inward) and the bottom ones were convex (bowed outward) .. except right up where they are about to get to the tusks. Also to do some analysis of where some of the lopsidedness comes from and what i can do about it.


Learned quite a bit with this one. The eyelids meet on the outside of the eyes at a different height on each side.

Also the plastic on the left side of the triangle mouth is much thicker than on the right side. which can account for SOME but not all, of the warped look there.

Mouth and nose centerlines are far off balance. I'm going to have to find a happy medium when i remove the 'teeth' and put them back in more evenly.


After considerable heatgun reshaping, now the both sides stick out roughly the same. You can Seethe piping edges and the neck edges all from a top down/front view. This picture is exaggerated by my camera lens curvature.


Side view. Both sides look similar now.

Next up... cutting out the eye 'rims' the rubies lenses mounted to.

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EYE SOCKETS

Begin cutting out the eye sockets to remove all that excess plastic under the lens in the Rubies.


Saw Saw Saw (and clip with sprue cutters, not shown)


Eyes done for now...


Closeup of Eye. Still needs a lot of cleanup


Sitting on paper to trace existing neck outline


This is not a pretty outline


THIS is a pretty outline. Use it to generate a 'jig' to mold the neck to (still
working out what method im gonna try on this)


Making a pattern for a wood insert to stabilize top of helmet while reshaping neck.


Completed Pattern. ready to be cut from thin plywood.


Dremel tidy Heres an example. I cut a bit off on the other side too...

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RESHAPING THE NECK

Wooden wedge to isolate top of helmet for neck reshape


Wedge inserted


Busted Mouth


Neck reshaper thought i would cut the groove with the dremel...


Dremel was not the tool for it. Used Jigsaw


Mask well secured in board for neck reshaping.


Straightening up the neck.. marking with paint pen


Reshaping neck


Neck in much better shape.


Reshaping complete

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BEGINNING THE BUILDUP

We remove a whole lot of the 'mounting' plastic.


Most of the mount removed


Decided to remove the original mount on the facemask, it was just too far from the right place.


Just checking to see what it looks like. not attached...


Finally some BUILDING UP instead of tearing down. Going to fill in the helmet ridge with evercoat to fill it for the reshaping of the outside...


Make sure to sand everything with 60 grit so it has some chance of sticking.


Mixing the Evercoat. Smells great!


Inside filled in. Drying...


Smoothing out the holes i cut out with files.


A few openings filled with bondo putty. Cant use the fiber filled evercoat on the outside.

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Next up:

- Some more filler on the outside of the facemasl.. something with no fiberglass in it but more coverage than putty.

- Sanding the inside of the helmet smooth(er) and then laying a couple sheets of real fiberglass and resin over it to really shore up the helmet before i remove/reshape the 1 inch ridge on the top/outside.

- Probably going to have extend the length of the helmet edges, have to find material to do that with. ANY IDEAS?

Not particularly looking forward to sanding fiberglass. respirator here i come.

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HERE GOES THE SANDING

Sanding off the bondo filler putty


Sanding the inside of the dome


Sanding off the rounded ridge


FIBERGLASSING PART 1







Ready to tear in to the remainder of the mohawk tomorrow night. With any luck the helmet will not break in half. If it does i will have to do significantly more fiberglassing. :)

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NO MOHAWK

No Mohawk


Warped


How to NOT cut a helmet in half

(oh hey look, a Cleaning Droid...)

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ROUNDING THE HELMET SKIRT


The facemask is at a reasonable stopping point for the moment. the 'Removal' phase is all done and the rebuilding plase will start soon.

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Here is the next challenge, since no one knew (or spoke up) i decided to make both sides rounded. seemed more logical.

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Traced the outline onto MDF board, then transfered to paper, folded at the halfway mark, and duplicated it You can still see the 'old' line on the 'left'
side, its quite off:


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Inner line drawn and ready to saw.

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Careful viewers will notice the helmet will now not go in this jig because the spars are there. In reality I cut a space out of the jig for them, but i forgot to take a picture of it that way. It was a learning experience. The jig by itself didn't work well enough like it did on the mask, i think because of the size of the helmet skirt i couldnt do heatgun work with one hand and hold the helmet in place with the other.

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Very pleased. To fix the warped skirt when viewed from front I used a triangular wood block screwed into the mdf from the bottom, not shown. there was a good half hour there where i was problemsplving on the fly and forgot my camera...

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And the end result of this round of mods:

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LENGTHENING THE SKIRT


glued the super thin styrene sheet to outside.



Styrene cut down a bit and clipped to make sure the it will stay put. and not let TOO much resin up in between it and the abs, that i will have to sand off later.

Next i will fiberglass inside the whole helmet and extend the skirt from the inside. This Will strengthen the whole thing and make it more rigid, as well thicken it up for more screen accuracy.


Incidentally while trying to do this without the jig in introduced a warp i will need to fix...

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Put in spars. The plastic on the 'left' (Right in photo cause its upside down) was still malleable from the heat gun so these spars succeeded in pushing out that side.

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AND THAT...

And THAT my friends catches us up to where i started this blog. with
A Novice Guide to Fiberglassing

Hope you are enjoying it.