A second new post in one night? Helmet PLACEMENT

Sneak Preview... Note the helmet and mask are just TAPED TOGETHER.  i *N*E*E*D* FEEDBACK on how they look before i set the final fiberglass. This is ESB Empire Strikes Back Style.  Does the Helmet Sit right on the Mask? Opinions PLEASE!

Helmet Mount Part 1

 Finally we get to attaching the helmet mount. I have had alot of trepidation about this step, but the time has come. We have two pieces of the mount. INNER and OUTER. INNER will go on the MASK and outer will go inside the HELMET. Remember both mounts were made by fiberglassing over parts of a kids Beach Pail.

So after some test fits I begin fiberglassing the inner mount to the top of the mask.

 Fiberglassing went very smoothly as I first drilled a pilot hole and attached the mount to the mask with a screw and nut.

Next you see our pieces of a wooden paint stirrer.. It happens to be 1/8 of an inch thick --- equal to two of the neodymium 'rare earth' N52 magnets i plan to use to attach the helmet to the mask to be removable later on. I have bought the magnets and they are STRONG. they are about the size of a Dime, and are literally so strong you have to SLIDE them apart. Trying to PULL them apart is a no go.

 Vader FEZ!!! Needs a Tassle.

As you can see more sanding and refining have gone into the cheeks, nose, and teeth.

 The INNER mount from the inside. I'll be reinforcing this with more fiberglass soon.. after I make sure things are where i want them to be.

 Sanded the whole thing to make it considerably smoother.. and dustier.

 Better inside view of INNER mount. That odd part in the top middle is where the screw and nut live. they will be most likely cut out once i get the fiberglass reinforcement in here.

You may not be able to tell, but i have dremelled out the black abs plastic of the mask so there's no overlap with the mount. This will make the inside fiberglassing work better. and reduce weight.

 Setting the OUTER mount on top of the INNER mount.

 Perfect fit.

 Oops! Sanded off some of the back of the helmet and i have to do a patch job.

 Re-Primered and looking nice.

Amber Lenses 'taped' inside the eyeholes.

 Same...

 Other side..

 Its just getting to the point of being photogenic now so i am putting up pix

 Eyeholes are done and smooth. I still have to cut the 'tear ducts' on the upper cheeks under the eyes.

 Check out the teeth! Puttied, filled in, and sanded smooth.

 After some test fitting with the helmet I decided to remove a bit of the front of the mount to enable the forehead to get closer to the mask... or something like that...

 Anyhow this modification was needed to get the fit right.. so there it is. God I love the dremel tool.

 Is that a scoop of rainbow sherbet? Nope! Its pastel (the cheapest i could find!) Play-Doh. Used in my quest to line up the helmet and mask properly. No Play-Doh will be used in the final product.

 I am not the originator of this technique, but its a great one. A Metal mesh pencil holder, cut apart, and used to go inside vader's Eyes. This will go underneath the amber lenses, the conbination will allow me to see out pretty well, but no one to see my eyes.

 Test Fitting the mesh.

Another test fitting View.

And thats what I have for this post. I have made a little more progress but that is for the next post!!

And remember. Don't do this. Buy one prebuilt! I am an insane person.

Face Time

Welcome once again after a long break in the blog to the most insane Rubie's Vader Conversion ever! If you have $90 for a Rubies, a dremel tool, multiple saws, files, fiberglass, body filler, primer, countless rubber gloves and dust masks, tons of sandpaper, and most importantly, ENDLESS HOURS to waste. Maybe you can do this too!

I feel I have finally reached the point where I see the light at the end of the tunnel though... The FACE is coming together now.. The following occurred over about a two week period upon return from my last trip to Virginia Tech.

As anyone with a Rubies Helmet will tell you, the mouth is NOT symmetrical. So here are some photoshop drawings I made by tracing the mouth shapes from the mask onto paper, scanning it in, and then planning how i would make the teeth 'right'

Plastic Templates

Here's the First of the plastic templates cut from styrene sheet and glued onto the mask with cyanoacrylate (superglue) gel.

I made two main templates, the 'outside outline' one applied here, and the 'teeth' one applied later.

Same thing from the sides, you can see I have added in some styrene sides on the right and left, and a tiny lip on the bottom. This will give us something to glue our 'teeth' to.

The 'TEETH' Template glued on at the bottom. at this point its just a very thin piece of sheet sytrene. the teeth may look sturdy in the picture put they are only slightly thicker than paper right now. This is just a template to which to glue the 'real' teeth' to the back of. (Can't make that sentence work!)

TEETH
1/4 inch square styrene 'tubing.' Evergreen and Plastruct are some of my new best friends. So I cut out several of these and glue them to the back of the template that is glued to the front of the mask, gluing them on from the inside.  I'm not gonna lie, this was a PAIN.. i cut about ten teeth out for the 6 needed but i got the hang of it.

Results: Vader Teeth. from left to right, the space between each tooth is slightly larger than the previous one, but you really can't tell unless you are looking for it, and it looks far better to my eye than the original teeth i cut out waaaayy back when.

Vader's Wrinkled Brow

So heres what i did.. I puttied over the whole upper nose.. then made a styrene template with the holes for these cut out of it and glued it around the nose in a previous post... In this step I used an X-acto razor saw to cut down each one. The Evercoat filler cut great, but the ABS and styrene plastics cut poorly. I used a dremel cutting bit to 'drill out' the excess material. I am left with kind of what i want, but with very ugly edges.

Eyeholes
Just a quick note here that I did a few things:

1. Dremelled around the eyeholes and inside of nose to remove a lot of excess material.

2. Dremelled, sanded, cut, and sanded some more, to get the eyeholes as close to perfect as i can. These should be super smooth and ready to accept the Lenses behind them.

3. Put body filler in behind the bottom of the teeth to keep them secure.

But I JUST Cleaned this UP!

Thats right, More body filler. then more sanding needed..

Sanding and Filing

More sanding and filing done after the filler was applied and dried. Lets see how we did...

Really kinda getting there..

I am seriously starting to see a likeness here... Cheeks are appropriately asymmetrical for ESB Vader, Eyeholes are smothed out. Teeth are looking pretty good... now to tackle those pesky brow slots again..

Missing Step?

Well I have left out a step because I didnt take photos..I was too busy!

Brow Slots

Basically I took some tape and put the lines down for the brow slots. This time they'd be easy to cut out since the material to be removed is all body filler, which cuts much more nicely than abs or styrene. So I cut down with the X-acto razor saw again, then I used an x-acto knife to cut along the edges and the filler just sort of flaked out of the slots properly! A little bit of work with some small detail files and i have some pretty good slots done.

Sanding and FilingAgain
Next I Sanded and filed all the areas that still needed more work... AGAIN.

PRIMED

And here we are. Primered again. Very VERY VERY close to done..

Little red circles show imperfections i still need to address.. filing and a tiny amount of filler putty will take care of these...

A few more tiny Imperfections...


And there we have it! 

That is the end of todays lesson in: WHY YOU SHOULD JUST BUY A PREMADE VADER HELMET AND NOT MOD YOUR OWN. :)

(Seriously I am having a lot of fun with this project, but my GOD the labor...  )