RetiredClone
New Hunter
Hi guys, I'm new to the Boba Fett costuming scene but have been busy these past few years building a ROTS Clone Trooper.
A few weeks ago I came across the opportunity to pick up one of animefan's Boba helmets and thought why not, it looks like a fun side project
So here I am now a few weeks after receiving the helmet and would like to show some progress.
Right from the start I gave all the parts a good wash, then prepped Boba for some dental work with a dremel:
I carved out the visor with minimal collateral damage (which would have been fine if I was doing a fully weathered helmet, but more on that later). After further sanding and lots of minor body filling work, here is the helmet ready for the paint stage:
Animefan's helmet had an ESB-style circuit board already molded into the keyslots in the back of the helmet, but I decided to carve them open to insert a separate ROTJ-style circuit board (the filled scratch marks on either side of the slots is where I got too eager with filing and ended up gouging out some of the surface):
Here's all the extra parts of the ears and rangefinder, cleaned, sanded and filled:
As this is my first Boba helmet, I had a great time poking around the forum and reference galleries, learning about the subtleties of the Boba Fett helmet and all its parts. I really want to make this helmet as screen-accurate as possible, so I ended up thinning down the inside edge of the visor (it was quite thick after dremeling out the visor).
I also discovered all about the borden connector and the polaroid lens cap in the rangefinder. The polaroid cap was easy enough (I just filed out one edge to make it look more like the real thing).
The borden connector in this kit needed a lot of work to make it screen accurate, as it was based on an actual borden which was further modified on the screen-used helmets. I first grinded it down as it was way too thick to sit in the helmet. Then I realised that the holes were flipped around the wrong way, with the smaller two holes sitting on the right under the larger hole, rather than the left. I also discovered that the side hole needed to be slightly smaller than its neighbour...
That probably doesn't make much sense to those unfamiliar with these helmets, so long story short, I sealed the side hole and hand-drilled another one in the correct position and size:
I'm pretty happy with the result. Once painted the original hole should disappear (hopefully).
Now I need to decide how I'm going to paint this beauty. This helmet doesn't have Boba's trademark dent, so I was thinking of doing an all-white Supertrooper. But then I had another thought... I know it's not technically canon, but if I gave this helmet a satin white finish and weathered it, it might look pretty good with the Clone Trooper armour I'm building. I could always just make it a Supertrooper (gloss white, no weathering), but I'm not sure if it would match nicely enough then.
Either way, I'll start by painting the inside of the helmet black to help hide the wearer's face.
That's all for now, thanks for watching!
A few weeks ago I came across the opportunity to pick up one of animefan's Boba helmets and thought why not, it looks like a fun side project
So here I am now a few weeks after receiving the helmet and would like to show some progress.
Right from the start I gave all the parts a good wash, then prepped Boba for some dental work with a dremel:
I carved out the visor with minimal collateral damage (which would have been fine if I was doing a fully weathered helmet, but more on that later). After further sanding and lots of minor body filling work, here is the helmet ready for the paint stage:
Animefan's helmet had an ESB-style circuit board already molded into the keyslots in the back of the helmet, but I decided to carve them open to insert a separate ROTJ-style circuit board (the filled scratch marks on either side of the slots is where I got too eager with filing and ended up gouging out some of the surface):
Here's all the extra parts of the ears and rangefinder, cleaned, sanded and filled:
As this is my first Boba helmet, I had a great time poking around the forum and reference galleries, learning about the subtleties of the Boba Fett helmet and all its parts. I really want to make this helmet as screen-accurate as possible, so I ended up thinning down the inside edge of the visor (it was quite thick after dremeling out the visor).
I also discovered all about the borden connector and the polaroid lens cap in the rangefinder. The polaroid cap was easy enough (I just filed out one edge to make it look more like the real thing).
The borden connector in this kit needed a lot of work to make it screen accurate, as it was based on an actual borden which was further modified on the screen-used helmets. I first grinded it down as it was way too thick to sit in the helmet. Then I realised that the holes were flipped around the wrong way, with the smaller two holes sitting on the right under the larger hole, rather than the left. I also discovered that the side hole needed to be slightly smaller than its neighbour...
That probably doesn't make much sense to those unfamiliar with these helmets
, so long story short, I sealed the side hole and hand-drilled another one in the correct position and size:I'm pretty happy with the result. Once painted the original hole should disappear (hopefully).
Now I need to decide how I'm going to paint this beauty. This helmet doesn't have Boba's trademark dent, so I was thinking of doing an all-white Supertrooper. But then I had another thought... I know it's not technically canon, but if I gave this helmet a satin white finish and weathered it, it might look pretty good with the Clone Trooper armour I'm building. I could always just make it a Supertrooper (gloss white, no weathering), but I'm not sure if it would match nicely enough then.
Either way, I'll start by painting the inside of the helmet black to help hide the wearer's face.
That's all for now, thanks for watching!
