My Ebay Helmet

i ordered a helmet on ebay from a guy who said he bought it from TDHer a while ago and when i got it i was kind of upset to see that the cheek bone pieces were cruved inwards and i'm fairly certain that that is not how it is supposed to be. do you know of any ways i could fix this problem or am i just kinda of screwed?

got pics? they do slant in alittle

these are quite the inward slant. i recently got a new camera for my birthday and i'll gladly break it in by taking pics of my bucket. i'll post them in a few.

also the back of the helmet looks a little flatter than it should be. butt im not sure as i am just a noob at this TDH game.

Do you know what material it is?

Believe it or not, any material can be fixed with a bit of work. That looks like a mediocre recasting of a helmet here. Either that, or it was a genuine helmet and with this summer heat, eventually deformed. Not assuming, just suggesting what it could be. Looks kind of like a MH

I moved your posts to your on thread. Seeing they where not about the same helmet maker.

I first read the issue about it in your first post, then saw the first pic and litterally jumped and yellped a bit..

I *think* from what it appears to be, is plastic resin that most of the RC helmets are made out of. Im not 100% sure on that, but thats what it looks like to me, because thats pretty thin and I dont see fiberglass matt anywhere.

Ive heard of it being able to deform by heat, so I think thats what really happend here. Your going to have to spend a bit of time reshaping this thing. I'd first try fixing those lower cheeks, it's supposed to be straight, not curved. I'd take like a flat wood block, and press it against the inside of it, and use a heat gun to slowly straighten it out, but thats my logic telling me what to do, so I dont know how effective or if that would even work.

I really wish you luck on reshaping this helmet!

okay, thanks for the tip man. what do you think i should do about the curve near the back? the key hole slot area is a little straighter than it should be.

Hmm..once you fix the cheeks, try and push the sides of the helmet a little closer, it should help form the curve on the back a bit. Im not really sure how the material will respond to the heat and pressure, cause I'd say get a craft ring, and use it to form the curve, but if you push it against the helmet along with a heat gun, it may embed itself, rather then form to the curve

The material looks like smooth cast roto, and its too thin.

I had a helmet deform on me in the mandibles just like that. The way I fixed it was I cut the lower mandible shapes out of a hard plastic and glued them to the back of it. That fixed the lower cheeks.

The rear I used an aluminum ruler, Cut it and bent it to shape and then glued it in.

I used something plyable because once glued in, it may not be straight and your going to want to bend it a little more.

Im not sure youll need a tun of heat with that stuff.

I cut a board that was the correct shape for the bottom opening and placed it in there for a day, and it went back to shape, before I glued in the cheek fix.

the stuff is pliable in heat, when i bought it, it had the visor still in it and when i cut i out, i wanted to see if it was piable so i but a piece of it in boiling water and i could bend it with my hands, i was thinkging of doing that with the whole helmet butt i'm not sure where i can find a pot large enough to fit the whole bucket in there.

yeah i would be super careful if you took a heatgun near it. a hairdryer on really high might be enough...

man, there has got to be a way to keep this kind of thing from happening...i got bent out of shape with my rubies, but this is bad, and people are just gettin ripped off on ebay for this sort of thing...i wish there was some way to be able to put up some sort of bilboard when noob's do a search for TDH to pop up and warn them, and keep them from going to ebay and getting, well, bent... sorry to see that happen, i guess the word will spread eventually...

Kyle, listen to Stormrider on this, he knows what he's talking about! Believe me!

okay, thanks for all your help guys. the disfigurement of that helmet has kept me from working on it at all so i've just been trying paint a mandalorian helmet belt buckle to the color of Boba's.

If you want to try to reshape the whole thing heres how I would do it. But DONT put it in water.

Take a medium sized cardboard box. 3x the size of the helmet.

Cut a hole in it.

Aim a hairdryer into the box, but NOT right at the helmet.

This will heat up the contents of the box slowly. You should be able to get it warm, without being too hot. But I dont think you need heat to do the fix. I think the cheeks can be fixed with a backing. which will straighten it alot.

The rear, is going to be like tubachris says, just working it into a ring.

Its because of helmets like this, that mine dont sell on ebay sometimes

holy ****!! That aint good
like storm said, give that a try

i'll try your methond, ill also inform you of the results. my only problem now is to find a box that big.

thanks,
dylan.

Again, I advise this instead or first, before heat.

You could do this _warm_ and it may be easier. But realize heating anything STRETCHES IT. If you STRETCH IT you will have no rigidity of the original shape.

so basically it would be a better idea just to go over the existing piece with a another straight piece?

i used stormrider's technique but instead of a box i used a an empty, cleaned out chlorine bucket (my dad's services pools, so there are many around the house). i cut a hole in the lid, droppped my bucket in the bucket (pun intended) and put a blow dryer in there as well (and faced it away from the helmet). after quite a bit of blow drying, i reshaped the cheeks with a piece of wood and i rounded out the back with my hands.

many thanks go out to each and one of you. with out your help, i might have ended up buying a new a bucket (this time i would have bought it from a TDHer to ensure a quality piece).

:thumbup thank you for all the help,
dylan

you may still wanna reenforce what you just fixed with that plastic as was mentioned to prevent it from warping again if you leave it out or its in your car after a troop too long or something

good point, i'll do that then. butt i don't think that it was warped, i think it was just poorly cast and that's how it came out of the mold because the dome is also very bumpy.