Rebuilding a Master Replicas Fett helmet

stormtrooperguy

Sr Hunter
I can take NO credit for any of the concepts you'll see in this post. Fettpride was the innovator on repairing the pinched visor on the MR helmet. He took the initial risk on his helmet, and when I knew it was safe and possible, I did the same thing.

Here are the guide photos I used. Helmet photos from rebelscum.com

fettmodfront.jpg


fettmodside.jpg


The cut I ended up making was a bit longer than that... almost to the keyslots. The longer the cut, the more you trash the paint, but the easier it is to reposition everything.

And now that the intro is done, on to the work! When I'm done modifying it, I plan to make a resin copy for myself. I'll never *really* trust that seam that I epoxy/bondo/goop coated for trooping. I'm going to use the ears / RF topper / etc... since the metal is nice. Paint stripped off of course!

Here is a shot of the helmet as shipped. Pinchy pinchy! And check out the weathering on the rangefinder:

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The soft edged dent.

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The interior, which sadly will never be the same again. This bummed me out, as the padded black interior was really nice :)

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bzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

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Ow, my eye! MEDIC!!!

And it's a good thing I WANTED to repaint it... The electrical tape DESTROYED the finish. The silver came right off. Even masking tape lifted the silver.

I used electrical tape here because that stuff can apply a LOT of pressure if stretched tight and wrapped around a few times. It did a great job of holding the cut area in place while I epoxied it from the inside.

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All better! Gotta love 5 minute epoxy putty!!

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Internal support for the visor, since I have some paper thin plastic in there now. I'm pretty sure that a good visor would hold it in place properly, but since I'm planning on making a copy of it, I'm not worried about that. I just wanted to make sure nothing shifted while I repair the cut side.

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An hour, a NIOSH approved respirator, a face shield, many pairs of chemical gloves and a bucket of acetone later...

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And the ears loosely fitted back into place.

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The dent, without the 99 layers of paint:

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Observations:

The paint job is interesting. If you see a color, chances are it's covering the entire helmet.

The base is the dark green on the back. Whole thing. Then the dome green, also covering it all.

On the visor area, the dark red covers the whole thing, with the lighter red on top, the grey on top of that, and the silver on top of that.

On the top, the dent was first painted dark grey, then light grey, then silver. so all total, there were 5 THICK layers of paint on there. No wonder the detail was soft.

The MQ-1 is a separate piece. I was able to pop mine out with only minor damage, that is easily repaired. I'm going to treat that as a separate piece in the molding process.

The RF assembly is neat. It's not a tilt switch... There is an on/off in the hinge area somewhere. the RF doesn't pass through the helmet, despite the large hole where it looks like it would have. It's entirely self contained.

There's a magnetic "lock" into up or down, which is cool.

The borden connector is metal.

It looks SO much better with the visor fixed. I *think* it could be done with minimal impact to the paint. You'd need to repaint the back left section of the helmet, in part or in full. Matching the colors well enough to touch up would be tough though.

Today I'll be doing the bondo work.
 
Wow! Very ambitious project! :)
Are you doing anything about that little extra "ledge" inside the edges of the mandibles? I think they added some extra material in there to secure the visor didn't they?
 
Wow! Very ambitious project! :)
Are you doing anything about that little extra "ledge" inside the edges of the mandibles? I think they added some extra material in there to secure the visor didn't they?

Yup, there's a second lip on the inside of the visor. I've filled it in flush with the front, making the visor thicker overall. The top of the T doesn't have the lip, and the helmet is about 1/4" thick there.

The vertical part of the T has the lip, but the front part is only about 1/8" thick. So I filled the whole thing in. I figured that I can always grind it back out to thin it down, but it's a lot more work to fill it back in if I want to add it up.
 
rf topper, sans brown splatter:

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not sure what i'm going to do about the rf topper. the rotj one doesn't have the polaroid window on the bottom, but that's the latch that gives access to the batteries. for now, i'll leave it as-is, until i think of something better.

ears, free of paint:

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whatever primer was on the ears did not dissolve in acetone. i had to break out that nasty stuff you use to get 200 years of paint off old woodwork. but they are perfect rotj ears now!!

and here is the inner working of the rf stalk:

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i'm actually really in love with this. i think it's great... the little spring that helps keep it in one position or another, the "switch" that makes contact when you put it down. i think it rocks.
 
of course i'm going rotj! the One True Helmet! ;)

here are some lovely primer shots..

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a bit more sanding and the cut line will be gone... note the area under the earcap, and how it looks like i've sanded away the detail in the line... the detail wasn't ever there. it's just really flat in that spot.

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Good stuff so far. Just out of curiousity, you are one of several folks that has chosen to cut the mandibles or cut the helmet to move the mandibles. Why is that? On my helmet I have simply corrected where they set by reinstalling a visor correctly.

Do you plan on modifying the ears to make them more accurate?

Last but not least, the borden seems to be a seperate peice, are you going to detach it?

Keep up the good work and the pics coming. :)
 
I am sure this is a stoopid question, but here it is all the same. What is the advantage of using the MR helmet over say, FP or BM (other helmets are available)? Looks like a lot of work to get it to the stage they are delivered in and then start to paint?

Sorry if this is a stoopider than stoopid question. :confused

confused, Rob.
 
Probably because the MR is taken from a cleaned up 3d scan of one of the actual pre-production Boba Fett helmets, thus making it the most accurate commercially available helmet.
 
You said it right HeadlessHunter... this is the most accurate fan availabe helmet out there. I didnt find it much work to strip it, and if you were simply doing a repaint you wouldnt have to rip the lining out of it, just strip the paint off on the out side and pull back the lining where it covers the screws and take the visor out, and install a new one correctly. Its just a matter of how crazy you want to get with it. Its a fun project either way.
 
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