stormtrooperguy
Sr Hunter
I got one of the BradleyFett vacuum formed helmets, and am putting it together to give away as a prize in a raffle the 501st is doing in January.
I set pretty tight goals for myself. 2 days of assembly, 1 day of main painting, 1 day of detailing.
I fell off that a bit due to other distractions during the process, but if you add up the hours spent on it, I'm spot on.
First, the assembly.
The kit comes in 3 pieces, just like the FX stormie kits: front, rear and dome.
The helmet is undented, so the dent was the first thing I addressed:
Rather than the idea of heating and pressing, I cut out the dent area and fashioned my own dent out of epoxy putty.
The epoxy bonds well to the plastic, but I coated around the interior edges with Goop anyway, just to be safe.
After the dent, I cut out the forehead triangles and keyslots. Not really interesting enough for photos there.
I attached the front to the rear using scrap plastic and rivets:
The dome was attached to that using epoxy putty to get the initial hold, then a bead of Goop along the whole seam to seal it up.
Once that was all dry, I used more of the epoxy putty to close up any visible gaps between the front and back. I used wood filler to close up the seam around the dome.
The right earcap needed a bunch of filler behind it, to fill in some gaps. More epoxy to the rescue!
(oh, and I superglued the Borden connector on while I was at it)
Total time spent on assembly, probably about 4 hours. On to paint!
primer on and looking good.
Sliver base coat.
I did the silver about an hour after the primer. This was late at night, so the colors would have to wait. I was hoping to do all the painting in one day, but that would have required a free weekend day, and that wasn't happening.
Fast forward. I didn't do progress pics of the painting, as it would really just look like a rushed version of the paintup I did for my MS3.
I did latex masking / layered weathering. I didn't really go nuts getting every detail. I have a folder with half a dozen of my favorite ROTJ helmet photos, and I spent a couple minutes on each one, trying to capture the major weathering. There aren't going to be any fine scratches or anything on here...
And here it is:
And for size comparison, here it is next to my MS3
The idea is to make a nice little plaque for the stand, and have Jeremy Bulloch sign it in a couple of weeks at another local con. So we'll be raffling off a finished, signed Fett helmet.
I set pretty tight goals for myself. 2 days of assembly, 1 day of main painting, 1 day of detailing.
I fell off that a bit due to other distractions during the process, but if you add up the hours spent on it, I'm spot on.
First, the assembly.
The kit comes in 3 pieces, just like the FX stormie kits: front, rear and dome.
The helmet is undented, so the dent was the first thing I addressed:
Rather than the idea of heating and pressing, I cut out the dent area and fashioned my own dent out of epoxy putty.
The epoxy bonds well to the plastic, but I coated around the interior edges with Goop anyway, just to be safe.
After the dent, I cut out the forehead triangles and keyslots. Not really interesting enough for photos there.
I attached the front to the rear using scrap plastic and rivets:
The dome was attached to that using epoxy putty to get the initial hold, then a bead of Goop along the whole seam to seal it up.
Once that was all dry, I used more of the epoxy putty to close up any visible gaps between the front and back. I used wood filler to close up the seam around the dome.
The right earcap needed a bunch of filler behind it, to fill in some gaps. More epoxy to the rescue!
(oh, and I superglued the Borden connector on while I was at it)
Total time spent on assembly, probably about 4 hours. On to paint!
primer on and looking good.
Sliver base coat.
I did the silver about an hour after the primer. This was late at night, so the colors would have to wait. I was hoping to do all the painting in one day, but that would have required a free weekend day, and that wasn't happening.
Fast forward. I didn't do progress pics of the painting, as it would really just look like a rushed version of the paintup I did for my MS3.
I did latex masking / layered weathering. I didn't really go nuts getting every detail. I have a folder with half a dozen of my favorite ROTJ helmet photos, and I spent a couple minutes on each one, trying to capture the major weathering. There aren't going to be any fine scratches or anything on here...
And here it is:
And for size comparison, here it is next to my MS3
The idea is to make a nice little plaque for the stand, and have Jeremy Bulloch sign it in a couple of weeks at another local con. So we'll be raffling off a finished, signed Fett helmet.