Han In Carbonite

Great progress! I just need to sand, drill holes, and attach my panels and I'm done. I didn't go 100% accurate, but I am definitely going to have a nice looking han carbo. You have done a great job so far.

Jawafive, do you have any progress pics of your HIC? Thanks for all the kind words too guys.

Awesome work! I like full scale props!!!

I see reference to "Panels" does this mean that someone out there is pulling the HIC on a sheet of plastic?

The panels are the side panels, the control boxes. There are some very nice ones being made.

The HICS's are pulled in rubber to make it affordable to ship.

jacob4581 said:

You beat me to it PFB, I haven't logged in for a bit. The panels were made by Angela and Dung Nguyen and you can inquire about a set from them, they are very reasonably priced for all the stuff you get. Here is their email dnanguyen@yahoo.com again. Hope to have some more progress done after this weekend!

Click to expand...

Thanks for compliment on the panels! Your HIC is coming out nicely and thanks for the step by step. It's gonna help me when I have time in the near future to build mine. Thanks again and happy Holidays! Cheers, :cheers

D.Nguyen, ive heard a lot of nice things about your panels. I didnt epect this many people to take my rubber HIC's this far, but its good to know they have other quality parts to add to this project, to make it great.

Very true SR. I couldn't have made any of this without you and Nguyen's awesome work! I'll be doing some more work on the HIC over Christmas vacation this week, I'll keep everyone posted.

Well over Christmas I got snowed in at my Mom's house for 3 days during a blizzard so I didn't get as much done as I had planned. The foam really solidified the body and head perfectly. We had to add a little more to the head and body to completely fill it in, but it's good to go now. The bottom part of the rubber by the feet also started to peel up a little so we reapplied Liquid Nails and then put two small screws through the boot tips from behind to really make sure it was on solid. The only thing I really got done was using a wood rasp to smooth the rounded corners out, and they turned out very nice. I hope to get the panels ready to mount in the next few weeks and I'll post pictures as I go when I build those out.

ok y? what are u going to do w/ a HIC all it does is sit there?

Hmmm. I think you may have joined the wrong forum. Are you a Star Wars fan? If so, you would probably understand why this would be cool to have. And yes it will just "sit there" and light up and look absolutely awesome in my house just like it did in Jabba's palace. To each his own I guess.

Great work.
It had to take a lot of time for doing this.
congratulations/

Not quite done yet. But thanks TD! I'm taking it slow and making sure everything turns out right.

Very good approach, so I wish good luck in further work

Rob, here are the blueprints I used for my HIC. You will need to adjust and tweak them slightly depending on whose side panels you get and if you build it as a trapezoid or a rectangle shape like I did. Let me know if you need anything else and the best of luck on your HIC.

More progress pics to come soon...

More progress over the weekend. When we put the expandable foam in through holes we drilled in the back everything filled in nicely except for his head. The foam got a little too expanded and it ended up looking like Han had a huge carbonite tumor on the right side of his head. We pulled up the top portion and salvaged what foam chunks we could from inside the head and shaved them down to the size needed. Then I reapplied the Liquid Nails and let it dry with some weights on it overnight. In the morning everything was looking good so we went around the entire black rubber edge with a framing brad nail gun. The nails it shoots are about an inch long and were just long enough to secure the rubber to the masonite below. We don't want this thing moving around at all once we apply the bondo. After the brad nails were shot around the whole edge of the rubber I followed and countersunk them slightly into the rubber so the bondo could go over them.





Next we mixed up the bondo and used a plastic bondo spreading tool to get it as even as we can from rubber edge to rounded corner on the front face. I used Micro Lite lightweight body filler that I got at Napa Auto parts and it worked great. On the actual HIC you can still barely see the line where the texture starts and the smooth frame meet up. I think we got this effect pretty good, and what isn't perfect I'll take care of when I sand it down.









We almost got it done with the one can I bought but we'll have to finish up the 3 or so feet on the bottom left the next time I work on it.
I also got started on the side panels too. I botched one of my panels trying to cut the squares out with a dremel tool so I had to buy another one that is slightly larger that already is molded with the holes cut out. I cut pieces of frosted plexiglass to fit behind the hero panel and panel 2. I used an exacto knife and cut thin strips of a white Avery sticker label to make the grid pattern on the flashing green part of the hero panel. While I was home we used a drill as a borer tool to roughly cut the squares out of my panel and I'll trim and sand them down to look nice and smooth.

Lookin great man.

When I fill one with foam, I dont back it. I fill it with it off, and then cut it with a sharp serrated knife. That way when it expands, it expands out.

Otherwise, it looks like your takin this downtown!

Thanks SR. The foam worked perfect everywhere else. The body is nice and solid and so is the knee. All the excess foam drained out of the holes we drilled in the back of the masonite.
We just put a little extra in the head and it turned out to be too much. We fixed it pretty easily though. It's coming along good though.

I finished up applying the bondo and touched up some areas too. I let it dry overnight and then used 60 grit sandpaper and a woodblock to hand sand the thicker areas down to be smooth. I made sure that where the bondo meets the rounded corner wood it is perfectly smooth so you can't see any seams and it will look like one solid piece. After this I will use an electric sander with 150 grit sandpaper and go over all the bondo once again to get it perfect. I didn't sand too much where the bondo meets the black rubber because I didn't want to damage the rubber. When I use the electric sander I will go over that area lightly to smooth it out a bit.