dv8r
Hunter
I was fortunate to get one of FettPride’s Premium helmets in cold cast aluminum made by animefan, and as with some of the other high quality parts I had a bit of trouble building up the courage to start cutting into it. My first job was to remove the molded-in MQ-1 circuit board, as I had one from a real calculator to use; slow and steady with a grinding tip on my Dremel tool. Cutting out the visor slot was harrowing, and took me about 2 hours using the Dremel and a cut-off wheel. After grinding and shaping the visor area to match the contour of the T-Visor (again with the grinding tip), I hollowed some cavities around the opening to hold the Chicago screws and metal tabs I planned to use to secure the visor. I also did the same for six spots around inside the top of the dome where I planned to mount a web cushion (as seen here: http://www.thedentedhelmet.com/gall...1357-boba-fett-return-of-the-jedi-helmet.html), some spots for posts to hold the servo motor, extended the ear slot channel through the helmet to move the RF stalk, and drilled out the whole for the Borden connector.
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I made the Borden connector from the (apparently not?) original part (check here http://www.thedentedhelmet.com/f20/dv8r-s-boba-fett-rotj-work-progress-55966/ for a complete parts list) by cutting it off (trusty cut-off wheel, again slow and steady), and flipping it around to use the cut off end. I slightly enlarged one of the small holes with a drill bit and filled the other with a very thin coat of JB Weld on the hole’s wall to better match the discussions of the original part, and used the sharp grinding tip to slightly counter-sink all three holes before mounting it in the helmet with more JB Weld. I also made some metal tabs out of a leftover lamp mounting plate that had some already threaded holes in it to use for securing the bottom of the T-Visor (similar to that seen here: http://www.thedentedhelmet.com/gall...1356-boba-fett-return-of-the-jedi-helmet.html). Then after roughing up the back surface with a metal file and some sandpaper, I sunk the screws and tabs in a bed of JB Weld in the cavities I’d made, and covered them with a bit more JB Weld to secure them in place.
I used Vaseline to hold little bits of duct tape to the ends of the screws and spotted the T-Visor onto the sticky side to determine where to drill through the visor for the two end screws. The others overlap slightly and secure the visor with the aid of some of the rubber washers listed above.
I made some modifications to the helmet around the right ear piece (as you probably noticed from the pictures) for adding the servo motor to move the rangefinder arm, continuing the wire cut out of the ear piece through the helmet to accommodate a post I mounted into the rangefinder arm. I think in hindsight I should have just removed the ear piece mounting post (securing it with rare earth magnets as I have seen in other threads) and then used that hole to mount the arm on my servo motor, but I was honestly concerned about breaking the ear piece while removing the post. I’m guessing the screen-accurate Boba moved the rangefinder down by hand and avoided these problems altogether, so here’s a place where I’m deviating (wink, wink, dv8r... get it?) from accuracy for awesomeness. After a bit of work aligning the servo, the rangefinder drops and rises as it should and the wireless activator fits easily in my palm under the glove. I thought since the rangefinder topper was molded in black, I could just use it as it was, but later realized there was silver weathering showing on the edges in the reference photos, so I backed up and used the 2 coats of Humbrol #11 silver sealed with Krylon Colormaster Clear Gloss spray over the whole thing, then masked the edges and sprayed some of the flat black acrylic (leftover from the boot weathering) to cover the silver, then sealed that with Rust-olium Master’s Touch 2x Ultra Cover matte clear. More deviation (lots of that here in the helmet) in the form of jc27’s self-contained RF light board, which installed easily after a bit of shaving on the perspex lens (I think I may have ordered the wrong version). Based on a picture of someone’s ESB rangefinder I’d seen, I added a Photoshopped picture of Luke fighting on the sand skiff to the underside of the lens, which is secured to the RF topper by two rare earth magnets (to be able to replace the battery on the light board).
- - - Updated - - -
I made the Borden connector from the (apparently not?) original part (check here http://www.thedentedhelmet.com/f20/dv8r-s-boba-fett-rotj-work-progress-55966/ for a complete parts list) by cutting it off (trusty cut-off wheel, again slow and steady), and flipping it around to use the cut off end. I slightly enlarged one of the small holes with a drill bit and filled the other with a very thin coat of JB Weld on the hole’s wall to better match the discussions of the original part, and used the sharp grinding tip to slightly counter-sink all three holes before mounting it in the helmet with more JB Weld. I also made some metal tabs out of a leftover lamp mounting plate that had some already threaded holes in it to use for securing the bottom of the T-Visor (similar to that seen here: http://www.thedentedhelmet.com/gall...1356-boba-fett-return-of-the-jedi-helmet.html). Then after roughing up the back surface with a metal file and some sandpaper, I sunk the screws and tabs in a bed of JB Weld in the cavities I’d made, and covered them with a bit more JB Weld to secure them in place.
I used Vaseline to hold little bits of duct tape to the ends of the screws and spotted the T-Visor onto the sticky side to determine where to drill through the visor for the two end screws. The others overlap slightly and secure the visor with the aid of some of the rubber washers listed above.
I made some modifications to the helmet around the right ear piece (as you probably noticed from the pictures) for adding the servo motor to move the rangefinder arm, continuing the wire cut out of the ear piece through the helmet to accommodate a post I mounted into the rangefinder arm. I think in hindsight I should have just removed the ear piece mounting post (securing it with rare earth magnets as I have seen in other threads) and then used that hole to mount the arm on my servo motor, but I was honestly concerned about breaking the ear piece while removing the post. I’m guessing the screen-accurate Boba moved the rangefinder down by hand and avoided these problems altogether, so here’s a place where I’m deviating (wink, wink, dv8r... get it?) from accuracy for awesomeness. After a bit of work aligning the servo, the rangefinder drops and rises as it should and the wireless activator fits easily in my palm under the glove. I thought since the rangefinder topper was molded in black, I could just use it as it was, but later realized there was silver weathering showing on the edges in the reference photos, so I backed up and used the 2 coats of Humbrol #11 silver sealed with Krylon Colormaster Clear Gloss spray over the whole thing, then masked the edges and sprayed some of the flat black acrylic (leftover from the boot weathering) to cover the silver, then sealed that with Rust-olium Master’s Touch 2x Ultra Cover matte clear. More deviation (lots of that here in the helmet) in the form of jc27’s self-contained RF light board, which installed easily after a bit of shaving on the perspex lens (I think I may have ordered the wrong version). Based on a picture of someone’s ESB rangefinder I’d seen, I added a Photoshopped picture of Luke fighting on the sand skiff to the underside of the lens, which is secured to the RF topper by two rare earth magnets (to be able to replace the battery on the light board).
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) as I seriously can’t tell a big enough difference between the Humbrol #11 silver and the aluminum in the cold cast to justify the extra priming and painting. Here are a couple of shots showing the first masking:
