Din Djarin Helmet and Rebound 25 Mold

darth wombo

Hunter
Hello,

It has been a very long time since I've posted here and a similarly long time since I've built anything Mandalorian related, but ever since the new series was announced, I've had that itch. I'm older now and I like to think I have a higher attention to detail and standard for quality. I wont ramble on. Here are pictures of my Mando helmet build. It took me several weeks to build and mold and I finally have some that are close to done. Let me know what you think and let me know if you have any questions! Thanks.


Started with WOF's paper template, (Same as I did in the old days lol).
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After fiber glassing and an initial pass of bondo. I forgot to take pictures in-between, but I actually fiberglassed the bucket without the cheek cutouts and then modified the WOF pattern, which is based on Boba (I think), and added them in.
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More Bondo...
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After an initial coat of primer to reset and see what areas needed filling/sanding.
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More sanding and Bondo. and pizza hut.
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I wasn't thrilled with how the cheeks were turning out. They we're slightly different than the reference photos I was using from the show...
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Added some face details with a thin sheet of card board and then resined over for rigidity.
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Decided to make some big changes to the structure of the face to more accurately reflect Din's helmet.
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More changes...
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More primer
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More sanding
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Decided the dome needed a lot more attention.
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More primer and started to use glazing putty. Amazing stuff.
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Marking flaws.
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More bondo... I lost count of the alternating layers of bondo/primer/glazing putty...
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I'll post more with continued detail.
 
Started work on the ear caps in these photos. Made them out of MDF. Did the primary shaping with a bandsaw and belt sander, then coated them in CA glue for rigidity and durability. These pieces were all built mostly by eye, using some of WOFs templates for basic dimensions, but obviously heavily modified.
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Back vent:
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Cut with a dremel.
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Forgot to get photos of the build process for these guys... sorry.
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Onto the mohawk...
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Laminated thin layers of card board with CA glue for rigidity and adhesion.
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More bondo... And I used a fine toothed hand saw to get the grooves.
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Decided the best way for me to attach the upper part of the ear cap would be to sand down the base helmet perfectly flat where they meet so that they would line up nicely.
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After some more primer and countless hours of sanding, she's starting to look like a mando helmet...
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Stay tuned for more.
 
At this point, I was pretty happy with the helmet overall. There were minor things that could have been better, and even now, I see things that bug me, but I found that I came to a point of diminishing return, where the more work I did, the less it mattered overall, and the more frustrated I became... So I moved onto molding, which was my focus from the start. I opted to use Rebound-25 as I have for small projects in the past. I've also used DragonSkin, but thought that rebound may be a better fit for this helmet. Here we go...

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So it begins...
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Started to add a thickening agent to fill in deep voids.
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Added keys for the mould jacket
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Opted for a fiberglass 2-part mother mold because it's inexpensive and also I've done it before, so it was familiar for me.
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Original, first cast, second cast. Used Smooth cast 300 for these first few, but then moved to 65d after talking to the folks at smooth on about my project.
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Scoring the inside of the earcaps and helmet for better adhesion via two part five minute apoxy.
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More photos to come on the painting process.
 
My initial thought was that I could get away with the graphite method, which looked great without a clear coat, but as you will see, the 2k clear I eventually used really darkened the finish and I wasn't really into it... It still looked good, it just wasn't looking like Beskar from the show.


High gloss grey, followed by graphite. Looks kinda cool. (I ended up not being happy with this, plus the graphite gets all over everything, so I rubbed it all off with acetone). Hours wasted...
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Casting!
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Sanding... And more sanding... and more. sanding.
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Gluing on ear caps with five minute epoxy.
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I also have to do bondo work on each one to fix up the cut seam from the mold. I was really hoping to make this a glove mold with no seam, but in the end, I had to cut it because my undercut was just too deep at the base of the helmet. Great for casting, not so great for demolding.
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More graphite and clear coat action...
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The 2k clear is actually pretty amazing stuff, just crazy expensive and you better be ready to use it all...
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Oh, haaaiiii.
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Got the visor in and trimmed the inside with some fleece. Trimming the inside has been the worst, most frustrating part of this whole project by far...
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Okay, more to come.
 

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One word. One very expensive word.

Alumaluster.

I broke down and decided this was the best way to get the Beskar look.

Gloss black, cured for 48 hours... here we go.
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oh look, it's $5 worth of paint.... :'''(
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Okay, but the difference is pretty crazy... Alumaluster on the left, graphite and 2k on the right.
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And here's where we are today. Did a run of 8 casts, ruined 2 by terrible accidents (wind blew one off a high place onto concrete and the other was also dropped and cracked), 2 have Alumaluster with a black gloss under coat, one of which has also been lightly weathered with some acrylics (pictured below). 1 has Alumaluster, but it's over the graphite and 2k and I'm not a huge fan of the look. The rest still need black gloss, alumaluster, weathering, visor, and interior trim.
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Thanks for checking out my build thread!

I may post more pictures in the future as I complete more helmets.

Cheers!
 
darth wombo so does the alumaluster need a top coat?
Really appreciate the perspective you're providing on the different paints and applications.
Hi there, I have not put a top coat on, although I played around with the idea of doing a 2k clear, just to add some durability. My fear is that it will bring down a lot of the shine that makes alumaluster so nice like it did when I sprayed it over the graphite. I will say that it’s fairly durable as is. I did find out while weathering that you do have to be careful about how hard you rub it though, as you can rub away the alumaluster if you apply too much pressure. If I do end up experimenting with a top coat, I’ll post the results here.
 
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