my first bucket

flightidle

Hunter
Hey all!

So a few months ago I saw a youtube of someone building a helmet from scratch with paper, fibreglass and bondo....and i'm thinking....this is a thing? So I started my own project...of course, Boba Fett is my choice of choices as it's always been a thought of mine to own a Boba Fett helmet.

I started researching and found this awesome forum, downloaded Rafal Fett's templates, and went to work. I'm at the bondo stage....and have been for the last few weeks. trying to get that perfect shape, no low spots etc.... Mad respect to you all for your scratch builds! now I see how much work goes into it!

So a question to the scratch builders out there....do you try and go for the smoothest bucket, sanding it down to a baby's bottom finish? i'm starting to like the looks of some of the small imperfections i'm seeing in my bondo work...like some deep scratches, dings and a few 'pock' marks. I think it makes it look more realistic as i'm sure a real bounty hunter would probably get a little smashed up in his line of work. Thoughts?
 
It all depends on how authentic/ close to the real deal you want. The actual helmet has some physical damage on it if you look closely. It's your bucket so if you like the scratches keep them. But a well painted helmet with the actual physical damage will look plenty beat up and authentic. Your choice man!
 
But a well painted helmet with the actual physical damage will look plenty beat up and authentic. Your choice man!

thanks Armydad! I was thinking along the same lines. I think it's the ocd in me that wants to see perfection...lol

have you ever used high fill primer to get rid of some of the scratches?
 
I've never scratch built a helmet, and never really had to do any bondo on anything, so I'm not really the guy to ask.
 
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I have made two so far and made it as smooth as smooth can be and then added the damage to the right areas, just work your way up the grit with your sand paper 80, 120, 400, 1200 and so on and it will be like snooker ball by the end of it, again like it's been stated all depends on how accurate you want it...smoother the finish the better the paibnt job (y)
 
When building to a reference I always go for perfect, then manually add the battledamage and weathering afterwards.

If you're just building an OC helmet and not trying to 1:1 match Fett though, then rough Bondo can give a pretty good natural wear look.. often more-so than a human intentionally trying to create natural wear. If that's the case then I say go for it, as it'll save a lot of time and effort. Going from 90% to that final perfect 100% smoothness is sometimes almost half of the work of the entire project.
 
If you're just building an OC helmet and not trying to 1:1 match Fett though, then rough Bondo can give a pretty good natural wear look.. often more-so than a human intentionally trying to create natural wear. If that's the case then I say go for it, as it'll save a lot of time and effort. Going from 90% to that final perfect 100% smoothness is sometimes almost half of the work of the entire project.

Thanks for the input! Yes...trying to get it perfectly smooth is proving to be painstaking. I think i have tennis elbow now from all the sanding :eek: . i'm at the glazing spot putty stage taking care of some of the deep sanding scratches.

my next bucket will be a lot different. i've learned a ton of important steps with this one being my first. especially the resin, fibreglass and bondo.

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I have made two so far and made it as smooth as smooth can be and then added the damage to the right areas, just work your way up the grit with your sand paper 80, 120, 400, 1200 and so on and it will be like snooker ball by the end of it, again like it's been stated all depends on how accurate you want it...smoother the finish the better the paibnt job (y)

wow....1200 eh? that's smooth! I have up to 6000 but i don't think i'll be going that far unless i want it to shine like glass! :p
 
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Personally I rarely go past 320, a layer of primer, and then a pass over with a scotchbright pad. Any paint you apply on top of that will generally fill in and self-smooth over the surface on it's own.

But yeah, it certainly can't hurt to keep going either. Smoothing passes go by pretty quick since you don't have to do any shaping, so might as well wet-sand all the way up to 1000 if you want. I did this once for a surface that I needed to be highly glossy and chrome-looking with zero imperfections, so it may be good to do if you're doing a Jango bucket or whatnot.
 
so while I give my tennis elbow a bit of a break from sanding sanding sanding.....I thought I would work on the ear pieces. Using Rafal Fett's template I found it pretty crazy cutting out all those pieces, and when I was done, well....I was frustrated. had an idea to try and build the ear piece from balsa wood from the local hobby store. I remembered a lot of the balsa pieces look similar to the shapes in Rafal's templates, so I gave it a go.

ears1.jpgears2.jpgears3.jpgears4.jpg

the center gap is a little off, but i'll correct it with bondo. ear shown taped on for size
 
so while I give my tennis elbow a bit of a break from sanding sanding sanding.....I thought I would work on the ear pieces. Using Rafal Fett's template I found it pretty crazy cutting out all those pieces, and when I was done, well....I was frustrated. had an idea to try and build the ear piece from balsa wood from the local hobby store. I remembered a lot of the balsa pieces look similar to the shapes in Rafal's templates, so I gave it a go.

View attachment 101571View attachment 101572View attachment 101573View attachment 101574

the center gap is a little off, but i'll correct it with bondo. ear shown taped on for size

Very nice! Great ingenuity, this needs to get saved!
 
Very cool. I was thinking about using wood for a good few elements of my build, but decided against it with what all the plastic already infront of me. Good to see how well it can turn out though.

Makes me think that a pure wood build, all nice and linseed oiled up, would be really cool as just a work of art.
 
Very cool. I was thinking about using wood for a good few elements of my build, but decided against it with what all the plastic already infront of me. Good to see how well it can turn out though.

Makes me think that a pure wood build, all nice and linseed oiled up, would be really cool as just a work of art.

I was thinking the same thing! it would look amazing and i'm surprised noone has done it yet! Wood is a little less toxic to work with lol!

the balsa wood is nice because it is extremely light, but will damage easily. sanding it is a dream, just a few passes of 100 grit will do the trick on minor defects. I had to carve the tip of the ear piece in the picture then sand it. The whole assembly time of the ear piece in the picture is just over an hour (for glue curing)

i'll apply a resin coat before bondo to give it some protection. I would hate to sand through the bondo and into the wood.
 
Thanks! I'll probably re post this as a forum topic when the other ear piece is built. I think that with a resin coat, you could easily make a mold for casting with this?
 
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Looks good so far, any updated photos yet?

Thank you. i only just completed it the other day. i'll probably build the right ear piece next before posting more pics. now that i know that it's viable, i may go pick up some more balsa. there are so many shapes at the hobby store, i'll have to measure out the right earpiece.
 
Thank you. i only just completed it the other day. i'll probably build the right ear piece next before posting more pics. now that i know that it's viable, i may go pick up some more balsa. there are so many shapes at the hobby store, i'll have to measure out the right earpiece.

I'm curious to see how well the balsa holds up over time. Should be fairly strong especially if you give it a thin coat of bondo and paint. Only thing I can see being a problem is catching it on something and taking a chunk out of it.
 
I'm curious to see how well the balsa holds up over time. Should be fairly strong especially if you give it a thin coat of bondo and paint. Only thing I can see being a problem is catching it on something and taking a chunk out of it.
good point, although a lot of scratch builds (from what I can see) are using paper / cardboard built ears with bondo. I'm hoping that a thin coat of bondo will help mitigate the dents/dings in the balsa.
 
allearsresin.jpgright profile.jpgright1.jpgright2.jpgright3.jpg

had some time to work on the right ear pieces. they were a lot more difficult to work with because of the details, and trying to interpret a template meant for cardstock and translating it into a balsa wood dimension.
I'm pretty happy with how they turned out. I did put a resin coat on a couple of pieces, as you can see in the pictures, the colour is a little darker. the resin coat doesn't really protect from dings or scratches. will have to do a skim coat of bondo which will fill in the gaps and protect the pieces.
 
good point, although a lot of scratch builds (from what I can see) are using paper / cardboard built ears with bondo. I'm hoping that a thin coat of bondo will help mitigate the dents/dings in the balsa.

Yeah I think you're right no track. Looking good so far!

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Not to mention the balsa would have to be much less weight than the cardboard/bondo that I did on mine.
 
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