Ord Mantell
Well-Known Hunter
sorry I missed this when it was posted. I did not find any of the old 10x25 hole stripboard, but I do know someone who has one. I don't know where he found it, but it was a long time ago.
Ord Mantell's ESB build
- Thread starter Ord Mantell
- Start date
Ord Mantell
Well-Known Hunter
Many of you might already be aware, but there is a new flak vest maker in town. Eli Jinn started making his own vests a while back, and spicy fett was the first to see the potential of his work and gave him some help to improve on it. I sent Eli my own sourced material recently and I'm happy to say the vest I got back is much closer to the real thing than anything I've seen before. He's working on a second one for me based on some notes and hopefully that'll serve as my final ESB vest. It features some details specific to the ESB/ROTJ/on-screen-hero vest not seen on any fan-made vest before.
Eli is obviously extremely talented.
I'm in the middle of painting my PP2 helmet but I plan to get the holes into the new vest and onto the display as soon as it arrives. This test one will go on my RotJ display.
Eli is obviously extremely talented.
I'm in the middle of painting my PP2 helmet but I plan to get the holes into the new vest and onto the display as soon as it arrives. This test one will go on my RotJ display.
Ord Mantell
Well-Known Hunter
Happy New Year! I promise this thread is not dead. At least not until the build is complete. I can't believe it's 2026 already.
Just before Christmas I received a package from London. It was my ESB helmet commission #1. Blaidon props is a very busy actual real prop person working on huge budget Hollywood movies, so it is a wonder he was able to make time for it at all. This helmet was painted at Pinewood Studios, which I shouldn't have to explain the significance of that location.
I haven't had a chance to take proper photos of it yet, but here are some iphone photos of it on the display. Currently the display does not have the vest on either as the new one is set to arrive soon.
This was painted with Archive X acrylics. I have not added the runes to the ears yet.
Just before Christmas I received a package from London. It was my ESB helmet commission #1. Blaidon props is a very busy actual real prop person working on huge budget Hollywood movies, so it is a wonder he was able to make time for it at all. This helmet was painted at Pinewood Studios, which I shouldn't have to explain the significance of that location.
I haven't had a chance to take proper photos of it yet, but here are some iphone photos of it on the display. Currently the display does not have the vest on either as the new one is set to arrive soon.
This was painted with Archive X acrylics. I have not added the runes to the ears yet.
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Ord Mantell
Well-Known Hunter
Ha! It wasn't wrapped so I didn't wait!Did you wait until Christmas to open it at least?
He does fantastic work! Congratulations on the newest helmet!
RamSkirata
Active Hunter
Ord Mantell Once again you set the bar of what is possible a bit higher. Wow!
Ord Mantell
Well-Known Hunter
The updated vest from Eli has arrived. It looks terrific. Eli has a lot of talent.
Next is to poke some holes in it. But as a warm-up I'll poke holes in the first vest and use that on the ROTJ build.
Next is to poke some holes in it. But as a warm-up I'll poke holes in the first vest and use that on the ROTJ build.
Ord Mantell
Well-Known Hunter
As I've already mentioned in this thread, my obsession with the vest began nearly 20 years ago when I realized my costume did not look right and a great deal of that was because the vest was so wrong. And need I remind anyone here, but back then the mind virus I call the 'tackle twill theory' was all the rage and unstoppable (those guilty parties will doubtless deny they ever were on team tackle twill). I had a tackle twill vest and that was how I knew it was the wrong material. And the wrong pattern. Not much about it was right, in fact. I went through many. I talked to seamstresses. I hunted for the material all over Los Angeles (lots and lots of garment and fabric shops here, or used to be) and the internet. All of that is over now. It's taken much too long but I think I finally got what I was after.
So, of course, the next step is to make it into swiss cheese.
I've put grommets on three of my own vests and helped two other people with theirs and I feel pretty confident about doing it now with the method I worked out. However, this time I couldn't do the usual method. This is because my armor posts were already superglued into place. Normally I temp attach the posts after the holes are already in and test fit and make alterations to account for the margin of error involved in punching the holes. But this time I had to make sure the holes were put in the same place as the previous vest or else my armor would not sit exactly right. Now, if you don't care to be accurate with how your armor sits on the vest then the margin of error is small enough not to have to worry too much, but I was worried because I prefer a little bit of accuracy.
So this is what I worked out. I realized that what mattered was the spacing between the holes themselves and not their placement on the vest. So instead of concentrating on each plate of armor, I thought it best to treat all the holes as belonging together. To do this I simply put tracing paper over the previous vest, marked the locations of all the grommets, then transferred that over to the new vest, centering the overall pattern to the new vest as best as possible. Like so...
I had two vests from Eli. The first one had a few minor corrections needed and would not work for my ESB, but I decided it was plenty fine for my ROTJ display. So I decided to try this method out on the ROTJ vest first.
Once the marks were on the new ROTJ vest, I took my armor with the holes in it and stuck it on the vest using clutch back pins to test the spacing of the armor.
this seemed to me to be working fine. So I decided to punch the holes.
I decided not to do all of them in one go like normal. I felt it prudent to do the ab first, check the fit, then do the chest pieces.
At this point I could rest easy. It was working fine. I double checked the placement of the center diamond and got its grommets installed.
Then I had to fix the neckline for the center collar grommet. One of the issues with this vest was the length was off by a bit, therefore in order to have enough space at the bottom, everything basically moved up, making the neck area where it runs out of space. But this is less of a problem since the neck is covered by the collar, so I added a little bit of material there for the center grommet to go into.
Voila. It worked. I was satisfied with the spacing here. Time to do ESB.
And immediately I came upon a problem. The spacing didn't seem right. The chest pieces were colliding with the ab plate.
Something was off and I spent a lot of time trying to figure it out. I came to the conclusion that I had made a few errors on the clothears vest that were showing up here and I would need to rethink my method. In the end I decided I would need a new set of old armor I could put holes in. The holes needed to match up exactly with where the posts were on the armor. This involved more tracing paper. then I drilled the holes and verified they matched up by stacking them.
This is the final ESB armor sitting over the armor with holes, with the final armor's posts going through the holes:
The alignment was within an acceptable margin of error. I placed orange masking tape along the edges of the armor where the edges are a little fatter than the final armor because of the rough trim. I cut out a big hole in the left chest for the chest electronics there because I'd rather do that than take the board out. It's kind of a pain. I cut that hole solely so I could stack the placement armor with it and verify the holes and the posts lined up correctly.
So again, using clutch back pins to get the placement armor on the vest:
That looked good. So then I added the speaker in the back of the ab plate to double check clearance on those.
and that's where I stopped for about a week. I spent most of that time fiddling with the positions of these plates. Once I was satisfied with that, I punched the holes for only the ab plate. You can see how many times I remarked the hole placement.
Two key things were good with the ab plate. It seemed centered and had the right amount of vest showing at the bottom. Proceeded cautiously to the chests.
the spacing between the chests and ab looks a little close here but that because the chest pieces are not bolted tight. They are very loose. Btw, that's one of the really wonderful things about this attachment method. You can refine spacing by how tight you screw in the posts and by how they sit in the grommets, either centered or off-center.
Another item here that turned out well which did not on the previous vest because the pattern on the old vest did not allow it, is how the vest gets pulled upwards on the side to the chest wings. It creates this odd fold on the side which flattens the front part of the vest facing forward there.
This has little to do with the armor post and more to do with the grommet position. You can achieve this look by not placing the grommet exactly where the bolt is, but by offsetting about one grommet diameter (center to center) downward and outward at a 45 degree angle. If that makes no sense its because it's past my bedtime.
Next, the center diamond. Which is a tricky one because on the ESB costume the diamond sits high, basically touching the chest pieces at the top end, with a lot of open vest space at the bottom. It also leans slightly to the right. As you can see here in this screencap:
That turned out fine. Then I paused a few more days on the collar. I hemmed and hawed about it's positioning. It's the hardest one because how it interacts with the vest material and it's placement is also determined by the pull of the jetpack and the attachment to the back plate. It gets complicated. Even when doing it the normal way. But at some point you just gotta punch the holes.
Long story short, it worked out fine.
Here is Eli's vest with the grommets installed:
One key ingredient here is the material I used. I bought it from a place in England. Sadly they have no more. My apologies. If you find a new source please share with the community.
The really, really nice thing about this more accurate vest is, like the original, we are using the same lightweight material for the outside and the inside. No heavy cotton twill on the inside. This is a super lightweight vest. As a result, folds and wrinkles happen in lovely ways much like the original garment. And like the original, it has a single stitch in the sides, not the double stitch of the prepro vests, and a rounded edge of the bottom of the front panel as seen here on display:
And Eli, being an artist and someone who is in love with details like the rest of us, he also added the wayward stitch of the left shoulder:
We did not have the measurements of the actual hero vest to go on, just what I could extrapolate from photo analysis, but I still think this new vest is as close as I am likely to get short of having hands on experience with the original.
Okay. That's it. Here are pics of the ROTJ first, then the ESB:
I'm a little sad how the oils on my fingers have effected my armor paint. I will have to try to fix that. Any suggestions?
So, of course, the next step is to make it into swiss cheese.
I've put grommets on three of my own vests and helped two other people with theirs and I feel pretty confident about doing it now with the method I worked out. However, this time I couldn't do the usual method. This is because my armor posts were already superglued into place. Normally I temp attach the posts after the holes are already in and test fit and make alterations to account for the margin of error involved in punching the holes. But this time I had to make sure the holes were put in the same place as the previous vest or else my armor would not sit exactly right. Now, if you don't care to be accurate with how your armor sits on the vest then the margin of error is small enough not to have to worry too much, but I was worried because I prefer a little bit of accuracy.
So this is what I worked out. I realized that what mattered was the spacing between the holes themselves and not their placement on the vest. So instead of concentrating on each plate of armor, I thought it best to treat all the holes as belonging together. To do this I simply put tracing paper over the previous vest, marked the locations of all the grommets, then transferred that over to the new vest, centering the overall pattern to the new vest as best as possible. Like so...
I had two vests from Eli. The first one had a few minor corrections needed and would not work for my ESB, but I decided it was plenty fine for my ROTJ display. So I decided to try this method out on the ROTJ vest first.
Once the marks were on the new ROTJ vest, I took my armor with the holes in it and stuck it on the vest using clutch back pins to test the spacing of the armor.
this seemed to me to be working fine. So I decided to punch the holes.
I decided not to do all of them in one go like normal. I felt it prudent to do the ab first, check the fit, then do the chest pieces.
At this point I could rest easy. It was working fine. I double checked the placement of the center diamond and got its grommets installed.
Then I had to fix the neckline for the center collar grommet. One of the issues with this vest was the length was off by a bit, therefore in order to have enough space at the bottom, everything basically moved up, making the neck area where it runs out of space. But this is less of a problem since the neck is covered by the collar, so I added a little bit of material there for the center grommet to go into.
Voila. It worked. I was satisfied with the spacing here. Time to do ESB.
And immediately I came upon a problem. The spacing didn't seem right. The chest pieces were colliding with the ab plate.
Something was off and I spent a lot of time trying to figure it out. I came to the conclusion that I had made a few errors on the clothears vest that were showing up here and I would need to rethink my method. In the end I decided I would need a new set of old armor I could put holes in. The holes needed to match up exactly with where the posts were on the armor. This involved more tracing paper. then I drilled the holes and verified they matched up by stacking them.
This is the final ESB armor sitting over the armor with holes, with the final armor's posts going through the holes:
The alignment was within an acceptable margin of error. I placed orange masking tape along the edges of the armor where the edges are a little fatter than the final armor because of the rough trim. I cut out a big hole in the left chest for the chest electronics there because I'd rather do that than take the board out. It's kind of a pain. I cut that hole solely so I could stack the placement armor with it and verify the holes and the posts lined up correctly.
So again, using clutch back pins to get the placement armor on the vest:
That looked good. So then I added the speaker in the back of the ab plate to double check clearance on those.
and that's where I stopped for about a week. I spent most of that time fiddling with the positions of these plates. Once I was satisfied with that, I punched the holes for only the ab plate. You can see how many times I remarked the hole placement.
Two key things were good with the ab plate. It seemed centered and had the right amount of vest showing at the bottom. Proceeded cautiously to the chests.
the spacing between the chests and ab looks a little close here but that because the chest pieces are not bolted tight. They are very loose. Btw, that's one of the really wonderful things about this attachment method. You can refine spacing by how tight you screw in the posts and by how they sit in the grommets, either centered or off-center.
Another item here that turned out well which did not on the previous vest because the pattern on the old vest did not allow it, is how the vest gets pulled upwards on the side to the chest wings. It creates this odd fold on the side which flattens the front part of the vest facing forward there.
This has little to do with the armor post and more to do with the grommet position. You can achieve this look by not placing the grommet exactly where the bolt is, but by offsetting about one grommet diameter (center to center) downward and outward at a 45 degree angle. If that makes no sense its because it's past my bedtime.
Next, the center diamond. Which is a tricky one because on the ESB costume the diamond sits high, basically touching the chest pieces at the top end, with a lot of open vest space at the bottom. It also leans slightly to the right. As you can see here in this screencap:
That turned out fine. Then I paused a few more days on the collar. I hemmed and hawed about it's positioning. It's the hardest one because how it interacts with the vest material and it's placement is also determined by the pull of the jetpack and the attachment to the back plate. It gets complicated. Even when doing it the normal way. But at some point you just gotta punch the holes.
Long story short, it worked out fine.
Here is Eli's vest with the grommets installed:
One key ingredient here is the material I used. I bought it from a place in England. Sadly they have no more. My apologies. If you find a new source please share with the community.
The really, really nice thing about this more accurate vest is, like the original, we are using the same lightweight material for the outside and the inside. No heavy cotton twill on the inside. This is a super lightweight vest. As a result, folds and wrinkles happen in lovely ways much like the original garment. And like the original, it has a single stitch in the sides, not the double stitch of the prepro vests, and a rounded edge of the bottom of the front panel as seen here on display:
And Eli, being an artist and someone who is in love with details like the rest of us, he also added the wayward stitch of the left shoulder:
We did not have the measurements of the actual hero vest to go on, just what I could extrapolate from photo analysis, but I still think this new vest is as close as I am likely to get short of having hands on experience with the original.
Okay. That's it. Here are pics of the ROTJ first, then the ESB:
I'm a little sad how the oils on my fingers have effected my armor paint. I will have to try to fix that. Any suggestions?
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Darth Miller
New Hunter
As always, beautiful work Bud.!!
And beautiful work Eli.!!
And beautiful work Eli.!!
Ord Mantell
Well-Known Hunter
Thanks guys.
I forgot I should add this about Eli, and he can speak for himself of course, but I just want to remind everyone that Eli is in college and it's not his life's ambition to be a vendor here on TDH. These vests take a lot of time to make and he does have other things going on. He will not be able to churn these out and may not be able to fill demand. It's possible he could pass it along to someone else who could, but that would be up to him and on his terms.
Not really. It has more to do with the display mannequin. If you make the suit the same as on screen and get a display mannequin that is the proper size, you can cut the mannequin down or pad it according to what performer was wearing it. For me I cut my mannequin down to mimic Morton as much as possible. He was a smidge shorter than Jeremy and his shoulders do not seem as wide. I'm not wearing the costume myself, so that doesn't factor in, but if I were I would probably have to worry more about tailoring the suit to my frame so the proportions work. But for display only, the goal is to try to make the suit with dims as close to the real thing as possible and adjust the mannequin for the suit.
I forgot I should add this about Eli, and he can speak for himself of course, but I just want to remind everyone that Eli is in college and it's not his life's ambition to be a vendor here on TDH. These vests take a lot of time to make and he does have other things going on. He will not be able to churn these out and may not be able to fill demand. It's possible he could pass it along to someone else who could, but that would be up to him and on his terms.
Not really. It has more to do with the display mannequin. If you make the suit the same as on screen and get a display mannequin that is the proper size, you can cut the mannequin down or pad it according to what performer was wearing it. For me I cut my mannequin down to mimic Morton as much as possible. He was a smidge shorter than Jeremy and his shoulders do not seem as wide. I'm not wearing the costume myself, so that doesn't factor in, but if I were I would probably have to worry more about tailoring the suit to my frame so the proportions work. But for display only, the goal is to try to make the suit with dims as close to the real thing as possible and adjust the mannequin for the suit.
Eli Jinn
Hunter
Hello! It's me, Eli. It's been a hot minute since I've been on the forums because of the aforementioned college. Just wanted to pop in and say thank you all for the kind words and that the finished product looks better than I could have ever imagined! I really can't believe that I got to be a part of this project. I wish I would have documented the making of the vest, but I'm happy that Ord picked up on all those juicy details I poured over. I'd love to pass the patterns and methods over to someone who can make these at a higher volume, but right now I'm busy. Someday, for sure. It feels wrong that I'm the only one who knows how to make these.
