Grimstuff's Scratch Build Journal (building, casting, painting)

Grimstuff

Active Hunter
Hey all, been lurking the forum for a while as I've been building my own bucket and been loving all of your guy's fantastic references and templates.

After a good few weeks of work I think I've reached a point where my bucket is nearing a good draft point before casting, so I thought I'd finally make an account to share my log and fish for any critiques before I work on the last few details and then pull out the silicone, where the thread'll probably then turn into a WIP.


Here's some preview shots of how it currently looks as of mid July:

XUIjyt0.jpg



I'll start with a big post about the template construction process below once I get all my images sorted.

2017 FINISHED EDIT:

Well after a pretty long journey, the helmets done. Just to satisfy any curious quick thread browsers, here's the completed bucket:

esrrflx-png.png


Do please feel free to still peruse the thread though, I have a particular good mold making guide on page 2, woweee!
 
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Assembling the Template

So I started this build because of friend of mine, who's a massive Fett fan, wanted to commission a helmet from me. I've done a few props helmet builds before, but not any with as exact and well-researched reference as a Fett helmet, so I thought it'd be an interesting challenge.

Because the helmet is so geometrically simple (pretty much just a big dome) my initial plan was to not bother with a pepakura model or anything and just do something similar to what Volpinprops did for his Helm of Yngol build with a simple two-plane template. Pretty quickly though I discovered Rafalfetts amazing templates, so I scrapped that idea; why reinvent the wheel. Huge thanks for his work.

Anyway, lets start. Unfortunately I took less pictures than I wish I had for this whole thing, but I'll try to clear up the blank spots with words.

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My initial laying out of the template paper, trying to get as exact of cuts as I could. Really not much to share here as all these templates are of course already presized to paper sheets and require little other than just pressing print.

One thing I did decide to do differently though was to print at 100% instead of the fit to page option, it created a 3% difference, but I was kinda favorable towards the idea of a slightly larger template both because it gives me more leeway to sand back if I need to, and I just liked the look of the page margins better. I don't expect the 3% to be that critical either way though, from what I hear many official replicas can have far greater variance. Correct me if wrong though.

Main Body Together

IMG_20160211_203637.jpg

Here's some of the helmet starting to come together.
It looks like the top layer is a bit misaligned to the underlying one, but that's just an illusion from a rogue marker mark and some experimentation with spray adhesive.

I wish I had taken more photos of this step specifically, as I had quite a few failures, and even scrapped an entire first try. I'm not quite sure precisely what went wrong the first go, but the two layers came out at very different lengths, about an inch. My suspicion is that the white glue I was using to connect the templates to the plastic was wetting the paper and causing it to stretch and warp, so it ended up much larger than it was supposed to be. You can see in the above shot that I just elected to draw the template lines directly onto the plastic with a marker instead. On this second try the top layer was only a few mm off from a perfect wrap, but nothing major.

I used cyanoacrylate glue and a tacking method to connect the two layers, similar to what welders. You bend a small segment into place, tack it with CA glue, then bend another segment and tack it. I did this until the entire circle was tacked into place and then put a ring of extra thin CA around the entire thing. Extra thin's low viscosity allows it to seep into the crack between layers some and gives you very deep strong 'welds'. Pre-curving the material is incredibly helpful when doing this, as it allows for a much easier wrap with less stress on each tack.

I elected for a front seam on the bottom layer, and a rear seem on the top, since then the most visible seam would only be that little band on the rear.

I also glued on the much more complex paper ear templates and such afterwards, using CA glue again to petrify the paper so it would be somewhat sandable later on.

IMG_20160216_195344.jpg

The material I'm using is of course Sintra (aka, closed cell expanded PVC sheets). Other options I looked at were chipboard and polystyrene sheets, but I knew I would end up probably using sintra it for parts of the helmet anyway so it was the cheapest solution to just get a bunch of it and do the whole helmet in it. It's nature as a flexible thermo plastic allows for some nice curved forms too. It's a bit of a pain to cut though, very dense, and you have to be careful heating and sanding it as it is PVC and releases dangerous fumes and dust.

The Sintra was acquired from Sibe Automation on Amazon in 5 24"x48" sheets. The price fluctuates greatly, but I was able to catch them for around 35 bucks shipped. I only used about one and a half sheets in the construction, so you could make due with less. I wanted more for future projects though.
 
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Getting the Cheeks On.

IMG_20160217_200908.jpg IMG_20160218_183707.jpg

I had a lot of difficulty here, I'm not sure if I cut wrong somehow but the templates seemed a little inexact here and I got lots of mixed messages from different references as to whether the upper cheeks have that seam line or not. I was using an aggressive disc sander to bevel the edges too, so that may have contributed if I had sanded too far in or had not beveled enough.

I was considering giving up and redoing them but I ended up just winging it and got it together as close as I could. Unless you heatform it (which I didn't want to do too much as it tends to warp the templates some), Sintra just doesn't have the precise formability that other materials can give, and small little 2mm differences here and there will be sanded out later anyway. These cheeks were definitely hard though.

Doin the Dome.

IMG_20160224_193238.jpg IMG_20160229_193253.jpg

To save on the Sintra, I used cheap simple foamcore board for the supports. Conecting paper and foam to plastic though can be difficult, hot glue is bout the only thing that works.

I thought the cheeks were hard but getting the dome panels on was definatly the most challenging part of this build. I'm not sure if I might have mixed two sections together or if the template was expecting more exactness than I could provide, but there were some definite fitting issues. I also switched from pre-curving them horizontally to vertically halfway through too, which may have also contributed. All in all, a lot of possible factors that made this way difficult. I think it would have actually been better to have done this segment in a much thinner more flexible sintra sheet or another material instead.

Luckily though I was able to get it all on in the end, and any sizing imperfections will be solved come the filling stage, which I'll post soon after I write it up. Please feel free to comment in the meantime though.
 
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Thanks for posting your progress pics. I have an illustration board helmet currently, and am thinking of a new one in PVC. I have 3mm and 1mm to work with. Looks like you used both.
 
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Alright, shaping time.

At first I thought this step would be an absolute breeze considering how mostly smooth the helmet already is, but I've yet to do bondo work that I haven't underestimated.

My first goal was to get a light covering over all of the dome, then fill in those cheek gaps.

IMG_20160307_212908.jpg

Shot of the helmet with the first layer on, sitting next to it's brother build (which might get it's own thread somewhere soon).

After that, I gave it a sanding down.

My bondo rough sanding process starts with using a product called a Sureform to shave down the big ridges and the like while the bondo is still a little soft, this gives you a much more level surface that is easier to sand. I then go over it with a palm sander using 60 or 80 grit paper. More aggressive the better imo, just gotta be careful to keep the sander constantly in motion.

If you find your paper is gumming up a lot and you know the bondo is fully cured, take a heatgun to the surface of the bondo for a bit, it should give it an extra bit of hardness.

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So this is where I ended up after my initial sand down, at first I was like woah that was easy, but I started to notice a few problems that I know would make this a bigger headache than I thought it would be.
error.jpg error2.jpg

There's a distinct convex curve on the back that I was completely missing, I imagine due to my heat curving the plastic causing it to warp inwards. And of course the cheeks are pretty wonky. So it all needed a lot more work.

I filled in the rear with a lot of bondo and worked on the cheeks with a lot of careful sanding and more filling.

IMG_20160316_194151.jpg

Few more layers done on the dome, but still working on the cheeks. The red stuff is spotting putty, which I really shouldn't be applying this early as the cheeks were still quite less than perfect, it took me a while to realize just how off they were though.

The gap between the right earplate and the dome is completely filled here. It was quite a pain to sand into those really tight detail corners, but stiffer sandpapers help a lot though, another option is to just glue a bit to a small flat tool. You'll have to make a few though due to them gumming up.

The connector hole was just drilled out with a bit sized to the hole on the template, and sanded to smooth it out a bit.

IMG_20160403_190949.jpg IMG_20160403_190959.jpg IMG_20160403_191024.jpg

Getting along. Applied a full layer of primer so it's easier to see what still needs work or not.

There's quite a few imperfections that aren't really visible in these shots, but after fixing them I was getting happy enough with my basic helmet shaping and ready to move onto building the ears and other bits.
 
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Thanks for posting your progress pics. I have an illustration board helmet currently, and am thinking of a new one in PVC. I have 3mm and 1mm to work with. Looks like you used both.

Np :)
And yeah, PVC board is pretty fantastic for all the large curved forms, which the Fett helmet is primarily made up of, I can definitely recommend it. (though most materials will work great if you give them enough care, Antman's cardboard build is incredibly precise)

The 2mm was a little thick for the more aggressively fitting stuff like those cheeks and dome slices though, if I was to do it again I would have just ignored the 2mm recommendation the template gave and just done them in 1mm or even cardstock or something. As long as there's just some sort of shape there to guide you, you can fill it all over with body filler later anyway.
 
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Thanks ToEleven!

Building the Ears

So, with the base helmet in a good shape, I began getting all the 'accessories' done. I began with the ears.

RafalFett's templates were pretty great for these dimensions wise, but imo a little overly complex.

aPHUmdO.png


I opted to skip all those tiny red support sections, and just got the basic core structure made and filled the gap with Bondo.

As for building the core structures themselves though, I found pretty quickly that trying to cut the template layers out with an exacto knife would inevitably cause them to be slightly different from each other. Instead I ended up settling on a process of cutting them outside the template lines, gluing them together, and then sanding the whole combined bundle down with a disc sander to perfectly reach the template lines. They all come out incredibly exact and uniform this way. If you don't have a fixed power sander, you could do it with just careful file work too.

Unfortunately I didn't take any pictures of that process, but here's more or less the end result.

IMG_20160331_205119.jpg IMG_20160401_210244.jpg IMG_20160406_193141.jpg

And there they are after a spotting putty sanding and a layer of primer. Still quite a few rough places that need more work, but that'll come later in a final details pass.

IMG_20160407_193638.jpg

For the rangefinder base I elected for a pretty simple wheel movement. I plan to use magnets on both the top and bottom positions to 'lock' it into each. Someday I might redo this piece for a more advanced spring mechanism system, but I feel this will do quite well enough for simple use.

The stalk itself is MDF cut out on a scroll saw and laminated with polyurethene to make it sand to a plastic-like finish and take primer easier.


Attaching the Ears

Since I never took any steps to flatten the ear base earlier on, electing instead to preserve a smooth consistant curve throughout the base dome, I'm gonna have to flatten them now to accept the flat ear bases.

IMG_20160407_193230.jpg

I did this with a sanding wheel on a die grinder, but if you're more patient a very flat sanding block should do just as well, or a good rasp file probally even more so. You'll likely throw less PVC dust all over the room doing it that way too (but still wear a respirator anyway).

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Not too bad a fit. The ear base on my dome was a little small for some reason, so I had to to refill and smooth all that again after I attached the ear, but could have been worse. I'm mostly surprised I was able to flatten the area so well with a die grinder while staying within the lines I drew.
IMG_20160407_193244.jpg IMG_20160410_225829.jpg IMG_20160410_225837.jpg

After gluing the ears on using more CA glue, any gaps were easily filled with Bondo and spotting putty with some careful corner sanding.

IMG_20160407_193539.jpg

Left ear base I didn't flatten quite as well so there was more a gap, you can see some of the detail of the filling process here.


Keyhole Area

IMG_20160407_193335.jpg IMG_20160407_193553.jpg

For the keyholes I pretty much just used the exact RafalFett template and heat bent it around a bucket for the curvature. One major thing I would change if I had to do it again though would be to NOT cut out the actual keyholes until the whole thing is done and attached, the heat forming process caused them to warp slightly and I would have preferred to cut them out with a grinding wheel and file rather than than the xacto knife I used on the template.

I did clean them up with some needle files though and got them fairly identical looking to the naked eye. Some gaps and general roughness in the plate still need to be filled in at this point.


Another Primer Layer

After getting all those attached and sanded, I gave the entire helmet another layer of primer to unify all the colors back into lifeless grey.

IMG_20160414_173044.jpg

Generally looking pretty good here, a few minor imperfections were fixed after this, but as a whole, I was ready to start on the forehead triangles and the infamous dent.
 
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Thank you guys, appreciate the comments

Bucket Inside

I forgot to mention since it was a pretty early step what I did for the inside of the dome. Since sintra is pretty flexible I figured pretty early on this was likely to cause issues with the bondo cracking and breaking off. So I elected to give some reinforcement to it.

IMG_20160723_152110.jpg IMG_20160723_152116.jpg IMG_20160723_152122.jpg

Since it's just a work helmet that I plan to cast, the inside was pretty much free for all no cares in terms of appearance, so I just slapped some fiberglass matting around the inside of the back, which was the most flexy area as it was just one big single layer of Sintra. The inside of the dome I slush cast with some thinned bondo, which is just bondo mixed partly with fiberglass resin (it's popularly known as 'rondo' among the Pepakura community). I did this mostly so I would have something to sand back into as I did my shaping work on the dome.

The grey stuff is apoxie sculpt which is a two part sculpting putty. It serves a dual purpose of both reinforcing the edge and giving me something to fill gaps between some of the sintra layers and sand smoothly.
The similar looking white stuff is a similar product of epoxy repair putty, works just like the apoxie sculpt, but a bit more toxic and much faster curing (10 mins vs 12 hours). I used it there because that's the spot I would cut the dent into on the outside, but I think the bondo was thick enough that I never reached it anyway.
 
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Drilling the Triangles

IMG_20160424_202821.jpg

Triangles were kind of a pain. My first idea was to use a Dremel as a sort of shallow-cut router, but the raised forehead stripe below them made any sort of level plunge cutting impossible. Eventually I settled on just drilling a hole all the way through and filing out the rest of the shape with needle files. Then I filled in the bottom half of the hole with Apoxie Sculpt and tried to flatten it as best as I could. Came out not to shabby.

Shaping the Dent

IMG_20160424_202812.jpg

The dent was a pain to place exactly where it should be, as different references seemed to have it in slightly different spots, and RafalFett's flat template doesn't work too well for a round dome. Eventually I just used some official ESB set reference and placed a marker dot that matched what I saw from the exact front view, then one from the exact side view, then I averaged out the position of both. This came pretty close to where the RafelFett template kinda placed it, so I figured it's good enough for me. Let me know if it looks off to you though.
IMG_20160424_202806.jpg

A closeup detail of it's shaping. I mostly used a dremel with a round grinding bit to remove most the mass and rough shape it, then a sharper bit to get the tighter corners. I didn't use a template for this but rather eyeball matched a reference photo. It looks a little off depending which reference you use, but I don't think the exact shaping of the dent is to big a detail. It's another thing that I noticed looks slightly different between different helmet sources. Again though, let me know if I'm wrong and it looks odd in any way.
 
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Rangefinder

IMG_20160728_000932.jpg IMG_20160728_000835.jpg IMG_20160728_000951.jpg

The template construction for the rangefinder is just a few simple walls that you glue together, so it was pretty easy and uncomplicated to assemble it together. For the parts that fold I scored the sintra by cutting it halfway though along the bend mark, then folding it into place. All the gaps between the pieces and score marks had to be filled in with bondo, which was patted in place lightly then sanded down after curing.

IMG_20160728_001038.jpg

For the perspex block I left the bottom part open, and filled the whole thing in with bondo to make it a nice solid piece. The outside was similarly smoothed like the rangefinder was. I plan to cast this in a clear plastic to simulate the acrylic.

IMG_20160728_001110.jpg

The stalk I elected to use a different material for as I didn't want to use too much of the Sintra for these long and hard to cutout pieces. I traced one of the paper templates onto a piece of MDF (medium density fiberboard) and then cut it out loosely with a scroll saw, cleaning it up to the precise template line afterwards with a disc sander and some file-work. Since it was wood and highly porous, I covered the whole thing with a layer of polyurethane coating to 'plasticize' it. After that it was much easier to smooth and paint. Still needs cleaning up in this shot though.


Some Little Things

IMG_20160609_235358.jpg

I added screws and mini-holes to the rangefinder base. It was actually surprisingly hard to find flat head screws, and the ones I did fine were much too wide. I ended up filing them down to the size you see here. They're screwed into drilled holes filled with apoxie sculpt to prevent any gaps.

I also drilled in the two mini-holes on the bottom. In order to make them look flat I drilled them deep then filled them with some more apoxie sculpt which I flattened with the back end of the drill bit.

IMG_20160727_222820.jpgIMG_20160727_230410.jpg IMG_20160727_231118.jpg IMG_20160727_231641.jpg

I'm not exactly sure what this is called so I'll just call it the cheek square. I used the same method to cut this out though that I used for the forehead triangles and above holes; drilling out as much as I could, shaped it with a needle file, then filled it in with flattened apoxie sculpt.

A quick glamor shot

IMG_20160501_190829.jpg

Helmet all roughly together. Pretty much everything is assembled and shaped at this point, just needs some cleanup passes. :]
 
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Very informative write up and very clean build. The only critique I have its the depth of the dent seems alittle too deep. It could be the angle of your photos though. These are reference shots that a member here compiled and a real helmet being worked on.
Dents.jpgfettlidsraw copy_zps5499mhfg.jpg

Dents.jpg


fettlidsraw copy_zps5499mhfg.jpg
 
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Very informative write up and very clean build. The only critique I have its the depth of the dent seems alittle too deep. It could be the angle of your photos though. These are reference shots that a member here compiled and a real helmet being worked on.

Hmm, yeah, looks like you're right there.

compare1.jpg compare2.jpg

Even if the maximum depth isn't too different, mine's definitely more steep and canyon-like compared to the much gentler references. I'll definitely have to fill this in some more, and try to match the shape outline a little better too while I'm at it. I'm surprised I got as close as I did considering I was hastily referencing a cellphone screen through dust covered safety glasses, but yeah it's definitely missing a few of the smaller ridges.

Thanks for the bringing it up, I would have completely missed it!

Also thanks for the PM offer, but I think I should be able to fix this up just with some careful filler work, I wouldn't wanna take anything someone else might need more. Do you happen to know the mm depth of your ESB plug though?
 
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Whoops, got a little sucked in by the 1.0 update for Starbound there, but ayy I'm back.

With all the construction outta the way, we've pretty much reached the point I'm at now; a mostly done helmet that I wanna get as good as I can before moving onto casting. This will be the point where the thread moves into being a WIP I guess.

Anywho, here's largely where the helmet is now (save for the left cheek square hole I added after this photoset was taken):
(sorry about the grain on some of the photos, but I got awful lens distortion unless I backed up a lot and zoomed in)

IMG_20160614_180707.jpg IMG_20160614_180749.jpg IMG_20160614_180834.jpgIMG_20160614_180851.jpg
IMG_20160614_181413.jpg IMG_20160614_181427.jpg IMG_20160614_181449.jpg IMG_20160804_141953.jpg

So, what do you guys think?

Thanks to RichardJones, I know the dent needs some filling and there's still some sanding gouges here and there that need another smoothing pass, but other than that please let me know if you see anything else that is off or incorrect shape-wise. Feel free to get nit-picky too, even if it's something I'm past the point of being able to change, It'd be nice to learn for the future.

Or if you just think it's generally pretty solid, let me know too.

My main goal is to just have it be 501st passable, but I'd like it to be as perfect as I can get it beyond that too. No turning back after the silicone is on ya-know.
 
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Bit of a lull since the last post but I'm back. Did some work on modifying the dent a bit over the past few days.

First thing first I printed out the comparison pic from earlier and traced out what I needed to improve, then traced it on to the actual helmet dent itself. From there what I wanted to do was to just make the whole thing more shallow, so I kneaded up some apoxie sculpt and pressed it in there to raise the whole thing up. I let that harden for a bit (read: few hours), then kneaded up a few more smaller balls and stuck them in some sections that I needed to improve the shaping on.

One night later it was all hardened up and I began shaping it back, at first with a coarse round file and then with rolled up sandpapers:

IMG_20160909_181626.jpg IMG_20160828_200607.jpg IMG_20160828_201014.jpg

Just to see where it was at after that I gave it a primer coat to uniform the colors. The depth seemed better, but there was still some smoothing work to do yet and it looked like i had gotten a little too liberal with the sanding and taken out some of the curves I had put in. I'd need to get the apoxie sculpt out again and redo them:

IMG_20160901_194617.jpgIMG_20160901_194626.jpgIMG_20160902_191528.jpgIMG_20160903_200412.jpgIMG_20160905_012015.jpg

As you can tell by the last image there, the colors were getting pretty chaotic, so I gave the whole thing another coating; this time in a reddish color to see if it'd reveal any imperfections that the greys don't.

IMG_20160906_213708.jpgIMG_20160906_213724.jpgIMG_20160906_213734.jpgIMG_20160906_213751.jpg

I suspect I might be one or two mm too deep still, I'll have to try to get a precise measurement. If it is though, it'll be pretty easy to smooth in some more apoxie sculpt to shallow it even more, it was getting the ridges shaped that took all the time. They're still inaccurate in a few places, namely the two big straight sections which are too short on mine, but that's something that would need a complete rework to fix and I'm more just chasing the existence of every ridge and curve rather than their exact mm sizes. I'm pretty happy I've gotten it as close as I have just free-handing.
 
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Also I'm still looking for any feedback or critiques on the helm before I go into molding too, so if anyone sees anything amiss with the build so far, please please let me know.

If nothin comes up I'll probably start prepping for molding pretty soon.
 
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Is it me or probably just the picture, but if you look straight on, the mandible/visor opening corner below the double arrows look uneven. Take a straight edge and see if they line up. Still, this is way farther than I ever got. It looks awesome!
 
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