My Early Disasters pt 2 - A Biker Scout Helmet - How hard can it be?

Passed by the workshop last night and decided to see how the hinge mechanism worked out.

It doesn't. Despite my brilliant planning, the central dowel refuses to rotate, meaning the arm is permanently stuck up vertically. I sat down and thought what I should do about this. So far I have thought of three options:

1. Beer
2. Cry
3. Cry into my beer.

This may not be the attitude that won the West, but it IS a tried and tested method of mine for coping with adversity.
 
Option 4. Throw something
Option 5. All of the above

;)

Sorry you've had a setback -I look forward to seeing how you tackle it after the beer and crying.
 
Hmph. Not impressed at all.

I tried re-working the hinge from inside the helmet, but it was too awkward. I'm really annoyed, because it was me being slapdash putting it together that's meant it's not easily rescuable now, and it's either do a quick job today, or put this aside for more than a month. Don't want to stop moving with this in case I don't pick it up again, so the regrettable answer is to fix the arm vertically as a permanent measure.

Bugger.

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This is the unfortunate result of me trying to get the hinge rotating again - the damn axle slipped and the whole arm leans out. Getting it stable and rotating is beyond me and my limited means at the mo. I'm gluing the thing back in vertical, making the top piece for the viewfinder and taking a break from helmets until I'm ready to tackle the Atlanthia-style build of the 1st Order Stormtrooper. March, I reckon. Meanwhile, I'll be finishing off the Harley Pop Gun and Hammer on my other thread.
 
You don't learn anything without mistakes. The people who are doing this stuff perfectly have already gone through the pain you are going through, its just that they don't post about it (and I know from experience!) and moreover they aren't learning anything new like you are. Keep at it! You'll get good experience and learning if nothing else.
 
I really appreciate the support le1120. Since I was a kid I have been able to imagine great things, but never produce them anywhere near as good in real life. Learning to let go of perfect and accept that I'm improving was a big step forward. It would also help if I spent longer on each step.
 
Right.

Putting aside my irritation at my slapdash nature screwing up the hinge bit, I've pushed on with the top of the rangefinder arm.

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step one: Take an old printer cartridge.
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step two: Cut that angle and cover the opened section with spare plastic.
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step three: cut open the end, and put in the assembly from a small colour-change LED tealight. Drill a couple of holes in the front edge to allow the light through.

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step four: Fit the assembly to the top of the arm, then wonder how you're going to match the colours and surface. Shrug, and go refill your coffee mug.

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Still isn't straight. Bugger.
 
With a day away from paid work, I took some time to finish off the rangefinder and neaten up the area where the arm meets the helmet. It's not perfect, but it's better than I've done previously, and contains the pretty lights which please me to an absurd degree. This, when I have seen similar buckets here on the rpf that have rangefinder arms that lower and raise via remote switches!
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I'm trying to remember that this project became a lot more ambitious along the way - my original intention was to take the face-only voice-changer mask and make it into a full bucket.

Here's roughly what I started with:
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As always with these projects, I've learned a lot, and already forgotten many of the most important things I learned. That's another great reason for keeping tabs on the build in this forum (and in my best-selling book*, "My Cosplay Disasters", available now on Amazon!)

For now, this bucket is done, and I'm going to put any remaining time into the Harley Pop Gun and prep for the big, big project - The scratch-build First Order Stormtrooper Helmet.

Signing off (until next time) with all the Star Wars Helmets made to date:

Star Wars Buckets 2016.jpg


* "best-selling" in this case refers to "compared to my other eight e-books". We are not talking big numbers here. J.K.Rowling I ain't.
 
Wow, I've been quiet for a week.

Several reasons: One, it's been a mad week - my wife in surgery, the surgery going wrong, youngest kid having a birthday, the furnace breaking down.....

So, I'm not getting very far with the next project. I wanted to build a First Order Stormtrooper bucket Atlanthia-style, from cardboard forms and paper mache, but I lack the organisational skills to break down the required steps. Now I'm taking a step back and trying a pep model first, so I can hold a physical thing and examine it. It'll be the wrong size, because I haven't taken the time to work out printing the pep plans at 1:1, and I only have four of the sixteen pages printed out right now.

In the meantime I revised and updated my e-book on building this stuff to include my Stormtrooper Helmet build. Hoping to release the revised edition later this week and maybe show some of my lack of pep progress then too.

Hope everyone else out there is getting some things done!
 
Thanks Grenater - my house is warm now, my wife is vertical again, and I may get some pep time next week. My Beta-readers are checking through the book for me, so all looks good for the re-release, and I added a small amount of work to the Harley Pop gun for my other thread (photos to follow there later today, I think)

Life is one bloody thing after another, but they're not always bad things.
 
Ok, so here's what's been happening with the latest project.
I want one of these:
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I don't have the disposable income to buy one outright, and I don't have the moral fibre to ignore my wife's raised eyebrows when it arrives and I try to explain why I need it.

So, building, then.

I've mentioned before that I don't have the fine control or experience to try pepping a full helmet, but the previous trooper helmet build made me think I could use the Atlanthia bargain basement method to build one of these. The first bit was easy - just get a front shot (like the one above) and a side shot, and map them onto a scaled grid. Then cut out the resulting pieces on card, and make a dome to sit on top.
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This time around I made the dome slightly longer than it is wide, and I reinforced the inside with packing foam. I thought I was being clever.

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Then I take the side shot and front shot and slot them together. Yay, it's looking pretty good. I've even gone as far as to take a piece of toilet roll tube and sit it where the "beak" goes.

And then it all goes to hell because I do not have a single CLUE how to build the rest of the support structure. I need some way to tell how those side pieces run, the angle, the curve.... Look, what I'm trying to build is the First Order version of this:

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This is Atlanthia's picture of the support structure he built for the original stormtrooper bucket. Those tubes and the eye shapes supported all the paper mache that went on top, giving it the right form. I got the dome, I got the central tube to shape the beak, but I am at a flippin' loss about the side pieces.

So, time for desperate measures. I download a set of Pep files (I forget which, sorry...) What I'm planning is to build a pep helmet and use that as a 3d reference. Maybe even cobble the pep pieces into my support frame?

Except, this is ME. So when I print off the pages they're the wrong size. This helmet, if I can build it, might fit my cat. Or it might not, she's got a pretty big head for a cat. I'm going to go ahead and try and build it anyway because:

1. I'm stupidly stubborn about unimportant things.
2. I'm curious as to how tricky pepping really is.
3. I can't figure out how to print the pieces out full-size on my piddly printer.
4. Haven't you read any of these posts before? This is my standard approach: Inferior materials? Check! Head in the sand? Check! Hopelessly inflated goals? CHECK!

But, as I've mentioned, sick wife, bathroom, etc etc. There are more people around the house who are saying things like "Take my temperature! Fetch me dinner! Change the channell! Don't you ever vacuum? Why the hell would you want another sodding lightsabre?" and so on.
 
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I'm looking forward to endless, endlessly entertaining posts. I think one an hour, regardless of whether you've done anything or not, should be sufficient. ;)
 
Thanks Snow Builder! I'm going to have to jump into the pep building soon, because I've been fondly imagining some great day when I have all the time in the world to assemble this paper masterpiece while the pets frolic outside and classical music plays. There may even have been dancing girls and free pizza.

But I have to accept that I've got the same amount of not-really-any-time-at-all to do this as I have to do all the other crappy work I've done. Except this will be smaller and require precision cutting and neat folding. Oh, and glue.

I'm going to end up with glue and paper stuck to everything.

Sheesh.
 
It doesn't matter if you end up with glue and paper stuck everywhere as long as you are enjoying what you are doing. You just have to remember the fun bit, that's what it's all about really.

Roughneckone:cool
 
The Great Pepakura Experiment begins...

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Well, I've been working with Pepakura projects for...oh...about an hour now. I can tell you from experience that you really need a large, clear, well-lit workspace, a scalpel, a ruler, and a good cutting surface.

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Since this is me, I'm working on a lap tray in front of the TV, using an old pair of scissors while watching Season 3 of "Ripper Street" - Look out Inspector Reed, he's got a gun!

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Things are going about as well as you'd expect, but I'm curiously happy. I've cut out and attached six pieces. About two hundred more to go...

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I decided to put in a second hour today, since there's only me, a sick Weasel and the builders here (Mrs Dim has gone back to work, and I've admitted defeat on the bathroom reno for now. Apparently there's a vogue for having the walls completely flat and at right angles to one another. Clearly, someone else has to take care of those details for me....)

So, I've moved back into my study and am using my nice, clear desk, with the pep program open on the screen in front of me. Hey, this actually helps!

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Doesn't stop me being hamfisted and fumble-fingered, but it does mean I don't have to squint at the tiny numbers to try and figure out what goes where. Of course, the numbers wouldn't BE so tiny if I'd printed the stupid pages off at the right scale... But, from balancing the first stage on my head last night (no, no photos of that, I looked stupid...) this is only going to be a bit small, not comedy small.

I got so into this that I didn't take pictures for each piece, but I've added another six.

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Still impatient for the moment it starts to look like a trooper helmet, rather than a paper skullcap, but I'm horribly aware it's going to look squashy and lopsided when it is complete. As to whether I can get hold of any resin on the cheap, I'm still not sure. Better go back to editing the book so I can take my material costs out of the huge profits from there.....
 

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