I'm a couple years late to the excitement of this one. A few months ago, Dear Wife told me "lets go to EpiCon (August 1-3, Mexico City) dressed up." Wife is in great shape, and does kickboxing. Wants to go as Black Widow. How could I say no to that?
I've collected militaria for the past 30 years, when I was a kid and Army/Navy surplus stores were still in abundance. Also read a lot about WW2, even interviewed a US Army Master Sgt (my buddy's grandfather) that went through Normandy all the way into Germany with the 40th Signal Corp (four hours of war stories on video). I figured an accurate Rescue costume would be fairly easy. Boy was I wrong.
I've learned a lot about this costume over the past three months, and my wallet took a beating. Reading up here, and seeing the attempts of others did help. I wanted to go with original vintage gear whenever possible, and finally have original NOS:
- M1943 leggings, size 3R
- M1936 combat suspenders
- M1926 cartridge belt
- leg strap (for the M6 knife sheath)
- AN-6530 flight goggles (restored)
The rest of the costume (repro):
- Corcoran reissued WW2 brown Paratrooper boots. I wish these were made half as well as my black Corcorans, and 1/4 as well as my original M1943 double buckle boots.
- that brown leather jacket. Bought on ebay for around $140. Looks good, feels good, but... it don't smell like real leather. If it isn't real leather, I'll have a shop in Mexico City replicate it in cowhide. There's a shop downtown that restored an original A2 flight jacket for me, they do fantastic work.
- Paratrooper helmet from At The Front, beefed up with NOS helmet top strap and repro leather chin strap. Painting it was fun. Valspar rattle cans from Lowe's, per the recommendation of another member here.
- Marvel Cap A short sleeve shirt. Found 8" embroidered stars on ebay, and a 50/50 long sleeve white shirt to establish long sleeves. Need to take it to a shop for the sewing.
- At The Front Paratrooper pants. Bought a new pair on ebay, saved a few bucks. Need the pants hemmed, but they are awesome.
- repro OD7 belt for the pants.
- M1916 holster. Target shooting is also a hobby; picked up a Rock Island Armory GI 1911A1 and added pair of Remington rosewood grips.
- Ontario M3 knife. I've had it for a few years, got a correct repro M6 sheath to go with it.
- At The Front Paratrooper gloves, medium. I normally wear medium; small would fit better. Of course, every shop is now out of small size gloves.
I'm going to forgo the dual compass cases that go across the chest. I know this is all make believe costume fun, but... they get in the way. I'd rather have a canteen on the web belt (got one of those, it'd be handy at the show).
What else... the shield.
Bought a Cap heater shield on ebay for $90. Made in Pakistan. Completely unhappy with it - too big, too flimsy, and a lousy paint job. So after more reading here, I found Valor's heater shield thread. The man was kind enough to share his dwg format images with me. All Metal Fabricators (here in Delaware) handled the job and made two 8 gauge 6061 aluminum shields and they are awesome. AMF is big operation, they do all kind of industrial work. When I picked up the shields, the guy that I had been communicating with was very excited: "What are you doing with these things?!" I'm thinking "now I get to tell these guys about geekdom."
"Wife and I are getting dressed up for a comic convention in Mexico City. I'm going to be Captain (expletive) America."
Big grin on the man's face. "That's a huge show! We did the fabrication work for Marvel's premier of Spiderman 2 up in New York a few months ago. One of our guys built an Iron Man suit for himself."
Small world, eh?
Shields were not milled or polished, saved some money there - figured I could handle the sanding myself (up to 600 grit so far). For the paint - I'm lousy when it comes to painting this kind of stuff. We all know what a quality Cap shield should look like, and I'm amazed at the results members here have achieved. Made an attempt with Krylon rattle cans when the weather was good, and... ended up stripping it back down to bare metal (Citristrip, great stuff for normal coatings). Tomorrow I'm getting in touch with a local guy that does electrostatic paint, and a body shop. Whoever quotes a better price gets the job.
As far as shield handles go... this has to be the toughest part of the costume for me. Got pieces of 1/4" 6061 Al from AMF, with the idea of constructing handles of repro 782 canvas webbing, or 1/8" thick brown leather straps, fitted with original WW2 surplus hardware to the aluminum bars. Going to try affixing the bars (once drilled/tapped for machine screws) to the shield back with JB Weld. We'll see how that turns out. Figured out a loop method and finally received the steel tips (ebay from China) for the webbing today.
If you've made it this far (tl;dr), I'm not much for photos. I do my hobbies for my own amusement, and strive to do a good job. Here's a few pics of the gear so far, I'll post more
over the next few weeks.
-Mark aka Furtive
I've collected militaria for the past 30 years, when I was a kid and Army/Navy surplus stores were still in abundance. Also read a lot about WW2, even interviewed a US Army Master Sgt (my buddy's grandfather) that went through Normandy all the way into Germany with the 40th Signal Corp (four hours of war stories on video). I figured an accurate Rescue costume would be fairly easy. Boy was I wrong.
I've learned a lot about this costume over the past three months, and my wallet took a beating. Reading up here, and seeing the attempts of others did help. I wanted to go with original vintage gear whenever possible, and finally have original NOS:
- M1943 leggings, size 3R
- M1936 combat suspenders
- M1926 cartridge belt
- leg strap (for the M6 knife sheath)
- AN-6530 flight goggles (restored)
The rest of the costume (repro):
- Corcoran reissued WW2 brown Paratrooper boots. I wish these were made half as well as my black Corcorans, and 1/4 as well as my original M1943 double buckle boots.
- that brown leather jacket. Bought on ebay for around $140. Looks good, feels good, but... it don't smell like real leather. If it isn't real leather, I'll have a shop in Mexico City replicate it in cowhide. There's a shop downtown that restored an original A2 flight jacket for me, they do fantastic work.
- Paratrooper helmet from At The Front, beefed up with NOS helmet top strap and repro leather chin strap. Painting it was fun. Valspar rattle cans from Lowe's, per the recommendation of another member here.
- Marvel Cap A short sleeve shirt. Found 8" embroidered stars on ebay, and a 50/50 long sleeve white shirt to establish long sleeves. Need to take it to a shop for the sewing.
- At The Front Paratrooper pants. Bought a new pair on ebay, saved a few bucks. Need the pants hemmed, but they are awesome.
- repro OD7 belt for the pants.
- M1916 holster. Target shooting is also a hobby; picked up a Rock Island Armory GI 1911A1 and added pair of Remington rosewood grips.
- Ontario M3 knife. I've had it for a few years, got a correct repro M6 sheath to go with it.
- At The Front Paratrooper gloves, medium. I normally wear medium; small would fit better. Of course, every shop is now out of small size gloves.
I'm going to forgo the dual compass cases that go across the chest. I know this is all make believe costume fun, but... they get in the way. I'd rather have a canteen on the web belt (got one of those, it'd be handy at the show).
What else... the shield.
Bought a Cap heater shield on ebay for $90. Made in Pakistan. Completely unhappy with it - too big, too flimsy, and a lousy paint job. So after more reading here, I found Valor's heater shield thread. The man was kind enough to share his dwg format images with me. All Metal Fabricators (here in Delaware) handled the job and made two 8 gauge 6061 aluminum shields and they are awesome. AMF is big operation, they do all kind of industrial work. When I picked up the shields, the guy that I had been communicating with was very excited: "What are you doing with these things?!" I'm thinking "now I get to tell these guys about geekdom."
"Wife and I are getting dressed up for a comic convention in Mexico City. I'm going to be Captain (expletive) America."
Big grin on the man's face. "That's a huge show! We did the fabrication work for Marvel's premier of Spiderman 2 up in New York a few months ago. One of our guys built an Iron Man suit for himself."
Small world, eh?
Shields were not milled or polished, saved some money there - figured I could handle the sanding myself (up to 600 grit so far). For the paint - I'm lousy when it comes to painting this kind of stuff. We all know what a quality Cap shield should look like, and I'm amazed at the results members here have achieved. Made an attempt with Krylon rattle cans when the weather was good, and... ended up stripping it back down to bare metal (Citristrip, great stuff for normal coatings). Tomorrow I'm getting in touch with a local guy that does electrostatic paint, and a body shop. Whoever quotes a better price gets the job.
As far as shield handles go... this has to be the toughest part of the costume for me. Got pieces of 1/4" 6061 Al from AMF, with the idea of constructing handles of repro 782 canvas webbing, or 1/8" thick brown leather straps, fitted with original WW2 surplus hardware to the aluminum bars. Going to try affixing the bars (once drilled/tapped for machine screws) to the shield back with JB Weld. We'll see how that turns out. Figured out a loop method and finally received the steel tips (ebay from China) for the webbing today.
If you've made it this far (tl;dr), I'm not much for photos. I do my hobbies for my own amusement, and strive to do a good job. Here's a few pics of the gear so far, I'll post more
over the next few weeks.
-Mark aka Furtive
