ANH Tusken Build

[vt357]

I've been working on my ANH raider on and off for a year now. I finally finished it and got accepted to the 501st last week.

Robe and Softparts

I made an inner robe out of osnaburg. I was originally going for a TK409 style robe, but decided not to put the opening in the front. The whole robe gets pulled in and tied around the waste by the sash. I also made an outer robe out of monks cloth (TK409 style).

I weathered both robes using watered down acrylic paint - both black and brown. Most people seem to put the paint in a spray bottle, but by the end your hand is dead from all the trigger pulling. I found a mini pressure sprayer at Harbor Freight for $6 and it made a world of difference. Just pump it up and you're good to go for pretty much the whole robe.

Two Liter Handheld Mister

All of my wraps were made of khaki colored strips of duck cloth. The massive ball of string that is created from ripping 3 yards of duck cloth into strips is a daunting task to clean up. I hot glued the wraps to a brown long sleeved shirt. At the end of the sleeves I left an extra long strip to wrap around the gloves. This works a little better than permanently attaching the gloves to the sleeves (then the sleeves must be separate from the shirt at the shoulders or you have to take the whole thing off just to remove your gloves - no thanks). For those looking for gloves, the cream gardening glove without a colored cuff is very hard to find. Harbor Freight sells them in a pack for just a few bucks.

I bought some cheap rubber boots at walmart for the shoes. I ended up using three tubes of E6000 to get the strips to stick the wraps to the rubber. Since I wrapped the bottom of the boot as well I used a tube of shoe go on the soles to provide some traction.

Inner robe

Sash tied in back

Arm wraps

Wraps in progress

Unweathered boot

Shoe goo for traction

 

[vt357]

Respirator

The respirator was made from a tomato paste can. The ends were 2 liter bottle caps and 1/4 flare fittings. I used Water Putty and Bondo glaze to raise and smooth out the ends. 1/4" copper tubing was bent into shape and connected at the back by a piece of vinyl tubing. The whole thing was spray painted silver, a strip of pleather was added around the can, and then it was weathered with a combination of spray paint and brushed on acrylics.

Assembled

Painted

Weathered

 

[vt357]

Bandoliers

I like the look of the 1903 Enfield bandoliers. Since they're from WW1 there aren't many originals left, but you can buy reproductions from ima-usa for $50 a piece. When I started the project, money was pretty tight so I decided to make my own out of vinyl. In the past a lot of homemade bandoliers have turned out pretty poor in quality, but I figured it was worth a shot.

The vinyl has a good leather appearance on the front, but the backing is a white fabric. The material is also a good bit thinner than leather. To solve both of those problems I glued 2 pieces together for the leather look on both sides. The only thing left at that point was the white seam which I colored brown using a sharpie.

I got the pattern from Studio Creations - he had scanned a trace of an original pouch. I picked up some buckles and spikes (in place of Sam Browne buttons) from Tandy and pop riveted the whole thing together.

Weathering was a little tricky, but came out really nice in the end. First I took some 220 grit sandpaper and roughed up the surface of the vinyl to remove the plasticky shine. Then I misted the surface with matte black spray paint. It had a very dusty look to it, but b/c it was vinyl, the paint never dried. Even after a week it was still completely tacky. Thanks to some searching here on the RPF I found the solution - a rag soaked in rubbing alcohol will liquefy the paint. The black gets into the texture and all the "nooks and crannies" of the vinyl giving it that old worn leather look.

I've got a about $20 invested in each the bandolier.

 

[vt357]

Gaffi

I really enjoyed the gaffi build. I was originally going to make a steel mace section. I went as far as to cut all the fins and get the whole thing ready to weld... then I realized that I would be like Luke "I can't see a thing in this helmet" Skywalker and would end up bludgeoning some poor kid when I turned around. :facepalm:

So I went a 3/4" dowel rod and 1/8" mdf for the fins. The body is a 1.5" diameter shovel handle attached to a bathroom grab bar. The shovel handle was reamed out for the mace end and attached with lots of glue and a screw for good measure.

The totokia end was created from a bun foot that I got at Lowes. I started by drawing lines 1/4" apart around the foot. Initially I was using a dremel and file, then I got smart and put it on a lathe to cut out the grooves. The spikes were each carved individually using a high speed cutter attachment on a dremel. To make the spike end, the remaining part of the 3/4" dowel rod was screwed to the foot. I again used water putty and bondo glaze to build up the spike and make the curve. This was screwed to the grab bar and more water putty used to smooth out that transition.

The whole thing was primed in a ruddy brown color. The mace end was then painted silver (if it gets scuffed away it will look like rust) then weathered with some black and brown acrylic paint. The "wooden" part of the gaffi was stained using gel stain. It was applied using a thick bristled brush which gives it a wood grain look - even over the metal grab bar. You have to look really really close to see the transition b/w wood and metal.

 

[vt357]

I built my mask using a vacuum formed face plate and resin pieces made by dialswiftjustice at the Krayt Clan. It's attached to a baseball helmet. I've got a big head so it was extra snug with the foam padding and there was absolutely no room for airflow. So I tore out the padding and installed a hard hat liner. I painted the interior of the mask black like many TKs do.

Next I built a fan system for the helmet. It's a 12V system with 2 fans. A large 80mm case fan will blow hot air out the top of the helmet while a smaller 40mm fan will suck in fresh air through the mouth. I ordered the quietest fans I could get that still had decent air flow. They move the air really well but are still a little loud in the helmet. I guess that's the price you pay for comfort.

I'm using (3) 3.7V Trustfire Lithium Ion rechargeable batteries linked in series as my power source. I tested the circuit at 12.6V when fully charged. They are rated at 900mah so at the 130ma the fans are supposed to draw I should theoretically be able to get about 7 hours out of them, in practice I'm hoping for about 3-4. But I'll always have spares with me though so if they run out during a long troop, no biggie.

The batteries are AA sized so I put them in (2) 2AA enclosed battery holders. I wired in a switch into the holder at the 4th battery slot. I provided a circuit diagram in case anybody was interested.

The dialswiftjustice kit included the vacuum formed mask, resin pieces, leather strips for the snout wrap, a piece of vinyl for the pleated mouth, and strips of cloth for the wraps. I ended up tossing the cloth strips in favor of my duck cloth strips so all of my wraps are the same material.

Mostly standard construction from here - the resin pieces were painted silver and attached with machine screws and nuts, the front of the mask was painted brown, the vinyl was hot glued into pleats and pulled through the mouth hole, leather strips were glued around the snout, and finally the whole helmet was wrapped in duck cloth.

The wraps were done in a Godzilla mask style - wrapping into the helmet opening instead of hanging down. It has a velcro flap on the back to fit my big head in. The neck covering is a duck cloth scarf that tucks into but is not attached to the helmet. All duck cloth pieces were weathered by spray paint. Black, brown, and olive green were misted over the wraps to give them more of a dusty look (pics below are pre-weathering).

There are screens behind both the eyes and the mouth to prevent people seeing into the helmet. Screens are also applied in the triangular slots on the side to provide some peripheral vision (not much but way better than none at all). The side screens were painted khaki to match the duck cloth.

Unweathered wraps

Light Finish weathering

 

[vt357]

Finished Pics

And a little photoshop just for fun. ::<

 

[Darthpapi]

Wow man that looks great!

 

[Qui-Gonzalez]

That thing is impressive.

 

[Bondo Fett]

Love all the photos and documentation. Always my favorite part of the posts. Thanks for sharing!

 

[kibosh]

Dude, you did fantastic work there!

Can you share some details on your neck wrap? It looks great in your pics. That is the part I'm having the hardest time figuring out on my build.

 

[Trap Joe]

wow. Awsome job. Thanks for sharing!

 

[vt357]

Dude, you did fantastic work there!

Can you share some details on your neck wrap? It looks great in your pics. That is the part I'm having the hardest time figuring out on my build.

Thanks for the compliments.

Honestly that is the part I'm still not sure I'm happy about. It's just the leftover scraps of duck cloth about 3' long and 1' wide weathered and frayed on the edges. I just wrap it around the neck about 3 times then tuck it into the robe and up into the helmet.

 

[Klwl]

That is awesome! I actually love the Raiders, I think it might be my next project to go along my wife's Boussh costume.

Bookmarked!!

 

[DL 44 Blaster]

It looks really fantastic!! Great build and the gaffi stick looks damned near spot on!

 

[kibosh]

Thanks for the compliments.

Honestly that is the part I'm still not sure I'm happy about. It's just the leftover scraps of duck cloth about 3' long and 1' wide weathered and frayed on the edges. I just wrap it around the neck about 3 times then tuck it into the robe and up into the helmet.

Wow. Nice and simple. I like it! Thanks

 

[vt357]

Wow. Nice and simple. I like it! Thanks

It's definitely a small world. I thought your screen name looked familiar so I looked back and I had your mask build thread at the krayt clan bookmarked. It was one of the ones that helped me figure out how to build mine. So thankYOU. :lol

 

[RoCKo]

wow, that looks really nice! great work!

i always wanted to upgrade my tusken mask display to at least a bust but never found the time to do so.
your work might have changed my priorities to finally finish the bust...

btw. how much for such a gaffi stick?

 

[vt357]

wow, that looks really nice! great work!

i always wanted to upgrade my tusken mask display to at least a bust but never found the time to do so.
your work might have changed my priorities to finally finish the bust...

btw. how much for such a gaffi stick?

I feel like the gaffi market is pretty flooded right now, at least for the pineapple spiked ends parts, so I hadn't really considered building any for sale. If I have some spare time I may end up building one or two, but I don't think I plan on doing a run or anything.

One thing I would do differently is to lathe the pineapple end completely out of wood. I'd have to find some light wood to keep it from becoming too heavy. The water putty build up of the spike looks great, but I am concerned about long term durability. It can take a beating before it cracks - I know, I was using a mini sledge on another part of the gaffi while it was attached and it cracked.

 

[kibosh]

Yeah, I got the helmet done, and kinda lost steam there. The whole neck part bothered me, and I decidd to think about it. For 10 months! I do plan on getting back to it this winter. Hopefully get the neck wrap sorted out, and the arm & leg wraps.

Glad I was able to help you out!

Thanks for the compliments.

Honestly that is the part I'm still not sure I'm happy about. It's just the leftover scraps of duck cloth about 3' long and 1' wide weathered and frayed on the edges. I just wrap it around the neck about 3 times then tuck it into the robe and up into the helmet.

It's definitely a small world. I thought your screen name looked familiar so I looked back and I had your mask build thread at the krayt clan bookmarked. It was one of the ones that helped me figure out how to build mine. So thankYOU. :lol