Dual Build Han Solo in Carbonite

[Sean Hebein]

Hello everyone,

One of my holy grail props is Han in Carbonite. I have wanted one for years but never had the skill or the the time to put one together. Someone from my area was recently asking around on Facebook for advise on one so I decided that now is the time. John and I are building ours at my house side by side. Since he lives in LA and I live in OC, I have been doing a lot of the build on mine and then John's get's the benefit of the lessons learned. Trying to include as many pics as possible. With that said, here we go:

Started off doing research on what to do for the initial box. A lot of people go with the Zenix box because it is cheap, convenient, and accurate. Initially I wanted to go with plywood instead of MDF because of strength and it would be lighter. I engaged a few vendors around my area and I sent them the box blueprints that are floating around online. Got several quotes for over $1k so the Zenix box was looking better and better.

I ordered the Zenix box, the Volvo panels, and the greeblies and they showed up about a week later:

I started assembly on the frame which was really simple. The sizes and the top fit together like a puzzle so I coated the insides of the puzzle pieces together with Gorilla wood glue and then I used a rubber mallet to tap them together.

For my box I decided to use screws to hold the tops and the sides together which was a mistake. For John's box, I just used wood glue and clamps. Makes filling and sanding easier which I discovered later.

Here's the box sides assembled:

Here's the box frame in all it's glory:

After I built my box frame, buiilding John's went crazy fast. I probably had his built in about an hour.

The MDF frame by itself isn't very sturdy so I knew that it was going to need a bunch of support. So I took some measurements of the inside of the box and I went to Home Depot. My idea was to use Baltic Birch plywood panels to strengthen the inside and I would use 2x4s as additional support.

I bought 2 sheets of this and I had Home Depot cut the sheets to the sizes that I needed. They have a vertical table saw that makes the cuts really easy so it was just easier to have them do it. It was also free to have them make the cuts so the price was right.

After Home Depot, I went home and I did some test fitting. The box itself is more like a trapezoid and the cuts that home depot made were straight. I bought a Dewalt circular saw at Home Depot to make some additional cuts to get the panels to fit right and then did some dry fits before I screwed them together. Here's the saw I bought:

I also bought some Dewalt collapsible work benches since working on the floor sucks:

Here's the test fit of the panels in the box:

In order to get the angles cut right on the end of the 2x4s, I bought a handy angle finder tool from Home Depot as well. It made cutting the ends of the 2x4s to the right angle super easy. I highly recommend it and it was only $20.

Here's the box again with all of the 2x4s laid in. I used a countersunk drill bit to drill pilot holes and then I used wood screws to secure the 2x4s. I also put some screws through the MDF and through the plywood backing. Then I used my Dremel with a metal cutoff wheel to cut the screws off so they would be level.

Here's the box with the internal support structure complete:

Around this time I received the full Han cast from Stormrider on TDH. I had read some threads that some people had received the cast and it was too short for the box so they had to come up with some creative solutions. I was bracing myself for that. I opened the box and I am so pleased with the cast. It's beautiful and with minimal amounts of trimming, it fits the box perfectly. Below is my box on the left and John's box on the right. I haven't had a chance to trim John's yet so more work to go with that.

Spent all day last Saturday filling and sanding. Over and over and over again......Here's a pic of John making it happen:

I decided to take some time away from the filling and sanding and turn my attention to the Volvo panels. First order of business was to use my Dremel to cut the windows out:

The resin is pretty brittle so I chipped the plastic in a few places accidentally. I used JB Weld to fill in those places and "sculpt' back the pieces that chipped off.

I also was starting to think about backing for the panels. I had in my mind that I wanted to use either a brushed stainless steel or a brushed aluminum.

I found some stainless steel sheets on Amazon that looked promising so I ordered 2:

Amazon Stainless Steel

From my measurements I could get 2 panel backs per sheet and I would have some left over should I need any detail pieces.

I figured I could just cut the stainless sheets with my Dremel with a cutoff wheel. The wheel was also heating the metal up and discoloring it a bit. Not good. I also burned through almost 3 wheels on 1 panel so that wasn't going to be sustainable. So I decided to look into other methods. I ended up ordering a ferrous metal cutting blade for my circular saw. I ordered this on Amazon:

Saw Blade

Got it in a few days later and it cuts through the steel sheet like butter.

 

[Sean Hebein]

Here's a couple of the panels so far:

Above is my hero panel and this is going to be my non hero:

I have also been toying around with the colors. I have been on the Facebook HIC builders group and I saw a pic of Boba standing next to the HIC and then in another pic I got a better look at the hero panel. Here's the pic of the Boba shot:

The non-hero panels have a look of a smokey grey or a graphite color while the hero panel has a silver look. Going to do some paint ups with that this coming weekend to see what I like. I have also heard of people just leaving them straight black. So idk lol, I guess I'll figure it out.

I plan on securing the stainless steel to the backs of the panels with either steel stick or JB Weld. I already tested the JB Weld solution and it worked great. I think steel stick would be a bit cleaner. I'll post back the results.

I have also been toying around with some ideas for the ends of my HIC. A lot of people leave them "unfinished" because you'll never see them if you display the HIC standing up. I may have mine horizontal if I decide to take mine to events so I want to make sure they look good.

I am taking inspiration from the Gentle Giant display:

Mat Luschek aka @Langley here on the RPF, was gracious enough to send me the 3D file for the thruster piece. He also quickly modeled the vent piece that will fit in the center.

With his permission, I sent the thruster file to Shapeways and had them print it in their highest resolution plastic. Here's what I received:

Luckily I already had some Smooth On Mold Star at my house so I went ahead and build a box mold and molded the part. Here's the mold I made:

Pretty rudimentary for what I see people on here do but it worked for what I needed. I decided to do a test cast using Smooth On Smooth Cast 65D:

I was pretty pleased with the result so I decided to order some aluminum powder and do some cold casting. I ordered this on Amazon:

Aluminum Powder

I dusted the mold with it and I mixed some in with the resin. I slowly poured it into my mold, let it cure and then I had a cold cast aluminum thruster! I used some steel wool and a wire brush on my Dremel and gave it a bit of a polish:

Gave it a black wash with some model paint:

Pretty pleased with the result, not bad for a noob. Decided that I am going to drill out the middle and the 6 smaller vent holes and back light it with some red and orange LEDs. More on that later.

That pretty much is it for now. Going to be finishing up sanding on the box tomorrow and hopefully throwing some paint at it this weekend!

 

[zsherman]

This is a FANTASTIC BUILD!!!!!!

 

[Sean Hebein]

More progress from over the weekend. Getting a lot closer to finishing up the wiring on my hero panel. I got all of the holes drilled out of the steel plate and I created some slots in the stainless to route the wires to the controller.

I also primed a painted the box finally.

I started off doing 1 coat of Duplicolor light filler primer. That exposed a lot of the areas that I needed to putty or sand more:

This is the putty that I used:

Bondo Putty

Here's the box with the putty:

As you can see, I had a lot of little surface defects that I needed to handle.

I took pretty much an entire day of alternating between coating with primer, putty, sanding, and repeating.

This is what the box looked like when I was finally done:

At this point, I coated it with one last coat of primer to so some surface rechecks and my OCD allowed me to be happy with the result so I was ready to paint!

I coated the box with 3 coats of Duplicolor Gunmetal. I waited 15 minutes per coat and I was doing light coats to avoid any runs.

Duplicolor Gunmetal

This is what the box looked like after the 3 coats of Gunmetal:

I was super happy with how this looked but it needed more. I lightly misted the box with alternating mists of black, graphite and gunmetal to soften it a bit.

Here's the paint I used:

Duplicolor Black
Duplicolor Graphite

Here's how it looked after. I didn't use any specfic technique, I just eyeballed it:

After I was satisfied with the look, I clear coated it with 3 coats of Duplicolor clear coat:

Duplicolor Clear


Here's how it looks after the clear coat:

All of this was over the span of about 2 days. So far, I am really happy with what I have been able to achieve. I am letting the paint cure on the box right now for a few days and I am going to tackle installing Han probably tonight or tomorrow. I have to mask off the box when I paint Han so I want to make sure the clear coat has plenty of time to harden up.

More to follow later this week hopefully.

Sean

 

[gkings29]

Wow, the best information I’ve seen yet on a HIC build. This is very helpful as I will be starting soon. Thank you for posting.

 

[kevinva]

This is incredible. I'm mentally preparing for my build and I'm glad that I saw this one, before I jump in. These are all great ideas. Thank you for sharing this.

 

[Sean Hebein]

I had to stop my build for a while because I was building my FOTK and then Christmas and then I moved and I am just now back into a position to start building again. I'll have a bunch more pics soon. If you have any questions regarding the box build, let me know.

 

[Metz]

Can’t wait to see the finished products

 

[Sean Hebein]

So, some more pics:

After I had the boxes ready to go it was time to get that smuggler inside of the box!

First, I sprayed expanding foam into the back of Han and then took a saw and leveled it out. The Stormrider cast is hollow on the face so I felt it needed a little bit of extra support.

Here's the spray foam I used:

Foam from Home Depot

Just spray it on and let it cure, doesn't talk long:

Here's the backside of Han (lol):

After that, it was just a matter of putting Han on the box and gluing him down. I used the following adhesive:

Loctite PL Premium X8

The adhesive I used requires moisture in order to cure correctly so I used a spray bottle and misted the back of Han and also the backing of the box. The adhesive takes about 24 hours to cure so a little patience is required.

Here is Han laying down being all lazy while the glue is curing:

One thing I learned while doing this, is that Han should be glued in and ready to go before you paint the box.

I painted my first box before putting Han in and that was a mistake because it required a lot more masking and some of the silicone I used to fill in the edges got onto the paint and I had to sand it down. Not fun. Learn from my mistakes!

The Stormrider HIC rubber cast fits inside of the Zenix box almost perfectly. Highly recommend it because the texture is molded in which saves time and is more accurate. I had to do a little filling around the seems with silicone to blend everything in. This is what I used for that:

Paintable Caulk

You want to make sure that whatever you use for the edges is paintable or else you will have a bad time later.

I took quite a bit of time with the edges. I want to make sure they looked uniform and stayed true to the rest of the casting.

When I finished with the edges, I needed to work the casting a bit to fill in bubbles and correct any minor issues with spot putty. I did a couple passes with filler primer and putty until I got it to where I wanted it. This is what that looked like:

After that, it was finally time to put some paint down.

I went ahead and painted the box. I already described that process so I won't bore you with that again.

After the box I painted Han. I put down 3 coats of the following paint:

Duplicolor Galaxy Silver

This is what that looked like after:

As you can see, he is super bright!

I was actually pretty nervous about how bright the paint was. It had a nice metallic luster though so I didn't panic because I knew the weathering would take it down quite a bit.

I used a black wash of acrylic black craft paint:

Craft Paint

I barely diluted the paint with water and kept it really thick. For every 1 part of paint I added maybe 1/4 part water.

I brushed it on, let it sit for about a minute and then wiped it off. I had to work in sections letting some sections dry and then working other sections with the paint solution.

I went over Han 3 times with the wash and then took a lint free cloth and kind of buffed off the raised parts of the cast. This is what I ended up with:

Pretty pleased with how it turned out.

More to follow as I have been working on the panels....(what a pain).

Sean

 

[JSchneider]

Hello everyone,

One of my holy grail props is Han in Carbonite. I have wanted one for years but never had the skill or the the time to put one together. Someone from my area was recently asking around on Facebook for advise on one so I decided that now is the time. John and I are building ours at my house side by side. Since he lives in LA and I live in OC, I have been doing a lot of the build on mine and then John's get's the benefit of the lessons learned. Trying to include as many pics as possible. With that said, here we go:

Started off doing research on what to do for the initial box. A lot of people go with the Zenix box because it is cheap, convenient, and accurate. Initially I wanted to go with plywood instead of MDF because of strength and it would be lighter. I engaged a few vendors around my area and I sent them the box blueprints that are floating around online. Got several quotes for over $1k so the Zenix box was looking better and better.

I ordered the Zenix box, the Volvo panels, and the greeblies and they showed up about a week later:

View attachment 1048692

View attachment 1048693

View attachment 1048694

I started assembly on the frame which was really simple. The sizes and the top fit together like a puzzle so I coated the insides of the puzzle pieces together with Gorilla wood glue and then I used a rubber mallet to tap them together.

View attachment 1048695

For my box I decided to use screws to hold the tops and the sides together which was a mistake. For John's box, I just used wood glue and clamps. Makes filling and sanding easier which I discovered later.

Here's the box sides assembled:

View attachment 1048696

Here's the box frame in all it's glory:

View attachment 1048697

After I built my box frame, buiilding John's went crazy fast. I probably had his built in about an hour.

The MDF frame by itself isn't very sturdy so I knew that it was going to need a bunch of support. So I took some measurements of the inside of the box and I went to Home Depot. My idea was to use Baltic Birch plywood panels to strengthen the inside and I would use 2x4s as additional support.

View attachment 1048698

I bought 2 sheets of this and I had Home Depot cut the sheets to the sizes that I needed. They have a vertical table saw that makes the cuts really easy so it was just easier to have them do it. It was also free to have them make the cuts so the price was right.

View attachment 1048699

After Home Depot, I went home and I did some test fitting. The box itself is more like a trapezoid and the cuts that home depot made were straight. I bought a Dewalt circular saw at Home Depot to make some additional cuts to get the panels to fit right and then did some dry fits before I screwed them together. Here's the saw I bought:

View attachment 1048700

I also bought some Dewalt collapsible work benches since working on the floor sucks:

View attachment 1048701

Here's the test fit of the panels in the box:

View attachment 1048702

In order to get the angles cut right on the end of the 2x4s, I bought a handy angle finder tool from Home Depot as well. It made cutting the ends of the 2x4s to the right angle super easy. I highly recommend it and it was only $20.

View attachment 1048703


Here's the box again with all of the 2x4s laid in. I used a countersunk drill bit to drill pilot holes and then I used wood screws to secure the 2x4s. I also put some screws through the MDF and through the plywood backing. Then I used my Dremel with a metal cutoff wheel to cut the screws off so they would be level.

View attachment 1048704

Here's the box with the internal support structure complete:

View attachment 1048705

Around this time I received the full Han cast from Stormrider on TDH. I had read some threads that some people had received the cast and it was too short for the box so they had to come up with some creative solutions. I was bracing myself for that. I opened the box and I am so pleased with the cast. It's beautiful and with minimal amounts of trimming, it fits the box perfectly. Below is my box on the left and John's box on the right. I haven't had a chance to trim John's yet so more work to go with that.

View attachment 1048706

View attachment 1048707

View attachment 1048708

Spent all day last Saturday filling and sanding. Over and over and over again......Here's a pic of John making it happen:

View attachment 1048709

I decided to take some time away from the filling and sanding and turn my attention to the Volvo panels. First order of business was to use my Dremel to cut the windows out:

View attachment 1048710

The resin is pretty brittle so I chipped the plastic in a few places accidentally. I used JB Weld to fill in those places and "sculpt' back the pieces that chipped off.

I also was starting to think about backing for the panels. I had in my mind that I wanted to use either a brushed stainless steel or a brushed aluminum.

I found some stainless steel sheets on Amazon that looked promising so I ordered 2:

Amazon Stainless Steel

From my measurements I could get 2 panel backs per sheet and I would have some left over should I need any detail pieces.

I figured I could just cut the stainless sheets with my Dremel with a cutoff wheel. The wheel was also heating the metal up and discoloring it a bit. Not good. I also burned through almost 3 wheels on 1 panel so that wasn't going to be sustainable. So I decided to look into other methods. I ended up ordering a ferrous metal cutting blade for my circular saw. I ordered this on Amazon:

Saw Blade

Got it in a few days later and it cuts through the steel sheet like butter.

Hi Sean! I was wondering where you found the link to purchase the Han cast from Stormrider? I've been looking around, but I don't see anything current. I just purchased everything for the box and panels. Still looking for my "Han" and I also need the electronics. Yours looks amazing BTW. Great job!