Mad Max Fury Road Leg Brace Build

THX 1138

New Member
Hello everyone! I am going to try to post my build of Max's leg brace from Fury Road here. I want to post this to help out anyone wanting to build their own and hopefully you can get some ideas from this thread. I followed the leg brace tutorial from madmaxcostumes.com back when I made my Road Warrior costume and found it extremely helpful. I'm hoping I can post something as useful here as I haven't found a build tutorial yet of the FR brace.

So I'm starting off with a DonJoy leg brace that I purchased second hand from eBay. I bought this in either 2015 or 2016 and unfortunately I don't have any "before" pics. All the metal frame pieces were covered in a rubber that I cut off with an X-acto knife. It had four velcro straps for attachment to the leg that were simple to remove but the top and bottom pieces of the brace were covered in a foam and velcro that was glued to the metal. This was a pain to remove because they were really on there and the foam would rip instead of pull off. I ended up using the X-acto knife to cut away as much as possible before spraying the leftover foam with 91% alcohol.

I thought this would dissolve the foam padding but I'm not sure it helped. I then sprayed it with Goof Off (Goo Gone) and that really helped. I then scrubbed it with some steel wool which removed the rest completely. I took the steel wool to the rest of the brace to clean it up and wiped it down.
Now I was finally left with a brace that was only the metal parts, a good starting point. Now be aware that this DonJoy leg brace that I purchased is not the exact model that was in the movie unfortunately. I thought it was back when I bought it but as promo pics of the brace emerged I quickly found out it was not. Oh well. If you do purchase a more correct brace then it might be possible to avoid some of the steps above.


Now on to the build. From the reference pictures posted on madmaxcostumes.com I determined that the movie brace is still coated in a sort of rough grayish texture that was on the brace from the factory. To replicate this look on my bare metal brace I sprayed it with some Rust-Oleum Hammered spray in the darker color. This was a great choice as I think the result looks very close to the original finish.
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I hit the outside metal of the brace with the spray and just left the inside bare, at least for now.

Onto the joint in the middle of the brace. Mine is covered by a steel plate that is riveted into place by two rivets. In the movie this top plate is removed to show the mechanical cogs of the joint underneath. A more visually interesting choice for sure and one that I will be attempting.

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I then took to drilling out the rivets on the sides. The rivet would spin in the brace when hit with the drill and there was no way to hold the opposite side of the rivet, so I had to take my Dremel and cut a notch in the head of the rivet, then place a flathead screwdriver in it to hold it while I drilled the opposite end. This worked and I was able to disassemble the brace.
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Once disassembled I reattached the pieces using socket head cap screws (fine thread) and hex jam nuts in black zinc that I bought from Ace hardware. I did have to drill the original rivet holes to 1/4 to fit the new screws.
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I used the 1/2 inch screws and this ended up being the perfect length.

That's it for this post. Next I'll finish drilling the other side and start on the leather work.
 
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