my repaints/mods to Galaxy's Edge X-Wing helmets (with tutorial)

[Treadwell]

This thread will document what I did to alter and deco the helmets.
First I'll post the final product of three of them, then I'll post about the process, and then later I'll add more helmets as I do them.

They all started like this:


and ended up like this:




next: comparisons to reference

 

[kevin926]

Nice work

 

[Treadwell]

The white helmet is based on one that is handed to two different pilots in ANH. (Another, almost identical one, is given to a third. That helmet ended up being used by Dak in ESB.)
The Ronco Slice-O-Matic design on the side is longer on this helmet than most others. I made a long version in Photoshop, but after I'd printed it I found I'd made it TOO long! So I cut it down and applied the halves overlapped. My source for the graphic is partsofsw.com.

I nicked up the "rebel symbols" (as people call them) to match the screengrabs, and used black acrylic paint to lightly weather it. It was difficult to keep from going overboard, as it is pretty clean in the film. I did not clearcoat this one.
The visor is the yellow one that came with it, oversprayed with Tamiya USA TAM86031 Polycarbonate PS-31 Smoke Spray. It looks the part, but visibility through it is extremely dark and blurry. No marching in a con parade with the visor down!

(modifying and painting the base helmet itself will be covered later)

I could not find a "rebel symbol" online that matched how they appeared on the helmets to my satisfaction. So I recreated it from scratch in Photoshop.
Source of photos of the helmet today: starwarshelmets.com

 

[Treadwell]

other graphics courtesy of partsofsw.com:

 

[Treadwell]

In researching the Porkins helmet, I made a few different conclusions than other replicas I've seen. For a long time all any of us had were screencaps--the cockpits were shot with with a strong primary light source with no fill, causing deep shadows that blackened anything in them.


But thanks to the Star Wars Identities Exposition, there are many photos now available of how the helmet looks today. It's really beaten up so the pics aren't good reference for weathering, but they clarified a few things for me:

The dark color on the outside edges of the ram's horns is green, not black.



The inside edges of the face opening have two different colors: Red on the wearer's right, a continuation of the green on the left.

The areas at the back of the red/yellow stripes where a cut-down version of this is applied:

...is cut down not only to remove the circle, but ALSO the bottommost stripe.

(hmm, or maybe part of it has peeled off. Oh well. )

The front of the mowhawk cap is painted with a black rectangle in the middle (not black across the entire face).


(none of the Identities photos in this thread are mine)

 

[Treadwell]

Thanks to the shot of the pilots being ferried carring their blue logo helmets, was able to confirm there was no emblem on the back of the mohawk, unlike many of the more decorated helmets.

 

[Treadwell]

Let's strip it down!


Remove the rubber trim first. It's clipped on at several points.


The liner is four interconnected pieces, all attached with phillips head screws. But once unscrewed they will need encouragement to detach.



You'll need something to pry them loose.


There we go.


It's still attached by wires to the sound effects activation button. Remove the screws holding on the assembly, and the activation panel.


Shell is now empty.


If you want to tint your visor later, or paint the insert, you'll need to separate them. It's held on with two screwed-on posts.


The mohawk strip has a tab at the bottom rear you need to free up by gently pulling apart the halves at that location.



The two shell halves are held together by posts on the underside of the mohawk strip. Gently tap from inside, them one by one, starting at the back, to get the strip to gradually pop out.



The strip is still held in place by the front cap. The cap is clipped on with tabs. Just cut them off. Once the cap is off, the strip can be removed and put aside. With the shell halves separated, our helmet is now stripped down.

 

[Treadwell]

The top strip on the Galaxies helmet is recessed, but it's supposed to be sitting on top. We'll have to make one to put over it.

 

[Treadwell]

I find the mohawk cap on the Galaxies helmet a bit wee. I like the size of the Black Series one.


So let's build it up! Measure the Black Series...


Cut pieces of styrene and glue/weld them (I use MEK) on each face of the Galaxies one.


The thickness of the styrene (I ended up doing two layers, not pictured) is building up its width and height to about the right degree, but the back is what needs extension the most.


Cut the pieces oversized at first and just get them on. Trim afterward.


Gap with filler of your choice and sand (and repeat!).

 

[Treadwell]

Painting.
One could just primer over it as it is. However, it would require several coats because the paint and silkscreening on it would still show up along the edges of each stripe/design.

I thought I might get lucky and find something that would strip it all off, down to the white plastic. I liked the idea of being able to let the white areas be the exposed plastic just like the movie props.

I tried all kinds of stuff. Brake fluid, brake cleaner, mineral spirits, Goof Off, Simple Green. They would either do absolutely nothing, or would melt the plastic.

I finally tried Purple Power.



That did dissolve most of the deco to the point I could scrub much of it off with a scotch pad.

But it did not remove everything, and some things, like the red and yellow stripes, were not affected at all.


So I proceeded to wet sand the thing to make sure any edges that might be evident after priming were gone.


I resigned myself to having to paint a white helmet white.
It also meant I hadn't really needed to completely disassemble it. The halves could've remained together.

 

[Treadwell]

They didn't do a terrible job with how they incorporated the sound effects activation button, but I wanted to eliminate the seams.


With the electronics removed, and paint scraped off of connecting surfaces, I used MEK (which is what I use to refill my long-exhausted bottle of Plastruct weld) to permanently attach it.



(ignore the play icons, these are stills from paused video)
The button is a different plastic than the helmet, but they're compatible enough for weld to work.
(The paint on it was also unaffected by the Purple Power.)


Glob it up with filler(s)


After the first round of filling and sanding... repeat...


In the process, I ended up more sanding down the plastic around the button, rather than there being a thick layer of filler in the middle evening out. I just sanded the whole surface and let the materials level out as they will. That is why the button is still black when I start primering, as seen below.

Now primer the hell out of it, sand, repeat. I was okay with the softening of the details/edges, as they were very soft on the original props anyway.

 

[Halliwax]

Extremely nice work!

 

[Treadwell]

As I discussed in another thread, on a real ABH-6 helmet, the oxygen masks are attached to metal buckle things on either side of the face opening, and those in turn are held onto the helmet with little round rivets. Since the X-Wing helmets are vacuforms of those, the rivet translates as a little bump. (also, see the screw on the left side of the pic? That secures a strap that goes behind the wearer's neck. Those screws also translated to bumps on the X-Wing helmet.)



Wellllll, due to some quirk in the process when creating the helmets for ANH, that rivet bump is NOT PRESENT on the wearer's left on the film helmets!



Now, it LOOKS like it's there on Luke's, but it's just painted on, to match the genuine painted bump on the other side.

So I decided it needed to go on mine!
I couldn't just sand it down without filling it in on the inside, or there would be a hole.
I used a technique I learned from the "Modelmaking Guru" channel on YouTube. He makes a substance he calls "sprue goo".
You cut up a bunch of tiny pieces of scrap plastic or sprue from your kit and put them in a bottle, fill it up with MEK or similar plastic weld solvent, and wait. The plastic will dissolve into a single thick globby mass you can paint on, essentially becoming liquid styrene. If you use plastic that came from the kit you're working on, the color will be a perfect match because it IS the same plastic.
In my case, I already had some made, so the color wasn't a match, but the helmet was being painted anyway.
So I glopped a bunch on the inside of the unwanted bump:


after curing, I sliced away the bump...

...and then, as always, sanding and filling. In theory, filling wouldn't be necessary if the glop filled in just right, but, you know....

Anyway, skipping ahead to the bump-free surface:

Which isn't 100% invisible. My concoction cured as a slightly softer material than the surrounding plastic, so it was impossible not to oversand. But it got me close enough that it isn't terribly noticable after painting (and standing back a few feet ).

 

[Rawktrooper]

its possible that different helmets were used to vacuform for the original helmets. since each military helmet is a little different, some can have exterior mounted mics and some with bayonet clips using strictly oxygen masks the mic is included in the mask and therefore not mounted on the outside of the helmet. and some depend on which side the mic is mounted. So a screw present on some helmets in a certain area might not be present on others, or its possible some screws were removed before casting but not on all helmets. I'm not sure how strictly they matched details when casting the original helmets, but seeing everything else from those films, probably not too strict.

 

[Treadwell]

There would have been only one vacuform buck to make all the rebel helmets, which would've been made from a single military helmet. Every APH-6 helmet I've seen has those rivets and mask mounting points.

 

[division 6]

After seeing this I looked through all my reference.

In the Hoth post At-At face plant it appears to actually have a raised bump (highlighted and shadowed edges), but that is it.
In ANH Luke's painted red dot appears and disappears from scene to scene.

 

[Rawktrooper]

what i am saying is, that every aph6 is not identical when it comes to attachments or visors or comms. yes the o2 clip mount is generally there, but those helmets don't need to accept o2 mask comms and some have a boom mic installed for other use, or different ear speakers, or different visor knobs and locations. these bumps could be remnants of that installation in some helmets. I'm not sold on the idea there was only one buck for all the helmets if there were differences.. there could have been replacements made from other methods if they had helmets destroyed or damaged or thrown away. the Tie helmet is also based on the aph6, it would be interesting to see the details on those as well.
you could be right but I'm just saying all aph6s are not alike so it's possible a bump or lack thereof could indicate another one being used.

 

[Treadwell]

I wasn't going to be reinstalling most of the liner, but I still needed to be able to attach the chin cup straps and the mic.
So I cut off those parts off the liner and welded them directly to the inside of the helmet. Later painted white.
Also evident here is that I trimmed down the posts that held the liner in place. (But don't trim the things the edge trim clips into!)

 

[Treadwell]

Reassembling the shells



and welding all of the mating surfaces.




reinstalling the strip and also welding. This thing ain't gonna creak!

 

[Treadwell]

I'm not sold on the idea there was only one buck for all the helmets if there were differences..

There weren't differences.
All variance is in the way they were painted or detailed (overtrimming the mohawk cap, for example). Sometimes the film is flopped, adding to confusion about L-R details.