Once I had my tauntaun hanging on my wall I decided I needed a nice Hoth trooper hat and googles to display as well. Of course, we all know how near impossible it is to find an actual pair of vintage Swans ski goggles so I decided I'd have to settle for the best match I could find and then adapt them to match the on-screen look as best I could. That turned into a whole project on its own. As a reminder, here is some reference for the actual Swans goggles:
I rather rapidly found an acceptable match in overall shape and features but with the major exception that the visor plastic itself was far too deep a yellow color. I'd have to make a new visor with a more proper tint.
The color grading in ESB is notoriously variable and confusing but averaging from shot to shot and looking at other photo reference of actual Swans I decided to aim for an olive tint, not too saturated. But first, I had to vac form the new visor itself. The first step to that was to make a buck from the actual visor from the goggles. I thought through the process a bit and decided that I needed to vac the new acrylic down to a buck made across the inner surface of the original visor, so that the thickness and curvature of the new visor would match. I built a clay 'dam' around the original visor and made a plaster buck from that.
The vac forming itself took a bit of trial and error to find the right combo of acrylic thickness and heat time, but with my friend Jim Arthurs' help we made some beautiful copies.
Here's some video of the vac forming process:
The next step was dyeing the newly minted visors to the right olive tint. I used a mix of yellow and green and brown iDye Poly. Once dyed to the proper tint I cut and trimmed the new visors to match the original.
Then some 3D-modeled and laser-cut pieces to add onto the vintage goggles in order to match the foam vents and strap holders on the Swans as best I could:
Once all assembled I have a pair of goggles that I think will be 'good enough' when finally displayed with my Hoth trooper hat.
Hopefully, someday someone will be able to make a good copy from an actual vintage Swans - I'm sure that's a production run a lot of us would support...
Dan
I rather rapidly found an acceptable match in overall shape and features but with the major exception that the visor plastic itself was far too deep a yellow color. I'd have to make a new visor with a more proper tint.
The color grading in ESB is notoriously variable and confusing but averaging from shot to shot and looking at other photo reference of actual Swans I decided to aim for an olive tint, not too saturated. But first, I had to vac form the new visor itself. The first step to that was to make a buck from the actual visor from the goggles. I thought through the process a bit and decided that I needed to vac the new acrylic down to a buck made across the inner surface of the original visor, so that the thickness and curvature of the new visor would match. I built a clay 'dam' around the original visor and made a plaster buck from that.
The vac forming itself took a bit of trial and error to find the right combo of acrylic thickness and heat time, but with my friend Jim Arthurs' help we made some beautiful copies.
Here's some video of the vac forming process:
The next step was dyeing the newly minted visors to the right olive tint. I used a mix of yellow and green and brown iDye Poly. Once dyed to the proper tint I cut and trimmed the new visors to match the original.
Then some 3D-modeled and laser-cut pieces to add onto the vintage goggles in order to match the foam vents and strap holders on the Swans as best I could:
Once all assembled I have a pair of goggles that I think will be 'good enough' when finally displayed with my Hoth trooper hat.
Hopefully, someday someone will be able to make a good copy from an actual vintage Swans - I'm sure that's a production run a lot of us would support...
Dan
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