spidermanna
New Member
Welcome to tutorial #11—I hope everyone is enjoying these or at least finding them useful or somewhat entertaining. I was originally going to do the entire process of making and painting the armor but that would have been a crap ton of pics so I decided to cover it separately. Hopefully you won’t be disappointed. Anyway…
Anyone who has made a Boba Fett costume has had to go through the wonderful process of painting and weathering the armor. Most people buy their armor online from a vendor or 3D print it. Here at Mannavations we like to make everything WAY more difficult than it needs to be and this was no different when dealing with the armor, so like everything else, I used 1/8” thick, 4” diameter PVC drain/sewer pipes. The schematics were downloaded from DentedHelmet.com and modified a bit but not much and placed on my plastic pal, Ken (aka, Manna-Ken). (I mentioned it before but if you plan to do this for realz, get at least ONE mannequin, preferably one with fingers if your costume involves gloves as they make for great displays and also great for holding the parts in place where they are supposed to be when you are hitting him indirectly with a 600-degree heat gun or loads of acrylic paints)…
Once I had all the pieces cut out, I carefully bent the edges in just slightly and marked/added dents with a heat gun using a conical focus tip to concentrate the heat and the back of a screwdriver. I also recommend NOT using the highest setting on the heat gun to do this (mine is from Harbor Freight and has like 7 settings and high/low power—I used it on like 5 with low power to make the dents). I also curved them in a bit so they would be more huggy around my chest and abdomen.
T-Nuts are at the heart, soul, lungs, waist, shoulders, and junk drawers of this build—anywhere armor is connected, a T-Nut is used. Some people use Velcro but screws rank higher than Velcro in the hierarchy of assembly so I highly recommend using them and do use them for everything. Typically they are imbedded inside of whatever I am making to make their accidental removal (i.e., breakage) a lot harder. For the armor they need to be flat so put them on a vice and beat the **** out of them with a hammer and flat punch
Once the spikey bits are flat, drive a screw into it with your overkill screwdriver…
I drilled a T-Nut-sized hole through a piece of aluminum that was maybe a but thicker than a 1/8”—maybe 3/16 (it was actually leftover material from the handle I retrofit into the EE-3 to keep it stable). I stuck the T-Nut/screw combo in and cut it off with a hacksaw. I used this method because I needed a quick, repeatable process as there are like 20-30 of these T-Nut/Screws I had to make.
After being cut, they have sharp edges which is bad so I needed to debur and round them over which I did with my DeWalt drill (RIP—I did get another one) and Dremel tool. Its way easier when the drill is spinning, btw (not shown)…
The end result is this. Remove the T-Nut and do the same thing with the screw until the threaded end is rounded a bit. FYI, you can also use a file instead of a Dremel but what fun is that…
These pieces are so important, I felt the need to make this pic especially huge (ignore the nasty-@ss fingers holding it)…
Using a hole saw and a No Parking sign, I made a crap ton of crap plastic washer-looking things. FYI, these are NOT used as washers, though technically the No Parking sign is (more to come on that later).
This is the abdominal armor as seen from the back. I used a compass to make an equal-distant line around the perimeter and mounted the T-nuts along the lines; the more the better. Then I glued them down. But I knew they would probably pop off eventually so I added the plastic washer-looking things.
To make them adhere, I heated them up with the heat gun on an even lower setting and pushed them against the T-nut/armor with my gloved hand (always wear gloves when using the heat gun unless you like pain/don’t value your fingers/palms)…
Then I marked their location on the armor and glued them down over the T-Nuts. These things are NEVER, EVER coming off…
I think I made the top dent a bit too hot—see how it browned the PVC?
I’ll get into cutting out and putting in that digital readout in the painting portion as I didn’t take any good pics of that process, however, the chest armor is pretty easy to make for the most part. The back armor on the other hand…
The back armor was a multi-phase series of trial and error, mostly error followed by lots and lots of reheating and rebending the shoulders to get them to fit (I think I know why they added the cape and scalps—to hide the gaps!). Anyway, as 4” pipe only yields a 12” wide flat sheet when baked in the oven and flattened and the back is WAY bigger than that, I had to glue two of them together. I also made a couple different forms for this. I have no idea why I used PVC to make the patterns—that was overkill when paper would have worked just fine. Whenever I make stuff like this, I always like to make it oversized and cut it back and this was no exception. (I usually still end up making it too small. I think I made 3 of these before I got it right!)
Lots of heating and bending. I rounded the shoulder areas with a ball and tried to match it on the other shoulder as best I could. This took a lot of effort before I came up with something that was pretty close.
The inside edges were reinforced with a No Trespassing sign and lots of superglue. The notched slots for the jetpack straps are actually very easy to make. I simply took a Dremel tool with a cutting wheel and made a slot where the hole would be. Then I heated that area up with the heat gun and stuck a piece of wood shaped like a wedge into it which opened it up to the desired width/height, and while the plastic was still hot and soft, pushed the bottom down which flattened down the base. I also didn’t bother taking any pics of that…
Left pic is me trying to figure out where to mount the top screws (I would later refit this to make the crews come in from the top vs popping out from the bottom. On the right, you can see what I am on about the gap between the vest and armor which would always be more on one side and also be pushed out by the harness. I also made the harness tubes smaller to take up less real estate which helped resolve this issue. I also modified the tops of the shoulders to make them line up and be flat which I think I show in the painting tutorial…
Had to use lots of bondo but so very happy to be nearly finished with the endless shoulder gaps!
Same with the junk drawers (cod piece). Notice the T-Nuts in the back. Probably still not a good idea to be working on this thing on the wife’s granite countertop…Used all the same techniques and patterns with a few variations.
So I made the front and back of the waist armor with the idea that at some point during the show I’d need to take a #1 and or #2 or just sit and not be standing so it would need to be easy to remove. As such, it was designed for the back part to go on separately and provide the framework for the front to clip into. The side screws simply hold the front on but also clip into the sides with T-nuts that you can’t see as they are only on the inside. This has the limiting effect of never allowing me to gain any waist width as they are NOT adjustable so I can never go over 175 lbs! (I used to be 250 so I am pretty careful about my weight but I can tell when I’m over by just a few lbs…)
The Velcro strap in the middle enables easy removal of the front while the T-nuts on the sides of the cod piece hold the rear section in place along with the square keyboard screws on each side (you can kind of see them there on the back…)
Speaking of the keyboard screws on the shoulder tops and sides of the Fettkini, that was made by cutting the shape out of wood and casting it in Silicone and cornstarch to make a mold. I put T-Nuts and a screw in the cavity held in place with a sheet of plexiglass to keep it flat and centered. I had to fill the form about halfway with polyurethane and then drop the T-Nut/screw assembly on top and let it cure. Once cured, add the rest of the poly with the screw still in it, let it cure, remove the screw, and sand away the bulgy bit. Works perfectly.
As mentioned early, For Sale signs (In this case I guess it was Tenant Parking and No Parking signs that were used) as massive washers to not only hold the armor in place, but also make it cling to the flak vest. Is it supposed to do this? Don’t care—I like it and think it looks better than seeing the gaps behind it…
…but you tell me what you think...
Anyway, next one will be on the painting which everyone has done so really nothing special that folks haven’t already covered on countless posts. Still, I may have a couple new tricks in there (but I doubt it). I noticed that I didn't take many (or apparently any) pics of the shoulder armor in work--not really much to those--I think I formed them around the same pipe I cut them out of, bent the edges in slightly, added the obligatory battle damage (dents) and add the T-Nuts--pretty simple stuff. There will be much more on those in the painting section...
Thanks for looking.
