spidermanna
New Member
Welcome to the10th installment of my RotJ Boba Fett costume build—getting close to the end, but not there yet. The knee pads (armor) were interesting because you had to integrate the mounting screws into the armor to support the straps and those little rocket things on the outer edges. They also snapped in half during Halloween causing a complete refit, but more on that in a minute…
As usual, for this armor (and all the armor) I used ASTM D2729 Sewer pipe which has a wall thickness of about 1/8” and is probably toxic when heated. However, it doesn’t take much heat to bend it into all kinds of shapes, so I used a heatgun with multiple settings and a cylinder on the end to focus the heat which helps make the job go faster. The knee armor consisted of an inner layer and outer layer; however, there was a couple points where the armor was only one layer thick and that is where it would break so I had to reinforce it with some thin sheet steel. Screws and screw mounts were all put in before gluing and shoving a lot of bondo in the two layers behind the mini rockets he killed all those stormtroopers with in Mando Season 2, Ep 6…
Dents were put in by concentrated heat and the round end of a small screwdriver. The edges were rounded using a lot of persistence (actually just used a baseball or something to form around although the fronts are two pieces glued one on top of the other to make it easier to get that curvy bend (if I had to do it again, I’d use one piece as I am better at bending the PVC with a form).
I used these T-Nuts a lot to hold the armor to the soft bits, in this case the straps. More on those in the main armor build later on (not this tutorial)…
Seen from the front and back. Probably the only time I’ve not used Velcro to make straps. I needed these to be tight and not fall down, which inevitably caused them to break! So, I need to keep that in mind for future builds…
My (wife’s) Cameo Silhouette 4 proved to be an absolute game changer for doing all the painting, damage, masking, labeling, etc. on this build. Once I zoned in on the right scanning parameters, I cut the damage out on sticky paper and stuck them to the armor after bondo-ing, sanding, priming, sanding again, priming, sanding AGAIN, and finally applying silver basecoat (not shown—sorry)…
You can see the stickers under the yellow middle coat (silver, light yellow, sort of mustard yellow). Also used Maskol to mask additional scrapes and dings.
As a general rule, I’d often add a layer of Maskol over the stickers to hold them in place if they started to lift or there was a hole in the middle like on these. Also, the maskol pictured here SUCKS!! Use the one from Humbrol!
Adding the mustard-ish yellow outer coat. I got these little squeeze bottles off of amazon and they worked great---for about 5 days and then they dried up so use quick or maybe pit some saran wrap or something between the bottle and the lid to keep them from dying out. That was only an issue with the enamels—had no issues with the acrylics which I STILL have like almost 18 months later! The patterns for the wear damage all came from DentedHelmet.com. Notice the sticky paper sheets in the back with the bits of damage peeled off…
And there is the other one done…
Seen with the decals/masking removed and the brown acrylic accents added. Aren’t those pretty?
With the Velcro added to the straps (and corresponding piece added to the flight suit…
The eagle-eyed among you may recognize my attempt at the Dread Pirate Robert’s sword on the counter next to the knee armor. If you want more on how to make a sword out of PVC, let me know…it turned out pretty well (I think)...
Seen from the back. I dyed the straps light gray—I need to weather them some more before the next show at the end of the month in Omaha and/or Columbus in December. If you look closely behind the straps on the top (where the screws are) you can see the metal reinforcements I glued and screwed in which have helped keep it from resplitting, as does using the Velcro as it takes pressure off the straps…
I didn’t take any pics of the rocket things in work. I turned them on the lathe, made castings from silicone & corn starch, and casted them in polyurethane. I may have mounted a nut inside of them during the casting process—if I did, that would have been a pretty smart idea, so I probably forgot…
And that’s that for the knee armor. One additional thing I did was scrape them a bit with steel wool as these would get a lot of damage as my Boba Fett would be exceptionally clumsy like me. I may have went overboard. Let me know what you think.
Hope you enjoyed—leave any comments or suggestions…Thanks.
