With the 20th anniversary release of The Rocketeer on BluRay I've decided it's finally time to finish the original Rocketeer helmet casting that's been gathering dust in my shop. The two helmet castings below were the very first two pullled from the original production molds.
The original sculpture for the helmet was made in sculpty by a friend of the author Dave Stevens under his direct supervision. This sculpture was provided to Design Setters, the company tasked with the job of producing the helmet and rocket pack props for the movie. The silicone mold was over catalized, either by mistake, or to speed up the demolding time. As a result, it started shrinking almost immeadiately. Since the sculpty original was destroyed in the process of making the mold, an "archive" casting was made. This was a very thick slush casting (the whitish yellow one in the picture) which was set aside for use as a pattern, should an additional mold be needed (a second mold was never made). The red casting was the second casting out of the mold, the first attempt at a production piece using a sprayed on urethane hard coat. This produced a very nice, but very thin and fragile part. Since it wasn't practical to keep the spray equipment on hand for a week or more to make all the castings needed, and since there wasn't the time to reinforce each casting with fiberglass, the decision was made to slush coat the rest of the helmets. Spray foam was shot into the red casting to reinforce it and it was set aside, never to be used.
A few years ago I cut out the eye and mouth holes and trimmed away some of the foam to turn the red casting into a display piece, but didn't get much further. Now I'm finally going to complete it!
Here are two original fin castings. The white one was again, an "archive" casting set aside in case an additional mold was needed. The painted one was actually from a stunt helmet provided to the production which was returned to the prop shop for replacement or repair. Notice that it has the bullet graze dent in the top edge. This was one of the helemts from the final sequence in front of the Griffith Observatory. Note also that this fin has a thicker flattened front edge rather than the more fragile knife edge on the fin from the hero helmet.
Here are a set of original, untrimmed, vacu-formed lenses. These will be going into the red helmet.
I've started to clean out the rest of the spray foam from the red helmet casting. The urethane hard shell is very smooth and consistant, but also very fragile. It's already cracked along the seam. I'm going to reinforce the shell with epoxy resin and fiberglass before cleaning out the rest of the foam.
I'll post more pictures as the helmet proceeds along to completion.
The original sculpture for the helmet was made in sculpty by a friend of the author Dave Stevens under his direct supervision. This sculpture was provided to Design Setters, the company tasked with the job of producing the helmet and rocket pack props for the movie. The silicone mold was over catalized, either by mistake, or to speed up the demolding time. As a result, it started shrinking almost immeadiately. Since the sculpty original was destroyed in the process of making the mold, an "archive" casting was made. This was a very thick slush casting (the whitish yellow one in the picture) which was set aside for use as a pattern, should an additional mold be needed (a second mold was never made). The red casting was the second casting out of the mold, the first attempt at a production piece using a sprayed on urethane hard coat. This produced a very nice, but very thin and fragile part. Since it wasn't practical to keep the spray equipment on hand for a week or more to make all the castings needed, and since there wasn't the time to reinforce each casting with fiberglass, the decision was made to slush coat the rest of the helmets. Spray foam was shot into the red casting to reinforce it and it was set aside, never to be used.
A few years ago I cut out the eye and mouth holes and trimmed away some of the foam to turn the red casting into a display piece, but didn't get much further. Now I'm finally going to complete it!
Here are two original fin castings. The white one was again, an "archive" casting set aside in case an additional mold was needed. The painted one was actually from a stunt helmet provided to the production which was returned to the prop shop for replacement or repair. Notice that it has the bullet graze dent in the top edge. This was one of the helemts from the final sequence in front of the Griffith Observatory. Note also that this fin has a thicker flattened front edge rather than the more fragile knife edge on the fin from the hero helmet.
Here are a set of original, untrimmed, vacu-formed lenses. These will be going into the red helmet.
I've started to clean out the rest of the spray foam from the red helmet casting. The urethane hard shell is very smooth and consistant, but also very fragile. It's already cracked along the seam. I'm going to reinforce the shell with epoxy resin and fiberglass before cleaning out the rest of the foam.
I'll post more pictures as the helmet proceeds along to completion.
