Bone's TM Hero Lid, aiming for Han Solo

[Bone[501st]]

Hi there!

 

A few months ago my budget was too small to order the full monty from Troopermaster (and, sorry, but it had to be Troopermaster

and nothing else!), so I settled for a lid only.

A hero lid. In 1.5 mm. A dream came true, after only 36 years ...

 

Every few days I was unboxing it, was staring at the beauty und put it away again.

(Not without running through the house, holding the two main halfs of the helmet to my head, of course.)

 

Two months ago, after saving up some more cash, I finally had the funds and ordered my suit of armor in 1.5 mm from Paul.

 

Yeah!

And the waiting started ...

 

But because I am really, really bad at waiting, I needed something to do.

I finally unboxed the helmet parts for the last time and started building it.

 

Everything needed was included: the faceplate, cap'n'back, two ears, two green perspex bubble lenses in 3 mm, four screws,

four Pop rivets, two hovis (with mesh installed), the s-trim and the brow trim.

 

I am building model kits since childhood and felt very confident about the helmet. I wouldn't call myself handicapped

when it comes to building stuff.

Trimming? Sanding? Painting?

No big deal!

 

Boy, was I wrong!

Why? Pauls helmet kit is excellent. It is everything you can possibly wish for ... That's not it.

No, wait, that is exactly it: I just didn't want to screw it up.

 

I looked at screenshots and photos and compared Pauls helmet to the originals. And compared. And compared, again.

I couldn't find anything, that is "wrong". It is just spot on.

And then I took a look at what others did with their kits and suddenly felt the bar has risen a few notches.

 

It took me some time to finally arrive at the state of mind to say "What the heck, if you screw it up, you'll just order another

one, go for it!"

 

And so I did.

I started trimming the cap'n'back with ordinary household scissors and went on to the eyes. I dremeled out the eyesockets

and then sanded them smooth.

Paul often stated, that the original suits were far from perfect and I salute iconoclasta_88 for his attempt to make his suit in every

detail look like a screenused one, but I wanted my lid to look like I remembered them as a child after viewing Star Wars for the very first time in 1978.

Pristine, shiny, mean.

 

(In every other thread there would be the first photos in this place, but I didn't take any while trimming the plastic.

Forgive me, but I regard this thread as a kind of training ground for my suit and e-11

building thread, meaning: I am still learning how to do this properly.)

 

Perhaps because of my model building Background I started to paint and affixing parts before I bolted together the faceplate and the back.

I just felt safer that way and at that time I didn't have any idea how to attach the lenses.

 

 

I finally found a way in using plumbers putty. It is a two component putty that is kneaded, dough-like, sticks to almost anything and dries stonehard.

I placed Little blobs around the lenses and pressed them into the faceplate. This created enough surface for the lenses to securely attach to the plastic of the faceplate and evens out small gaps.

 

 

I ordered the humbrol paints and started outlining the tears and the spots on the back in black first. After they were dry, I painted the inner area in grey, leaving a fine black line on the outside. I did the same for the tears.

 

The Humbrol paint is great, but (and I found out the hard way) can be also very runny. It doesn't appear so while painting, but you can't leave it unattended or it will ruin your paint job by obeying gravity, as you can see at the ears and the tears in the photo above.

 

I pieced the front and back together and have to confess, that I thought I had done something wrong, because it wouldn't fit at all. There were gaps where the ears were supposed to sit and the back was a lot wider than the faceplate. It looked horrible and completely out of shape.

I nevertheless clamped the parts together and drilled a hole for the first pop rivet.

 

(This is the part where I sacrificed my own blood to the gods of handiwork.

It is a very bad idea to put your finger between the grips of the rivetgun while pressing them together.

I was fortunate to be alone, otherwise my kids would have learned a whole bunch of new swearwords ...)

 

 

All in all I had to use theree rivets on each side to stabilize the faceplate to my liking. The faceplate had a tendency to slip upwards and give the helmet a brow that was in the middle of the eyes.

[gazmosis[501st]]

You did it right so far. Your story is a great one. Way too familiar to a lot of us!! It's great to hear that your sights are set so high. Why not start at the top??

Humbrol paints, though accurate, are a bit unconventional in their behavior....which is why I only use them for tube stripes. Their 6 hour dry time drives me nuts as well. I never rush anything, but I do get into a rhythm and like to move forward. Anyway, you will need to repair those outlines where your paint ran. I suggest that you go get some long bristled brushes. These are my weapons:     With long brushes like these(and a bit of practice) you can make a pinstripe around these areas with a fair bit of consistency in the thickness of the line.  This is mainly because if you put more pressure on the brush, the bristles just bend rather than fanning out like smaller brushes do. Jittery hands don't help so no coffee if you plan on this method. 

Take it slow and steady. Things look great so far!

[Bone[501st]]

Hey Gaz!

 

So nice to have you as the first commenter!

 

No coffee before painting will be the biggest sacrifice I have to do for this build!

 

Yes, the drying time is really something to get used to. I had the impression, that it is a lot more than six hours.

Avoiding fingerprints is so hard when all you want to do is pick up the helmet every five minutes to marvel at it.

[The5thHorseman[501st]]

Looks like an extremely solid beginning.

Don't forget to study closely reference pics so you put the right number of black stripes in the tears and vents, as the right number of tube stripes .

 

However, i feel like your brow might be a bit low for Han's helmet:

[T-Jay[TK]]

Wow, that is scary: we both live in Germany, have about the same age and have children. We both did model kit building and aim for an idealized TK.

 

We post pictures in "quadro-style" and have a wooden desk in the background . You also painted the helmet interior black and trimmed the eye brow to be parallel to the traps.

 

Even the story at the beginning sounds familiar to me. So many coincidences, isn't that strange somehow?!

 

You did a nice start (exactly as I would  have done it).

 

Following...

[The5thHorseman[501st]]

Yeah, that's funny, i noticed the quadro-styled pictures too and thought: "It must be a german kink"  .

[Bone[501st]]

@Tino: I have to confess, I took your photos as a template ...
 
It looked so tidy and nice to look at. Germain, there's the german kink!
 
But the wooden backround is coincidence, honestly, it is just my workplace.
NRW? Where exactly? My homebase is Datteln.
 
@Germain: yes, the brow is too low. That's where the idealized part comes into play. I am still battling myself about that, because I like the mean look with alow brow ...
But I did my homework on the stripes: seven in each tear, twelve in the back, eleven on the right tube and thirteen on the left one.
I even asked Karin about the handguards, because I couldn't find any decent screencaps: left hand "hero" and right hand "stunt"

[The5thHorseman[501st]]

Actually Han has this handguard set-up only during the first half of the film. Once he gets to the elevator with Chewie handcuffed, he has swapped with a normal standard left/right set-up:

 

alternative style on the left hand, standard on the right

 

Standard style on the left hand, with standard on the right

 

 

 

[Bone[501st]]

Aha!
That's why I was so puzzled.
Remember that I said that I couldn't find any decent screenshots?
That is, I only found Images that said, that Han had "Standards" on both hands.
And I knew, this couldn't be the case.
 
Good god, you are really knowing the movies inside out, don't you?
But .. one question remains: if I want to tag my future suit as a "Han suit"´, what shall I do concerning the handguards? Two standards or one standard and one alternative?

Edited October 2, 2014 by Bone

[The5thHorseman[501st]]

To me, you can do both. 

However, the fact of wearing two different handguards and knowing why you wear them like that, i find that it adds a little to the history of the replica

 

The same goes with his biceps hooks. He doesn't always have them, and not always in the same configuration. The right biceps hook you see in the thrash compactor is different than the very uncommon one you see in the control room, and most of the time he doesn't have a left bicep hooks but you can clearly spot one in the thrash compactor scene.

 

I think i would just pic those little details from scene to scene that make the suit unique and mix them together. Just my opinion though, do as you prefer!!

[Bone[501st]]

So, let's pick up where I left last time:

 

I had bolted together the two halves of the lid and now it was time for the ears.

I used a tool I purchased long ago, albeit without knowing when or what to use it for.

Please don't ask me what it is called in english, as I don't even know what it is called in german ...

 

 

I took four measurements, two for each ear from the front and from the back, because, as we all know, the helmets are not symetrical, and the shape you have to cut out for the front is not the same as the one for the back. Then I traced these shapes onto the ears in lead pencil and cut it out. After some sanding I had a decent fit.

 

I painted the inside of the helmet black before I put it together. It's not because of light issues or being able to see better, but pure taste. The lid looks more valuable and "I mean business"-like.

 

I was amazed how sturdy that thing became after everything was affixed. I would never have guessed, that these "flimsy" plastic parts would become something that has a grip and a nice weight.

 

Paul made the lenses from 3mm green perspex. How he did that is a mystery to me, because they are flawless!

When you wear the helmet and look sideways,, your vision is slightly distorted, but if you look straight ahead, everything is distortionfree.

 

For the padding inside the helmet, I went the cheap route: the pads are mouse pads with a wrist cushion from a Dollar store. I cut them out and hotglued the cutoff parts underneath them, to make them thicker. After that I velcroed them into the helmet.

Edited October 9, 2014 by Bone

[Bone[501st]]

Okay guys and gals,

 

I am preparing for the daunting task of painting the stripes!

 

I thought about it for a long time and tried to imagine how they were done in 1976 by the stagehands.

I couldn't imagine them cutting out templates for all the helmets. If that would have been the case, then all helmets should have the same number of stripes, right?

What would be the quickest and less time consuming way, keeping in mind, that they handpainted all the other stuff?

 

The quickest way would be to take some tape and mark the top of the stripes and the bottom and the just handpaint the stripes inbetween.

Just half an hour after I put so much work into thinking it out, I read in another thread, that fellow troopers had the same idea.

 

But years before me ...

 

And I thought I could finally contribute something to the FISD ...

 

Anyway, I kept in mind the sizing of the stripes (just a pencil thickness away from the upper edge and 2 cm wide) and masked of the part for the stripes. This is where I ended up:

 

 

I was lucky to find sand colored tape that was exactly 2 cm wide. That was the placeholder for the tube stripes and I was able to place them exactly where I wanted them to be.

 

I bought green frog tape (Yeah! Frog Tape! The good stuff! No paint bleeding!) and marked the upper and lower edge. (Picture one and two)

 

I removed the sand colored tape and ended up with an exact field to paint.

After that I measured the length, divided it with the right number of stripes (eleven on the right tube and thirteen on the left one) and marked them with blue sharpie (picture tree and four).

 

I took this shot to see the spacing of the stripes (you can also see, that I tried to emulate the weird spacing of the stripes in the tears):

 

 

Now I need a steady hand and stay away from the coffee.

Edited October 16, 2014 by Bone

[T-Jay[TK]]

Hey, good preparation done! If you continue like that (and you surely will), I'm absolutely confident you'll get a perfect result.

[troopermaster]

Looking good so far

 

Take your time with the tube stripes. If you mess one up, don't panic and try to correct it straight away. Carry on painting the rest and leave the paint to dry or you risk ruining the other stripes. A Q-tip with white spirit will take care of any mistakes.

[Bone[501st]]

Hi!

 

Reporting back with another installment of my bucket-building thread.

 

While handpainting my tube stripes, I did exactly what Troopermaster Paul predicted: I messed up. Royally.

 

I thought green frog tape is working miracles, but in the end it is the same old (insert favourite word here) than any other masking tape.

 

Look here:

 

 

The paint not only bled under the tape, but also along the ridge.

However, I also did another thing that Paul said in his last post: I didn't panic.

I let it dry and tried to correct the paint afterwards.

These are my first efforts:

 

 

Still not finished, but getting the hang of it ...

 

Here are some other pictures of the nearly finished helmet:

 

You can see, that I painted the mictips differently. The right one has a white interior, the left one is painted black on the inside.

This is how the tips appeared to me on Han Solos helmet. Correct me if I'm wrong, but the left one always looked darker to me and this was my way to achieve that.

The Vocoder was painted matte black and then I gave that part some swift wipes with my sweater to make it some kind of semi-matte, but only on the raised parts.

 

 

After I attached the s-trim I recognized that the helmet was to narrow for my throat and that I was not even remotely able to look down. So I had to cut off more from the Vocoder

than I found optically pleasing, because it chafed my throat. All in all I also find the opening of the helmet really tight, but I knew beforehand that I have to "screw" the helmet on.

Another interesting fact is, that I don't have any space left between the top of my head and the top of the helmet. There is no padding in the top of the helmet at all.

Okay, my forehead is high, but after all I read I haven't expected that.

 

 

I put some very fine mesh behind the teeth. Air circulation is quite good and nobody's gonna see my face.

(The grey paint Looks bubbly, but that is a weird reflection)

 

 

I managed to get the end of both ears tightly wrapped under the s-trim. No small feat!

 

 

I painted the right number of stripes for a Han Solo helmet in all the spaces ...

 

 

 

... and even created the gap at the left eye that I found on Hans helmet:

 

 

What do I stillhave to do?

 

1. clean up the tube stripes

2. raise the brow, to really make it a Han Solo helmet.

 

Nevertheless, some Beauty shots (thank you, Paul!):

 

 

 

 

 

But some questions still remain:

 

Take a look at the very last photo.

Is the right ear too thick at the bottom?

And, are the tube stripes too thick?

 

Thank you all for comments and tips!

Edited November 5, 2014 by Bone

[TK-50101 Blue Snaggletooth[TK]]

At all its a beauty. Sadly the tube stripes are to thick.

[The5thHorseman[501st]]

I agree, the tube stripes feel to thick.

The top screws on the ears are also set very low and overlap the painting. And the brow could be cut shorter, Han's one ends before the end of the traps (at least on the right side):

[Bone[501st]]

Right you are about the brow, germain.

Didn't see that.

 

For the upper screws, at least on the left side I interpreted the screenshots like that. Even in the right screenshot you posted above, it looks like the screw does sit very low.

Or in the Image in my post above (number 12)

On the right ear, yes, I set the screw too low. Darn!

[The5thHorseman[501st]]

However, even if it's not a perfect match for a Han's helmet replica, it's still an absolutely gorgeous hero lid.

And btw, i too have no padding at all on top of my helmet

[Bone[501st]]

 Thank you, Germain!

Edited November 6, 2014 by Bone