Trooper Expert ESB Bucket

[Smitty]

My latest bucket project

 

Trooper Expert signed ESB Bucket

 

This was second hand at least, looked pretty good on the outside and looked like someone had burned down a trailer inside of it.

 

 

 

Check out the undercut on this one compared to my TE2.

 

 

The outside of it doesnt need much work other than a good buff down with a Magic Eraser. So I ripped out the lens material, it looked like someone's dog was chewing on the green acetate film. Then I scraped out all the glue and other adhesives and pulled out that nappy crumbling foam that was in there. Washed it out all nice and what not and got this:

 

 

 

There are still globs of epoxy that were left in place that TE utilized to prevent recasting. Mainly the tear traps and chin vocoder.

 

So then I installed batting helmet interior from a Rawlings batting helmet and now it looks like this.

 

 

I left a piece out of this helmets padding and put the large pads in a different place than on my TE2. Its an improvent. Nice tight grip and vision is better than my TE2.

I still have to screen the frown and add lens. I'm hoping I can still get my hands on some of runriott's lens. Those things are great.

[Terry19D]

Certainly a marked improvement! You realize what this means, of course: Soon you'll have to go for ESB Elite as well as ANH.

[Smitty]

Maybe, I've been tossing that idea around but I thing I'm gonna stay on the fence as far as ESB Elite goes while the ESB Elite standards seem to be up in the air. The namely the trap/ear slateblue/ANH grey and decals vs. handpainted, because as it stands right now it has hand painted traps and doesnt qualify for elite but I rather like the hand painted traps. I'm thinking of painting the ears to match the traps because right now the ears are ANH gray and the traps are slate blue. This used to be a ANH bucket you can see some of the orinial gray behind the black teeth and some exposed ANH grey on the traps.

[Darth_Finger]

What is this one made of?

[Smitty]

What is this one made of?

 

HIPS just like my TE2 Looks like .090 maybe. Its about the same thickness as my TE2 which is .090

[Daetrin[Admin]]

You bring up an excellent point - we'll certainly have to revisit our assumptions about ESB buckets pretty soon. I think blue will have to be grandfathered and gray accepted given the new info. Not sure about the hand painting though - will depend on what turns up tomorrow perhaps.

[Darth_Finger]

What happens tomorrow?

[firebladejedi[TK]]

Excellent i love looking at these helmets. Any chance you can post more pics of the side to show the painted traps and tears etc..

 

Sorry i dont want to get too off topic but are stickers cool for anh elite aswell as hand painting? So should hand painting and stickers be ok for esb elite also?

 

Back to this lid, great stuff

[Smitty]

ANH helmets were a mixture of decals and hand painting thus both methods are acceptable for elite status however in ESB the traps were all decals based upon the info we have so far thus handpainting is no good for ESB elite status. Give me a few minutes to take some pics and upload them to the server.

[Daetrin[Admin]]

What happens tomorrow?

 

Sorry, my way of saying "this could change". A few years ago everyone had plastic or perhaps leather belts. Now we know they're canvas and that's what people are moving too. Until last week the common knowledge was that the ESB traps/tears were much bluer than ANH, now it seems they were the same are very close.

 

See Smitty's post above re: "info we have so far"

[SuperTrooper]

ANH helmets were a mixture of decals and hand painting thus both methods are acceptable for elite status however in ESB the traps were all decals based upon the info we have so far thus handpainting is no good for ESB elite status. Give me a few minutes to take some pics and upload them to the server.

 

Actually all ANH helmets were hand painted. We allow stickers for elite as an acceptable alternative to hand painting. The elite standards aren't 100% movie accurate, but are simply a raised bar over the 501st requirements.

[firebladejedi[TK]]

All apart from this one, it would seem....

 

not all helmets were painted

[Smitty]

Here's the pics of the handpainted traps. Sorry it took so long but right after my last reply I seemed to have lost internet access.

 

[Amish Trooper]

Too bad about the new color discovery. I mean it's great that we now have more accurate info but I really like the ESB slate blue

[Smitty]

Woohoo! just scored some Runriottt lenses for this project!

[trooperstormy]

Woohoo! just scored some Runriottt lenses for this project!

 

Love those lenses.

[Guest T*E]

Love those lenses.

 

I never added gobs of epoxy to ANY helmet to prevent recasting. Thats a gino thing. It makes it inaccurate and I would never do that.

 

T*E

[firebladejedi[TK]]

Here's the pics of the handpainted traps. Sorry it took so long but right after my last reply I seemed to have lost internet access.

 

 

 

Hey thanks for posting these, regardless of accuracy i think i prefer hand painted 'decals' over stickers any day of the week. There is something satifactory about painting them for yourself and i like the way they look.

 

Anyhoo i guess we had better get used to a run of accurate decals..

[Daetrin[Admin]]

Actually all ANH helmets were hand painted. We allow stickers for elite as an acceptable alternative to hand painting. The elite standards aren't 100% movie accurate, but are simply a raised bar over the 501st requirements.

 

And you know, for this reason maybe we should allow hand painted tears/traps on ESB? Again, the point of the Elite standards was not to achieve screen accuracy, the primary goal was to at least get some consistency and quality to the TK costume until the Legion catches up.

[Smitty]

I never added gobs of epoxy to ANY helmet to prevent recasting. Thats a gino thing. It makes it inaccurate and I would never do that.

 

T*E

 

I talked to Gino and he doesnt recognize the helmet and says that the epoxy inside was not his doing either. Interesting. Well I'm all out of ideas of who could have put the epoxy inside.

[Guest T*E]

What? So this thing has your signature on it and some of Gino's handiwork on it as well? Holy crap. That's frikken awesome. I just made the assumption, my bad...but that's so frikken cool.

Thats not what I am saying. gino only recently started to brush epoxy into the helmets he made. I woul not venture a guess as to why there is epoxy in there in the first place. All I am saying is that I did not do that to the helmet you have.

 

T*E

[troopermaster]

I think you mis-read Matt. He meant Gino puts resin/epoxy inside the helmets Gino makes, not your in actual helmet.

 

The epoxy was probably there to hold cooling fans or padding, but was put in badly by the previous owner.

[Smitty]

I think you mis-read Matt. He meant Gino puts resin/epoxy inside the helmets Gino makes, not your in actual helmet.

 

The epoxy was probably there to hold cooling fans or padding, but was put in badly by the previous owner.

 

No the epoxy is clearly an anti-recast measure. What's got me boggled is who would have done that. Other than Gino or TE I cant think of anyone who would worry about it being recast. Its just not something and end user would worry about.

 

I was hoping that it might have been a bucket that maybe the two had worked together.

[troopermaster]

Hmmm that is strange. Only the maker of the helmet should have to worry about recasters.

 

It's hard to tell from pictures, but it does look as though something has been placed on the tear ducts rather sloppily and been removed. Anyway, looks better now with the new lining

[Smitty]

You'd have to see it in person. If the epoxy was used to glue something inside the helmet, it would have left an indention in the epoxy, but theres no indentions. It makes no sense to me either anymore.