sskunky

I don't think that's you Vern, it a couple of faceplates!

Vern has a few good points..... HIPS won't actually absorb moisture from the air. Only ABS will you need to heat if it's been sitting for more than a couple of days. If you are storing it in a heated house it's not so much of a problem. Heating the moulds a bit will help to a certain extent but if we are to get technical it's probably better to mention the rooms ambient temperature as that has a big play in your forming too. The main problem is when you apply the vacuum you also remove air from the room and move it about and this all affects the way plastic forms....To have a perfect forming room the air has to be controlled too. Forming is a lot more complicated than it looks when you start to get into it......as for blowing off the mould you will need a compressor and high pressure blasts will help.....or a vacuum table that has a blowback system built in...... To remove the plastic it's best to do it when the plastic is still warm.... Cold will tend to make the plastic brittle....depending again on how hot you got the plastic to start with..... It's good to experiment on what timing you heat the plastic for.... a second or two can and will make a difference. Another way is to have a mould that collapses... There are various ways to approach this... You can have a sliding mould where the pieces slide together and can be solid or you go for the plug method of silicone moulds that have a plug you pull from the inside and the outer mould then collapses and pulls out easily.... You can even reverse vacuum form by having a negative female mould and suck the plastic into rather than over....Mould making is an art form in itself......

I can tell you that he is a nice guy but with no morels when it comes to recasting other people's work. All he has ever done is recast other makers armour and helmets. Makerofthings translates to Makerofotherpeoesthings! Yes your armour is cast from an original set a few generations removed. He used to recast TE then CAP now it looks like RS. There are only two makers currently selling armour cast from original. That's myself of which is ROTJ and RS which is ANH. I'm the only one that currently sells "cast from original" ROTJ so no real confusion there. ANH is another story. There is loads of history on here but most ANH armour apart from TM, RS and a few other fan sculpts derive from ROTJ armour re engineered to look ANH and started out as TE then recast by CAP who gave permission for all to recast which gave way for a multitude of offshoots. It's complicated. So bottom line is that makerofthings sells recasts of other vendors armour and helmets.

What about the straps that connect the back plate to the butt plate?

If you can get the back llate a bit lower. I set the elastic straps to pull the back down a bit.

That's looking great mate!

Wow! Good work! I can't believe a bit of hot water did that to PVC! I think I'll stick with ABS it practically laser proof!

The problem we have is we are looking at 30 year old armour. Who knows what mods or repaired it's had over the years.

Haha.... I quite liked your edited out comment! I like being a novelty.

Looks amazing! Good luck.

I'm loving this. It's always exciting discovering new finds and details. Paul, I need to pick your brains on something. I'll pm you.

Are you sure it wasn't a tour suit? Interesting! Would love to see it.

Just lie the shins on the edge of a table and iron the edges flat. Should give you a little more to play with. When I made the moulds it was all new to me. As soon as I finish the house and workshop I'll redo a lot of the moulds to make this easier.

Good point Andy. Hadn't thought of that!

You can upload the pic to a photobucket/Flickr account and post a link to it.

The pdf link is not working....

Couldn't have done better myself. Looks like you're off to a great start.

Looking good. Just sent you an email!!

I know exactly where you are coming from. I just spent the last few years accumulating Alu, Steel and electronic 2-3-2 R2 parts! My wife gave up on me years ago.

To weather paint just use sandpaper. Start fine and if it's not giving the best results go coarser. Looking great mate, I've nicked a few photos for my info I send out. Hope you don't mind.

Looking good troopers! Unfortunately I have never kept tabs on all the armour I have sold! I reckon There are at least 45 out there maybe a few more....... Obviously not that many have actually registered.....

Yeah, That's more like it.

You know all these posts are useless without pics!

I was going to say the ears could do with trimming a lot thinner but as you'd already glued them I didn't want to upset you. If you haven't glued the brow trim on you could always trim it a bit.

Looking good. That didn't take long.