Addertime

The Testors paint worked really well. It was very smooth and luxurious looking compared to the thinner Humbrol and Revell paints I have which is kind of funny because back in my younger days when I built models often, I pretty much wrote off Testors as "consumer grade". I need to post more pics. The helmet has come a long way.

Have fun with your build! It is an exciting and sometimes frustrating adventure but it's all worth it.

This looks great. I'm at this point also and it's great to see what others have done. Stellar work!

So, it looks like you went another way with your tube stripes. They look great! Care to share how you finally painted them?

The helmet... it's been a lot of work... at least 10 hours so far... but you know, it's been an awesome roller coaster and I like where it's going! So, onto the painting! I laid down the black for the outlines first. I masked the straight lines and did the curves freehand for the most part. After curing overnight, I touched up a few spots by lightly scratching off the paint with a blade. The next step was to mask the black outline and paint the gray interior with my vintage 40 year old Testors 1138. I'll go back and touch up the corners with black when the gray dries.

I happened upon an interesting score a few days ago. I was looking through one of our craft drawers and came across a several bottles of old model paint, most notably a bottle of Testors 1138 Gray. My wife claimed ownership and said it was hers from one of her first model kits as a child from around 1980. So here it is, a half bottle of vintage paint in the right color for my ANH TK. I wondered if it had maybe gone off so I stirred it really well and gave it a test paint: It covered well, applied smoothly and dried to the touch in only a few minutes. I remembered how good model paints used to be. In the old days, we didn't care about being green, we used paint (and glue) that was flammable, filled with fumes and toxic as all get out... and they worked great! I miss my old Pactra paints and the orange tube Testor's model glue. Those were the days... But I digress... I doubt I have enough of this vintage paint to cover all the areas of my TK helmet but I plan to use some just to tie it to the past.

Looking good! The end caps seem a bit deep, particularly the right one, but it could be the angle of the photo. Anyway, keep building!

Helmet cont. (sigh) Ok, I dismantled it all back to it's component parts. Then I repositioned the faceplate, drilled new holes and re-riveted the helmet back together. I went right to work on the ears and cut them down a lot, as much as an 1/8" in parts. About 3 1/2 hours later, it looked like this: I'm much happier with it now though it's still not perfect. I looked at tons of screenshots and the screen used helmets are all over the map... some are good and some are crazy bad but two things were clear... 1. no two helmets were the same and 2. they pretty consistently have a 1/4" to 3/8" of white showing above the eyes. I tend to like the low brow because I think it looks more menacing and that seems to be a popular contemporary way of styling the brow. I had done it myself. But I failed to notice that the real ones weren't like that and I decided to raise the forehead a bit. That helped my ears fit better and I didn't even have to redrill the top holes. All in all, it came out ok and I'm calling it "art" for now. Onto the painting!

Congrats on BBB day! Take it slow and have fun with the build!

Congrats on BBB day! Exciting and terrifying... the adventure begins! Read other build threads, look at reference photos, and research before you start cutting. Start with the easy parts and learn your lessons. Build the helmet later in the build as it's the part everyone will look at first and you want to know what you're doing before you tackle it. Take deep breaths and walk away when you get frustrated. Have fun with the build!

Thanks Paul. I'll reposition the faceplate a bit and have another go.

Congrats on the big day!

Helmet cont. Tonight was right ear night (again). 3 hours of fit and dremel and I'm not happy with it (again). I hate the gap and the thickness of the ear. I think I will rework both sides. I want them to be leaner and sit closer to the helm. Thoughts? Suggestions?

Yep. That's exactly it. The taped-flexed joints are as good or better than the one I clamped AND both sides are glued at once which greatly reduces drying time. Now, I didn't use a strip on the inside like some people do. This technique would'nt serve for that method.

The hand guards look great as do the shins!

I figured you were looking for people with whom to generously share them after you bought them.

Are you going to bid on them?

Ok, so I didn't get around to finishing the helmet tonight. Tomorrow for sure.

Now you need a good 3d modeling program. Blender is the most popular but I prefer AutoCad.

Helmet And now I'm gonna change gears. Of course I was dying to put the helmet together since day one but knew I needed some experience under my belt before I embarked on building the most iconic bit of the kit. I posted the initial images a few day ago... I was pretty happy with the initial assembly. Here's how it went down: The face plate came pretty well trimmed from TrooperMaster. I did a test clamp and it fit together well. I wrote to Paul and asked if I should trim the forehead or not and he said he usually leaves it like this but I could trim it if I wanted. I decided to leave it. So I took it down to the shop cut the eyes and teeth out, and painted a first coat on the vocoder, just because I just wanted it to look more finished and then after another five (or twenty) test fits... trimmed the skull plate and popped the rivets into it. I was ecstatic and let it sit overnight and went back the next day to work on the ears. I studied everything I could find on creating the ears and felt confident about it. I marked the left ear and became cutting and test fitting. And after three grueling hours of cutting and fitting, I had a piece of roughly ear-shaped scrap plastic... yes... scrap plastic... now I see why there were two sets included with the kit. Day three of the helmet build and I opted to work the right ear. The right side of the helmet fit together tighter and I felt I'd have a better chance with it. I reviewed all the tutorials I could find and went in again. Using the hard-learned lessons from the first ear debacle, I got it right mostly this time. And this time it only took two and a half hours. Could the ears be a little leaner? Yeah.... and they will be... baby steps. I'm still concerned about the redoing the left ear but I think it'll be ok. That's my project for tomorrow evening. Thanks for visiting. See you soon with more progress and probably hard lessons! I know a lot of kits come with the helmet assembled and I considered that but I wanted to build it all. I'm a maker, and in the end, the satisfaction of having completed it and having overcome the difficulties, will make it all the more special for me. Or I'll have a bunch of scrap ABS. Either or.

Bicep and Forearms cont. Ok, so I've actually advanced quite a ways but I'm lagging on my updates here. Here is the second forearm/vambrace... I tried adding the coverstrip to one side. let it dry and then added the second half of the vambrace and I wasn't pleased with the results so I'm gonna stick to the way I was doing it before. I butt the halves together and tape the joint on inside. Then I apply E6000 to the length of the joint, on the other side, and apply the cover strip, taping it down as I go starting from one end to the other. To make the joints tight, as I think I explained before, I flex the joint and then pull the wings of the tape into place. The tape sticks very well to the ABS and the elasticity of the plastic acts as the clamp. And here is forearm two, all taped up. As you can see the flex makes the joint very tight. So, yeah, blue tape. Love the stuff... almost as much as gaffer's tape. I've largely eliminated the magnets from my clamping inventory. I feel they may have their uses but for the cover strips, the tape method works very best for me. You'll see later that the shins worked out perfectly with the tape method also.

Hi Christine! I've been following your build with interest. Congrats on the approvals. I hope I can join you there.... it might be a while though,

Two. Which is too many. I work on one of them evet day and yet never seem to make much progress. I know that one day, I'll suddenly realize I'm finished and then have to start a new project.

I decided that today would be helmet day. I've been terrified of helmet day. I knew it would come and I decided I could no longer avoid it. It was an arduous four hour journey, both physically and emotionally, to go from here: to here: I started the ears but decided it was enough for one evening. I cracked a beer, sat back in my chair across from the workbench and thought, "Wow... there's a stormtrooper helmet on my workbench." Cool stuff.