JS1

I only cut out four tooth at each side and painted the 5th black. For centurion, do you think that is acceptable?

Painting the details, one need 2-3 layers of paint to have a good coverage. Some WIP photos

Using a pencil, I first outlined the area of the detail to paint onto the helmet.

For a ANH helmet, all details were hand painted, ie. the trap detailing, tube stripes, frown and vicoder. ESB movie helmets were finished with decals for the traps and tube stripes with painted frown and vicoder. This helmet will be finished as an ANH version, so no decals will be used. However, in order to have an accurate template, I printed all the decals on a sheet of A4 paper, cut them out so they can be placed onto the helmet. paper decal put on the helmet to allow to mark the shape with pencil.

Humbroll paint needed, numbers 85, 14 and 23. One also needs gloss white for painting the visible screws.

Drill two homes for the Hovi-Mix mic tip greeblies. The mesh front inserts will be installed after painting these black.

Eyes were cut out with a knife.

The foam liner was cut and installed in the helmet.

The black S-trim can or cannot overlap the bottom edge of the ears a little. Screen-used helmets exist where the bottom of the ear is within the S-trim and where it is above it, so either is fine. When installing the S-trim, ensure it is a bit longer (approx 2.5cm) than the circumference of the opening to allow compression force to help keep it in place. In this case I have not trimmed the underside of the neck opening. If one do so, do the trimming after the ears were installed.

Dry fit of one of the ears. Not many plastic was cut beforehand. Fitting the ear shows were more plastic should be removed. Do this slowly and patiently, step by step, cutting small amount at a time, fitting again, cutting, fitting, etc... Don't cut to much !!!

Two holes were drilled in each ear. The location of the hole was already marked onto the plastic. ANH stunt helmets will have three screws, hero helmets just two. This will become a stunt ...

The left and right ear are already partly cut by removing the excess ABS around the ears. The next step is cutting them so they match the curved helmet surface. In my opinion, the most tricky part of the build. I would leave way more ABS material than you think you'll need when making your first cuts. When installed on the helmet, ear gaps are authentic and seen on all screen used helmets, but one should not overdo this.

It now already looks like a helmet

Use of an additional screw at each side to fix the two plates together. As long as both screws (or rivets) are under the ears, one can do whatever one wants.

Remove some excess plastic under the ears. I fitted the ear temporarily and marked with a pencil some plastic which can be removed.

Allign the faceplace and the back as seen on this photo, mark one hole on the backplate at one side only and install the screw. Ensure the other side in aligned, drill a second hole in the blackplate and again install the screw. Fitting the helmet to the face (with the brow trim in place) is is important to give a balanced look. There should not be a gap in the brow line between the face and cap and the cap should be centered onto the face. When all is fine, you can replace the screws with a rivet, but ensure using a backing washer on the inside as the rivets will rip right through the ABS plastic.

Instead of rivets, I 'm going to use some screws to attach the faceplate to the backplate. These can be later replace using rivets or not ...

Black leather brown trim installed. Then drill two holes in the front faceplate

At each side of the front face plate, some plastic needs to be cut away to install the black rubber ’S’ brow trim. Here the 'before' photo, then the 'after' photo. The brow line ,needs to be trimmed as well to make it more or less horizontal. Trim little bits at a time until it fits nicely.

This is really an awesome piece to build, directly casted from an original ANH helmet and showing all the original wrinkles and bubbles and inaccuracies of the original prop. The helmet is also build in exactly the same way as the prop making it's assembly a real journey back to 1977 ! The only real difference is the material used. ANH screen used helmets were made from HDPE painted white. Armour was made from ABS. In this thread I will just post how I assembled the helmet. It is a first time build, so probably there are so many other and better ways to build a helmet. Some of the tools I used :

The helmet .. just a few pieces.

When everything arrived is was rather overwhelming.. the box with armour and strapping kit

Hi all, I like to start a new build thread for my ANH stunt stormtrooper. Hope to have a Centurion level armour quality set at the end of the build .. no clue yet how I will be able to achieve this though. So much to learn ! The set I bought came from RS Prop Master when they had their 40 years celebration kits for sale for an attractive price. I have the helmet and armour + strapping kit and ordered also the blaster, holster, 2 piece suit, shoes and neck seal. These are not yet delivered. I already have build the helmet and will start this build thread with the helmet first. Looking forward to all your comments so I can submit the costume for 501 approval ! Thanks Johan