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[Kebiin Ke'Varek]

Hello everyone! Kebiin here from Veshok in MS.  My husband Raestin posted this helmet in his WIP thread, but he's decided to let me have it since it's scaled a little too small for his big head.    He's gonna start a scratch build this next week.  We're still making some good progress on it, so I'll post some updates soon!  If you have any questions, criticisms or suggestions, please let me know!

Here's the J2P helmet, fresh out of the package, with the crappy visor removed.  I just pulled it out pretty easily by hand.  It left a bunch of raised tabs, but I'll dremel those out shortly.




Here you can see the backside, after I've dremeled off the visor tabs.



So, next up was to cut out the keyslot in the back. You can see that I also sanded down some of the molding bumps on the back.






The next part was a PITA, but it was necessary in my opinion.  I didn't like the curved cheeks, and from what I can tell, they're pretty frowned upon here on the boards.  Option 1 was to try and straighten them using something glued to the back, like a support layer.  I've seen it done here and it turned out pretty good.  Probably stronger since you don't have to cut anything, but I ultimately wanted something perfectly straight.  So I went with option 2, cutting them out and replacing them with flat material.




Now to glue the two pieces together.  If you look closely, you can see that I used my dremel to rough up both sides of the inside (BEFORE gluing the two halves together) in preparation for some material that will be epoxied on the seam to help give it more support.  Please be sure and rough up the plastic BEFORE using the epoxy (I may or may not have forgotten that step and had to start over....)  I used the Loctite Plastic 2-Part epoxy for all of this. I also used some clamps and painters tape to secure it all until the epoxy set up.






Here's the bucket, minus the clamps and tape.  Looking good so far!!  You can see the tote I plan on using for the cheeks.






 I used the white lid and traced out template, then used the template to cut out the cheeks from the tote lid.  I actually over lapped the cheeks on the backside, rather than trying to fit it exactly into the cut out area.  Either way works, but doing it this way was a bit more forgiving.




It looks SOOOOO much better with the straight cheeks.





To help flare the helmet out a bit, I used a 9" sewing hoop.  I gorilla glued the halves together, marked it for the keyslot and waited for it to dry.  Once it dried, I cut it out and dremeled everything nice and smooth.  I then epoxied it to the back of the inside of the bucket.  It fit like a glove and really flared it out perfectly.



Once the back was flared out, it unfortunately skewed the front where the visor goes.  So I cut a small strip from the plastic lid I used on the cheeks and made a brace to keep it all straight.  The cheeks are now back to parallel.




That's it for now!! I'll be posting some more updates soon.  Stay tuned!

[Kebiin Ke'Varek]

Just a few update pics.  Smoothing out the RF with some apoxie sculpt. It'll be ready to sand this evening.






Next step is adding the ear caps and smoothing them in.  Then covering up the seam in the bucket.  Hopefully it'll be ready for paint this next week. 

[Raestin Ke'Varek]

Made a lot of progress tonight!

Got the bucket sanded and the visor installed.





Installed the rangefinder. Wish I could have waited until the bucket was painted, but since it's a J2P, you have to put the RF on, then the ear cap, then it's permanent...




Also installed the other ear cap.  We're using E3600 to attach everything.  Takes way longer to set, but it seems to adhere better to this plastic better than almost anything. (Seriously, we tried everything....).



Clamps...lots of clamps!



That's it for tonight.  Tomorrow, we'll get the seam covered with apoxie sculpt, then it should be ready for paint!!!

[Jorad Werde]

Wow, that's great!

[Bowfanny]

Wanna know a secret about that range finder? Ah I'll tell you anyway.... There's a little screw on the part that goes into the helmet itself that you can unscrew and pop the tab off in order to paint the helmet and everything. I made the discovery las week. So you can take the rangefinder back off if needed. and your mod is looking great!

[Raestin Ke'Varek]

That's very true... Unless you remove the little nubs that you snap the ear caps onto... Yep, that's why I had to permanently attach the ear caps.   

It's all good though. I think it'll look better to have to caps smoothed in permanently.

[Kebiin Ke'Varek]

More progress on the bucket tonight!!

Here's the helmet after applying the apoxie sculpt, filling in the seam on top, smoothing in the ear caps, and smoothing in the cheeks.






Everything will be fully cured by tomorrow night, so we'll hopefully get everything sanded!!  I'll keep you guys updated!

[Jorad Werde]

Looks great, make sure to feather the edges!

[Kebiin Ke'Varek]

Lol. Definitely! 

[Vhett Naast]

Nice work!  buying a resin helmet is always a good option, but taking a Rubies helmet (or a Hasbro Boba Fett helmet) and modding the living daylights out of it into something that looks credible really gives a sense of accomplishment.  Not to mention the build threads are just fun to watch    

Enjoy your build!

[Bowfanny]

I agree with Vhett Naast! Creating your own balance is always a good thing!

[Kebiin Ke'Varek]

Updates!!  We got the helmet sanded down and all the edges feathered.  Gonna hit it with some primer this weekend and finish touching up the spots.  It's getting so close now!!!

[Bowfanny]

Looking very nice! It's smooth and that sanding is going to allow the paint to stick very nicely!

[Vhett Naast]

Looks great! definitely hit it with some primer to see if there is any small imperfections that need fixing before you move on to the full paintjob.

[Kebiin Ke'Varek]

A few updates! 

After several coats of primer and some wetsanding, it turned out pretty smooth.


Nice and shiny silver undercoat!  Once it's good and dry, we'll start taping it and working on the other colors!

[Vhett Naast]

Nice work! turned out very smooth, that is not easy to pull off!

[Kebiin Ke'Varek]

We made some serious progress this weekend on the helmet!! I'm super excited.  We had a bit of a hiccup with the masking tape trying to peel off some of our paint.  So rather than use **ANY** masking tape, we used toothpaste to mask off huge sections of the helmet.  It was messy, but omg, it worked SO much better!!  I still have a lot of "design" work to do on it, but all of the colors are pretty much done.  We're gonna hit it with some scratches and dull it down a bit with a black wash this weekend.  Hopefully I'll be posting a completed bucket soon!!!!

Here you can see a few of the layer coats going on.






And here is the final color scheme.  Dark blue on the upper cheeks, dome and back.  Light blue on the lower cheeks and earcaps.  Coral on the t-visor section.  We still have to paint the RF and add some more "top secret" bits to it.  But you get the idea. 






It's definitely come a looooong way from when we first opened the packaging.  It's been a huge learning process for Raestin and I, but we've enjoyed the process so far.  Feels good to be close to finishing a major part of my kit!! 

I'll post some more pics this weekend! 

[Jorad Werde]

That paint job looks great, a bit of black or brown wash on there will really make it all pop

[Vhett Naast]

Nice work! layered weathering looks good.

[Raestin Ke'Varek]

Well, other than a bit of scuffing and some blackwashing, Kebiin's bucket is done!!  We still need to pad the inside, and I want to add some fans, but other than that it's finally finished!!! I couldn't be happier with the way it turned out. It was a huge learning process, and sometimes very frustrating...but it was worth it!  The lightning was her idea, and I must say, I love how it turned out. She says it's exactly like she imagined it to be.  Let us know what you think! 

[Jorad Werde]

That looks really interesting, it's great that it turned out exactly how she wanted.

[Vhett Naast]

Looks fantastic, glad it turned out exactly how she wanted, always good when a project ends that way!!

[Bowfanny]

Me likey! Nice job guys!!

[Raestin Ke'Varek]

We finished the backwash, so now it's officially done!!  I think it really brought the helmet to life.  Now we need to finish mine!!!!   

[Tal Kote]

That's one bad sheebs bucket vod. Good work vod!