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[sombraptor]

Shaping up even better than your original kit, which I have no idea how! That segmented backplate just adds some extra something to it!

[Celtkhan]

Helmets are a lot easier than they appear at first glance. They can be time-consuming, but as long as you make your measurements exact and don’t rush, you will get a good result at the end. The Bearded Mando has a build log in the helmets forum as well as a channel on youtube. I logged my build progress in a thread in the helmet forum as well, and I have absolutely zero costuming experience before tackling it. So even a complete newbie can do it.

[trashcanmando]

Helmets are a lot easier than they appear at first glance. They can be time-consuming, but as long as you make your measurements exact and don’t rush, you will get a good result at the end. The Bearded Mando has a build log in the helmets forum as well as a channel on youtube. I logged my build progress in a thread in the helmet forum as well, and I have absolutely zero costuming experience before tackling it. So even a complete newbie can do it.

I'm no pro, but I've already got one kit completed. The problem with this one is it's a zabrak, so I have a row of horns, and won't be able to just put the helmet on normally. I'm thinking of a two part design where the faceplate attaches by magnets and comes off. I don't know if I should scratch build, cut apart a cast helmet, or what exactly. I should probably go dive through twi'lek builds, I know a few of them have two part helmets.

[Celtkhan]

The question would be how prominent your horns will be. Something like Maul’s horns might fit, barely, inside a typical helmet, but would be impractical for repeated donning/removal. I’m not sure a removable faceplate would be sufficient; you might need to split it in half. That seems to be the way the Twi’leks do it, with a backplate for under the lekku and a front piece that includes the visor, mandibles, cheeks, dome, and possibly the earcaps.

Crazy idea: have you looked at the helmets from the old Mighty Morphin Power Rangers TV show? They split in half at about the ears, hinged at the top, and had small clasps near the neck. You could mask the seam with the earcaps and some sort of blast plate or forehead crest.

[trashcanmando]

These are really good ideas and got me thinking, thank you! (And thank you to everybody following and supporting this build! I really appreciate all the kind words!)

I looked into the morphin' power rangers, it gave me a few ideas. I glued the horns on, and just tried some things out. It turns out I can, just barely, get my current helmet on with the horns if I take out a bunch of padding, so a normal sized helmet that allows the face plate to remove should work great! So I drew up some ideas.

Here's the horns for reference, so everybody can see the placement and the size:





As a side note, the only thing I'll be doing to my hair is dying it black. Zabraks can have hair, purple or black, and I know a bald cap would never look good. A majority of the pictures of zabraks on the wookiepedia page actually do have hair!

On to the helmet. Right now I'm thinking traditional mandible style, no rangefinder, because I don't want the weight of it throwing this thing off. It's going to be complicated enough without asymmetrical weight.



I marked out approximately where the horns sit. The plan is to have the bulk of the helmet padded very closely to my head, probably with something like upholstery foam. The goal is to have it padded well enough that it doesn't move at all (with cut outs of the foam for my ears of course). The faceplate should also have pretty precise padding to keep the horns protected.



Here's another view of where I'm thinking the faceplate should split from the rest of the helmet. I toyed around with a split that just goes straight across the dome, but I decided I want the dome to extend farther down my head for security, and I just think it looks better to have the faceplate split at a 45 angle instead of 90.



Then I marked out what I'm thinking on my current helmet. Blue is main helmet, red is faceplate, purple is overlap, and the green is magnets. I thought about trying to recess the magnets into the edge of the cut instead of overlapping, but I tend to be a very active trooper, and the half inch or so gives me just that much more room for the horns. I'm also considering a couple pull down toggle latches (no idea what the name is but that's what google gave me) because I'm not sure I want to trust this entirely to magnets.

As far as practically making the helmet goes, I'm considering a resin cast to use as the bulk of the helmet, cutting out the area I need, and scratch building the faceplate out of primarily 6mm sintra.

[trashcanmando]

Did a whole lot of gauntlet work! Here's the process:



Fill, sand, filler prime, sand, repeat... But finally on to the fun part.







The whole thing was very seat of my pants, but that's just how I operate  I had to repaint the gauntlets when the color came out different from my other plates, dropped one and had to repair it, used too much hairspray to stick the salt on and had to scrape off a bunch of salt with a knife, discovered the holes were too small for a bike spoke and ended up using a paperclip instead... But it turned out!







At our latest armor party, my ruus gave me some used up 3D print heads for darts and fiberglassed the joints in the back for me! Had to strip four of the heads so they'd fit in the smallest holes, but I'm totally in love with them.



These are going to have red lights as soon as I figure out how to do that  If anyone has references or guides on how to wire LED lights, I would love to see.

All that's left on gauntlets is to finish the closing clip, and add lights and foam padding inside!

I also started the kama! The only thing I don't at least have started on this kit now is the helmet, everything else is in some stage of progress!







This is four layers of material- outer canvas, two filling layers of duck cloth, and an inner liner. I think I'm going to rip off the sand edge tape and replace it with ribbon, I don't like how it bunched and think I can get it much neater as soon as I find the right color ribbon. Maybe needs an extra snap and weathering, but it's very nearly done! Probably the fastest sewing project I've ever cranked out, what you see here took me about 5 hours 



I love the lining, even though it doesn't show in straight standing pictures <3

[Aster Veris]

Looking good 

[trashcanmando]

Update time! There's a costume contest on Saturday I want to enter with this kit so I'm crunching hard to get it cohesively wearable. I've redone the trim on the kama, picked the shoulder bells off the flak vest, and done a lot of clean up on the thigh bags. I'll post all of that up later, right now I just want to post up the attachment system for my knees. I'm really proud of it!

So the way I did my knees last time was with a snap in the center of the plate and the center of my kneecap, and a strap of elastic running from one end of the plate around the back of my knee and velcroing to the other side of the plate. The knee plates have always been the most annoying part of that kit, constantly falling down, snaps unsnapping, velcro coming loose. Last troop I had to staple the elastic to the plate. So it was definitely time to completely reassess attachment.

Problems identified with the snap and elastic on the plate:
-Plate is only attached to the flight suit at one point. If that point fails, the whole plate falls down.
-Visible elastic, while allowed, is something I wanted to do away with if I could, but is necessary to hold the plate flush to the knee.
-Ideally the plate should be attached at the sides, but still need help staying straight on the knee. I wanted to be able to easily pivot it upwards, more on my thigh, to be able to kneel. So it can't just snap to the center of my knee cap.

Solution I came up with:
-Place the plate itself just about an inch higher than you would think. When kneeling, if the flight suit is tailored well enough, this pulls the material of the legs up and puts the knee plate on the thigh. But when standing, gravity pulls the plate right at the knee. I can also adjust my knee plates if they're sitting uncomfortably by raising my arms instead of awkwardly picking at my knee! One piece flight suits do have their advantages 
-Magnet on either side of the plate, matching magnet inside the flight suit. This would also work with snaps.
-Elastic that runs behind the knee on the inside of the flight suit, attached to the same point as the flight suit's magnet, effectively making one circle complete circle around the knee with the plate, but not visible.
-Short loop of cord epoxied to the top center half of the plate. Clip of some kind sewn to the flight suit. This holds the plate up, but gives enough flex that the plate isn't just locked straight to the flight suit.

This gives the plate three points of attachment, all of which can flex. If the magnets are pulled off in kneeling or jumping, the loop and clip holds the plate and allows me to quickly position it back to the magnets.

Loop and clip:



Internal magnets and elastic:



Knee plate positioning (ignore the one on the left sagging a bit, I've since adjusted it but not had the opportunity to get pics taken)

[Tramp Graphics]

If you want to be able to kneel properly, you want the knee plates to align with your shins, not your thighs, so that you’re kneeling on the full face of the knee plates, not on the bottom edges of them.

[trashcanmando]

Is that what everybody's doing? The idea of putting most of my weight on a plate scares me  Are there any advantages to placing it so you can kneel on it vs making it so it raises out of the way like I've done?







Straight standing, slight bend, and full crouch. I'd much rather do this than be potentially damaging a plate every time I kneel, and I tend to be really active in kit.

I also did a loop and clip for my cod plate so it won't get knocked off!  I don't want to have to worry about losing plates, I think I'm going to do this to the shoulder plates too. The magnets hold everything else well and have been extensively jump-tested  (Me hopping around wearing my kit) 

(modified to avoid double post)

Side angles of at what point the knee detaches from the magnet and is held solely by the clip:







Kind of hard to do this and get good shots at the same time  But the plate doesn't rely entirely on the clip until the magnets get slid off at about 45 degrees (I expect the angle to be even smaller once I have everything properly sewn in instead of having safety pins in the way) You can see that fully kneeling, my thigh get compressed enough that the plate doesn't fit.

[Tramp Graphics]

The point of the knee plate, as with knee pads, is to protect the knee from having things dig into your knee, particularly when kneeling. Knee pads provide extra cushion from the ground, knee plates add armor protection on top of that. When kneeling, you want to rest your knee on the face of the knee plate, not directly on hard or rough ground, rocks, etc. that could dig into your knee. It’s not there to protect above the knee. It’s there to protect the knee where it rests on the ground. Having the plate move with the thigh defeats the purpose of it. It needs to stay aligned with the lower leg.

[trashcanmando]

That would be true if I was building this kit to fight in.  Although my goal is to build it as immersive as I can, this is a costume that I'll be interacting with small kids at troops in, and that's a lot of kneeling. I'm way more worried about breaking a plate than hurting my knee. Moving the plate to lie flush with my shin while kneeling would make it look way too low while standing.

I appreciate the input, but I believe the way I have this set up achieves the goal well! Combat practicality is nice but I know the limits of the materials.

[Tramp Graphics]

That’s why knee plates need to be durable. Even if the plate isn’t real armor, it still needs to look functional, and that includes it’s placement. It also still provides a certain amount of protection from debris on the ground you’ll be kneeling on. My first kit (made from cardboard) moved with my thigh. I found it nearly impossible to kneel. It was very uncomfortable and the bottom edge of the knee plate got in the way. By having the knee plate in the proper position, moving with the shin, thus resting on the face of the knee plate when kneeling, it is far more comfortable and easier to kneel. It’s a matter of functionality and comfort.

If you look at my knee plates in the pictures below, they’re attached to a set of industrial knee pads.







The straps wrap around just below the knee, allowing the knee plates to move with my shin. I can kneel very comfortably on these knees. I wouldn’t be able to kneel at all in them if they moved with the thigh. It’s not comfortable and the bottom edge would get in the way.

So, if you’re planning on doing a lot of kneeling, then it is even more important to have the knee plates move with the shin, not the thigh.

[Atin Lea'ahya]

As Trashcanmando's Ruus and one of the many sets of eyes that will approve this kit we will make sure all plates are properly placed, up to club standards, and meet CRL's.  If not we will throw Trashcanmando in to the nearest sarlac pit where she will have to fight her way out and then go through the entire story line of BoBF or be slowly digested over the course of a thousand years.  I have no doubt that Trashcanando's kit will be completed to the highest quality as was her first kit, and will fit her needs as such.

[Tramp Graphics]

As Trashcanmando's Ruus and one of the many sets of eyes that will approve this kit we will make sure all plates are properly placed, up to club standards, and meet CRL's.  If not we will throw Trashcanmando in to the nearest sarlac pit where she will have to fight her way out and then go through the entire story line of BoBF or be slowly digested over the course of a thousand years.  I have no doubt that Trashcanando's kit will be completed to the highest quality as was her first kit, and will fit her needs as such.

Of that I have no doubt.  My only concern is her comfort and the functionality of the plates, not simply the CRLs.