Minor update: Plates!!
So while I was watching paint dry
I figured I'd work on tracing out the parts of my Beskar'gam that I have templates for (torso and back plates)...
So I took all of my posterboard templates and taped them down to the 4" PVC drain pipe and traced them with an Ultra fine-line Sharpie:
Once I was happy with the tracing I pulled the templates off and chopped all the pieces out with my jigsaw:
*Repost from my Buy'ce thread*
Cutting & flattening:
- Once I cut the basic shape out with my jigsaw I used my heatgun to start flattening the visor, here is the basic procedure I used:
First a few tips/hints:
-- Heat on a smooth concrete floor or a piece of clean sheetrock (sheet rock is smoother and won't transfer any imperfections that may be present otherwise
)
-- Use gloves! Decent weight leather work gloves or "Ove-gloves" work great!
These are the gloves that I use:
-- Take your time! Don't rush it, if you try bending a piece that is not evently or thoroughly heated you will end up with cracking
-- Keep it moving! I'm sure everybody has heard this over and over, but it's true... Don't leave the heat gun in one spot for too long or it will burn/boil!
Now how I did it:
-- Start at the middle from the outside, heat from the centerline out, slowly pulling the PVC into shape as I was heating
-- Once I had the piece fairly flat I heated the entire piece until it went limp
-- Sandwiched the soft PVC between 2 pieces of
clean sheetrock (this is where I found out that any imperfections will be pressed into the soft PVC!
)
-- Stand/sit/kneel or put any decent amount of weight on the sheetrock directly over the pieces as they cool for about 30 seconds to a minute
-- Looked at the piece to see if it need to be reheated and flattened anywhere, and repeated the previous 3 steps until the piece was perfectly flat
this is what I came up with
:
I'm sure alot of you are asking "So why flatten them if you're just gonna end up shaping them anyways?"...
Well, symmetry!, I can place the pieces back to back now and trim them together to get all of the pieces perfectly symmetrical (I know Boba/Jango weren't "perfectly symmetrical... but, then again, I am not them!
)
So off to the next steps:
- Trimming/cleaning the pieces
- Welding the backplates together
- Shaping all of the pieces