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[Hik'aari]

.....what is a jig??

It quite literally means "a device that holds a piece of work and guides the tool operating on it."

When working on cars some exhaust makers have "jigs" that they can build onto knowing that when it is transferred to the car it will be the correct shape.

[Laaran Kar'ta]

It quite literally means "a device that holds a piece of work and guides the tool operating on it."

When working on cars some exhaust makers have "jigs" that they can build onto knowing that when it is transferred to the car it will be the correct shape.

Awesome! Thanks lol.


AND: "... never has there been a more wretched hive of guesswork and bodgery..." <----quote of the year.

I am so excited to see the end result for you guys! Your build is turning out phenominally! Every page is, "Oh!" and "Oooh!" and "Oooh!!". I really hope we run into each other next year. I've already got my tickets for SWCC.

[Ihala]

Absolutely wonderful.  That's the best walkthrough for the WoF knees I have seen, they are rather a puzzle.
Your gauntlets are amazing!  You have shamed me into upgrading, sir! 
I look forward to seeing these kits completed.

[Syko Voss]

Thanks again folks.

On the 'jig' question - here it is...



Things I've learned:

• Bending Foamex(/Sintra) with one of these is really simple and it allows you to easily make the unique, tailored shapes for very little effort - trust me - it's a piece of prep work that you'll be thankful for spending a few minutes and some spare cardboard on
• Building one takes maybe 10 minutes with a sharp knife and hot glue - really it's that simple - it'll take you longer to wrangle the PVC trying to heat form it without one
• Cut the profile shapes and then stick right-angled bits of card on the inside as supports for the wrap around - but position them just inside the profile so that the wrap around is flush with your profile (on the helmets I wrapped the card around the helmet which meant my shape was too big by exactly the thickness of the card!)
• For strength - once you have the end profiles glued on, cut a couple more profiles, shave off the thickness of the card and hot glue them in as supports down the length of the jig - takes seconds, but it'll be worth it
• For shape - make sure that you're cutting the wrap around piece so that the 'grain' of the card goes along the length of the jig - and bend gently and repeatedly to as you shape it to the profiles so you avoid the card suddenly folding and giving you a hard angle
• The more care and precision you put into building a jig, the better the end results - it'll translate directly into the Foamex and allow you to get away with bodges and other crimes in different places
• Draw pencil lines and registration points on your jig to match up with things like centre line markings that you will have drawn onto your foam - it'll make it easier and faster to line up when you've gotten a handful of hot foam that needs shaping
• Oh, and in the above case - it's easy to check for fit - the offcut of card that I cut away when cutting around the profile as I made the jig - I was able to put my knee inside it to make sure that the jig and ultimately the knees were going to fit okay

Hope that helps folks - definitely my jig-making skillz are levelling up with every new piece (helmets, gaunts, now knees) - looking forward to working out a neat but simple way to make forms for the rest of the armour to make life simpler.

Have a great day!
Simes

[Malek Dair]

Simorph you sir are amazing! Love the walk through for those tricky knees. The WoF templates can be down right puzzling enough to drive you bonkers!

Also, on your gaunts...was that the bottom from a falcon grav. tank I spied?

[Raestin Ke'Varek]

You sir, are an extremely excellent source of high quality reference material!!   Great job on the knees, definitely up to par with the rest of your kit!   8)

[Syko Voss]

Well, time for another update, and since everyone's been finding how I've documented things so far, here's the final steps on the knees...

(And, yep - I know I'd scorched the Foamex before - I was running against the clock and cranked things up a little too high on that particular knee!)

After much filling and sanding (about 3 rounds I think) it was time to attach the blocks to the outsides of the knees.
As much as I glue, I always aim for some mechanical attachment - nothing more embarrassing than something dropping off because the glue gave out.  So in this case I used some old screws and countersunk them on the inside of the knees - dead easy to do with Foamex - I just too my cross-head screwdriver and turned it around on the foam to gouge out a small dent the size of the head, then screwed through into the side blocks.



Then I turned them over.  Using the WoF templates' as a guide, I drew the 'D' shapes onto the faces of the blocks, the drew lines from the key points where the 'D' met the slanted side faces of the blocks to where the corresponding points would be on the knee shapes...



Then it was out with the Mouse Sander, and then some wet and dry sandpaper (lots of water and a bit of liquid soap/detergent really helps speed things along) to sand down the side blocks and round all the edges off:



And a little more spots of filler and more sanding to finish off:



Then the issue of the knee darts.

Again, to ensure that things are mechanically attached, I chose to put a couple of ~1.5" screws into the blocks.



And then used the black end of a Letraset Promarker, and some more pieces from the inside of liquid soap dispensers (seriously, I must've reused these parts at least 15 times over our kits - perfect pieces of interesting-looking pipes!) to create the knee darts...



To attach the pipes, I decided to first put hot glue on and around the screws and let it set to bulk them out.  Then I got 2-part Araldite Epoxy gun and mixed up a thick gob of it and painted that around the end of the pipes.  But, before putting the pipes over the screws, I quickly globbed more hot glue onto the screws, pushed the pipes over, and then drizzled hot glue down the ends of the pipes.

No way that those things would come off - epoxy'ed at the base and almost solid with hot glue!

Then it was 3 coats of matte black:



And 2 coats of chrome 24 hours later to finish:



Tomorrow, I'll put 2 good coats of gloss lacquer over them, and then when that's cured, go over that with Rub 'n' Buff silver.

I've found that the gloss lacquer (although it's a great ultra-tough protector) dulls the chrome paint and so it loses a little bit of its metallic look.  So, Rub 'n' Buff sparingly polished over the top brings some of that back.

With knees done, the oddest single thing to build was a Mighty Mando Codpiece.

So, back to the WoF Templates again...



Shaping gently with heat gun....



(I'm used to building cardboard jigs as guides to bend around so this was a little trickier.  One dodge I did come up with to check that the curve was symmetrical was to stand the cod on end, trace the curve with a pencil, cut it out and flip it over - probably me being a bit OCD, but I want a perfectly symmetrically Mando groin!)

Then, I decided to cut out some space for, well, comfort...



And then glued the top edge of the flat centre piece to the waist...

Cutting identical wedges for both sides (which guarantees symmetry/front piece not slanting to one side or another), I worked around the centre piece heat forming small chunks of Foamex to fill the space...





And from the inside - plenty of room for secret weapons and things...



After LOTS of filler and sanding, I decided to add a bit of Swarzy assymetrical greebliness in the form of the back of a junction box from an old security light that looked like it had been destined to sit to the right of the waistband...

http://imgur.com/TuABIo6

Then matte black spray...



And chrome...



Finally - JIGS!

Since we've talked a bit about this in this thread...I made a start on the shoulder armour and wanted to create a nice symmetrical pair.

So - I first drew a rough curve on a piece of paper that I though would match the curve of my shoulder, cut that out and rested it on my shoulder.

Happy with that I took some measurements, went to the computer, fired up Illustrator and created a quick template (using an online calculator to do the math that would ensure that the length of the elliptical curve would be the same length of the WoF template's widest point)

I printed out my paper curve and cut out three card copies, cut out a clean rectangular piece of card (making sure the corners were nice and square) and then with hot glue and small bits of spare card assembled the innards of the jig...



Then it was simply a matter of cutting out a strip of card to the correct width, hotgluing one edge and then slowly bending it and gluing it into place.



To create the jig took maybe 15 minutes including working out the paper template - hot glue and cardboard are just so fast to work with.
There's no excuse when it's this quick and easy and guarantees such reliable clean curves. 

I made a point of drawing the centre line on the jig, an arrow to indicate one side of the jig.

And drew the centre lines onto both Foamex pieces - drawing arrows on the opposite sides of them...



I then got out the heat gun and quickly formed the two pieces...



The reason for the arrows?  Well, it guarantees that you get two shoulders that have matching curves - if there were any inaccuracies/discrepancies in the jig, I wanted them to be consistently on the back or the front of the pieces of armour - make a left shoulder and a right shoulder so to speak, than two shoulders for the same side.

In other news, work on the first flak jacket is going slowly (I'll post WIP on that once we've gotten it to a showable state - cutting and forming the shoulders means that we can make the shoulders of the flak jacket match the shoulder armour just like Jango's does in the movies)

And with regard to the ammo belts....

All 16 card pouches have now been assembled, and small magnets inset into the front of them (since we might as well make these functional pouches):



And I've just started the steady process of wrapping the card pouches with pleather...



1 down...15 to go...


Hope everyone's having a great run-up to the Force Awakens.  Thankfully we're aiming for kits for SWCE in July.
With the way that melee weapons are now 'in vogue' I'm planning to build a couple of vibro swords, inspired by the ones wielded by the Commando Droids in Clone Wars, but with a bit of 1313 thrown in to match the big baddass blaster that for now, is going to be staying safely at home.

Stay safe everyone, have a great weekend.
Simes

[Ram'or Kranak]

This is looking awesome!  Before I kept scrolling down, I thought that cod was going to be too boxy, but it came out nice.

[jett drexel]

an absolute masterclass.

[Malek Dair]

Spot on work! Love the tutorials. I learn so much from your stuff here! Thanks vod!

[Simmy_82]

This is just awesome. Some serious skills vod. Top drawer skills.

[spideyplumhead]

WOW ...such a nice job as always ... I had tried to make the knees in one part of 5mm foamex and had a side snap on me. Now i have seen how you have done yours i shall have another attempt at it ...so big thank you for showing us how you have been doing things
The joys of rocket/dart launchers from pump style bottles (aussie shampoo serum bottles have a really nice one)
Your belt boxes look interesting ...nice idea from the standard block idea ....shall be watching with interest 

[Syko Voss]

Unfortunately my aluminium pipe supplies are nil so I have to resort to card and glue.  The cod weighs precisely 301 grammes but I understand it can stop an imaginary blaster bolt from point blank range...
Thanks guys for all the nice comments, glad that my stuff is helping us all figure things out and make better kits!

[Syko Voss]

Hopefully not double-posting here - here's an update of late...

Accidentally dropped one of the knees - it broken off cleanly at the point where the kneepad meets the straight portion of the inside leg - an easy re-glue with Superglue but showed me how fragile these things are - the weight and the shape combined means that when they hit the ground, the part that's only 1 piece of Foamex thick takes all the stress and snaps.

So, I took some PVC guttering pipe, heated it with a heat gun, flattened it and cut some 1" strips that I then heat-formed to go fully around the inside of each knee.  These were then glued with Araldite 2-part epoxy and reinforced with 4 screws - 2 at each end, 2 just inside the knee cap.



Happily I can confirm that they work - dropped another knee from the workbench, it hit the floor and cracked at the same stress point, but held together, requiring only a spot of Superglue to close up the crack...  Glad I figured that out before I try to wear them in action.

Ammo belts making steady progress...

16 cardboard inners, now wrapped with black pleather - found that Evo Stik adhesive was best for this - smear it on, allow it to get tacky and it folds over easily and sticks the pleather.

I adopted a production line approach to get these done, so after making 1 completely, I found the most efficient method was to cut out 15 other rectangles of pleather, then glue all 15 around the bodies of the card, then once that was dry, for each of the 15 make the various folding cuts, then apply glue for 15 tops, then fold 15 tops, etc, etc.



This means you're repeating the same action over and over which means faster progress, and since the Evo Stik requires a small amount of time to get tacky (trying to hold two pieces together before it's had a little time to do this gets messy quick) I found I could start at the end of a row of pouches, apply glue to them all and by the time I got back to the first one it was ready to stick.

Then came cutting, folding and gluing 16 flaps...



These were quite easy to put together (although since the length of pleather has a tendency to curl when glue is applied) I had to glue and fold each in turn.  To get them flat, I laid them inbetween two sheets of baking parchment and stuck a big granite chopping board on top of them overnight.

In other news - decided to have a go at building some melee weapons.

Taking a cue from Clone Wars' Commando droids...



I worked out a template in Illustrator and have so far cut and assembled the following using MDF offcuts...



Both have been glued and daubed in gallons of PVA - want to make sure I seal the MDF really well this time so that I don't suffer the warping problems I did with the blaster carbine (which were annoying and disappointing when they crept in during the last phases of the build - you won't see them, but I will!)

Looking forward to stopping working (so much) over the holidays in a couple of days' time to crack on with the flak vest, start cutting out armour plates, finishing ammo belts and making the vibroswords come to life.

(Saw Force Awakens the other day - thoroughly enjoyed it, hope everyone else does/did too!)

Laters!

 

[Kavryn Falco]

Nah, double posting is only a worry if you're not adding progress. Since you are and it's a few days later, you're fine.

Good plan on the knees, that's always the most fragile part.

[Syko Voss]

And here's the state of our kitchen table before I cleared it for Xmas dinner...




...and as if I didn't have enough Mando to build, here's what Jayne got me for my Xmas pressie...



1/12th scale Bandai Boba Kitt!

Happy Holidays, everyone! 

[Kavryn Falco]

I see nothing wrong with the state of that table...? It's even silver for Christmas! 

That is a glorious pile of parts, vod.  Slow is a good thing when you take your time to do it right and everything winds up coming out like that

[Sorv Kelborn]

you sir have amazing skills, so informative too, thank you very much as I'm finding it so helpful 

[Syko Voss]

You're all so kind.  Glad that my postings are proving helpful.  I want to give back, share the shortcuts, wrinkles and materials I've discovered along the way and give any experienced folks as many opportunities to feed back as possible.

Anyhow...here's today's update - first steps on holsters for Jayne's twin Westars, how I ended up finishing off the rest of the ammo belts,  working out the flak jacket and a first trial of everything together with the WoF Jango paper templates...

First up holsters for the Westars...
I wanted to make something minimal so that all the work that I put into the guns would get shown off (the canon Jango holsters are basically leather tubes that cover the guns from the tip of the barrel right up to the trigger.)

So I got out some cardboard and duct tape, and inspired by the shapes of the ESB Boba Fett sidearm holster, set to work:



I flattened the shape out, cut it out of 3mm Foamex, scored where the fold line would be and heat formed around a pipe, folding the Foamex along the cut line.  The resultant shape looking like this:



These need filling, holes drilling in the tops to allow them to be attached by pleather straps to the ammo belts.  I intend to paint these up as chipped painted metal so they'll add some extra colour/texture to Jayne's outfit (which will feature a lot of black in the soft parts.)

Then, onto the ammo belts.

Xmas presents brought me some new belts, so I repurposed the old ones for us.  Since they needed to sit on our hips, not our waists, I found that I had to glue and rivet a small length of spare belt  to get the lengths we needed:



I then cut out some pleather twice the width of the actual ammo belt and laid the leather belt onto it, gluing it down with Evostik Impact Adhesive.  Since the leather belt is about half the size the ammo belt needs to be, I took strips of cereal packet card and glued layers of it, first overlapping the belt (so there'd be a smooth transition from the real leather belt and the card) and then below the belt to bring the interior to the right thickness/depth that I needed it.  (BTW the leather belt sits at the top of the ammo belt so it bears all the weight.)

Here you can see the back of the pleather, with a strip of cereal card, then the belt on top of that, with a thinner strip of cereal card below it... (Apologies for having insufficient WIP photos here - everything got very sticky for the next 20 minutes...)



With the sandwich of real leather belt and card complete, I folded the pleather over and glued it to the belts.  Because I'd underestimated the width of pleather I needed to wrap the belts, I cut a small strip to cover the gap, folding its edges over before I glued it.  In the end, I thought the detail it added looked so interesting I decided that what was going to be the inside of the belts was going to be the outside.

Here's one of the belts being clamped so the industrial Velcro closure has as much chance of sticking as possible...



That done, it was time to attach all 16 of the pouches - Jayne had done the sewing detail for me on the flaps, so I set up a small production line, gluing first the bottom of the flaps to the pouches, then putting the pouches on the belt, then gluing the top of the flap to the top of each pouch.

I found this to be the most efficient way to work, and better to do on the belt rather than off it since in my first attempt I'd underestimated the amount of slack I needed to leave at the back of the pouch to make the belt loop...



Then, the final step - small magnets to make the closures on the flaps - found the easiest way here was to drop a magnet onto the pouch so it would find its position, put a spot of superglue on the magnet and then press the flap down...




So there we have it, two ammo belts with practical pouches - a really satisfying little project.  Total cost: price of the hot glue, Evostik glue, the pleather, some magnets and a bit of Velcro - everything else - cardboard, cereal card, two old leather belts - zip, nada, nothing.  Quite pleased with that one.



(And the extra pair of straps on the lower belt with some Chicago screws in - they'll attach to the Westar holsters when they're finished.)

Going back some time this is how we got to the flak vest.

We first leapt in and using some spare fabric attempted to create a prototype flak vest using one of the templates out on the net - that just didn't work for us - if I recall some of the instructions were mangled in the tutorial and were never corrected, so ultimately hacked around with the basic shape we'd made, comparing it to the Boba Maker Jango Jacket photos and making as many iterations as possible until we got something that fit...





With that done, we took the prototype apart, laid it flat on some brown paper and made a new pattern - the intention being to put Velcro closures on both sides and on the shoulders so we could do the same kind of closure as that on the Boba Maker site.

Here's the front - note the 'Velcro' flaps...



And the back...



Lots of sticky tape as you can see - the result of several iterations cutting, trying it, taping new pieces on - that's the way we worked it out.

To solve the problem of finishing the edges of the pleather, we realised that if we effectively lined the flak jacket we could get a reasonably slick-looking result.

So, we cut out our shapes in plain black cotton-like fabric, allowing a whole inch around them:



...and also in pleather...



Laid the pleather facing side down onto the black fabric, and Jayne sewed around them:

(Note the extra stitching line where the Velcro flaps are on the front...)





We then trimmed the excess as much as we dare and cut many small V shapes in on the inside of all the curves...



That done, we turned both front and backs inside out.

The result:

A front...



...and a back...



...with hidden stitching all around.

All I had to do then was attach Velcro in the appropriate places...

And here's a top tip from me...

DON'T USE GLUE BACKED VELCRO AND THEN TRY TO STITCH THROUGH IT -

I NEEDED A PAIR OF NEEDLE-NOSED PLIERS TO PULL EVERY PAINFUL STITCH THROUGH!   

Public Information Announcement over, to make the shoulder pieces, I made the 'shoulder bell' armour first, then made a pattern to fit those since I wanted them to fit like the Jango ones.  Although I use the Boba templates since they're a little bigger and I wanted to make sure my shoulders bulk out as much as possible to help balance the size of the helmet (which is approx. 111% of the size of the standard WoF templates)

So, tonight has been the first proper test - put everything together, attach paper templates using lots of masking tape...



...and try things out...



Ignoring the fact that some of the paper started to come off as we were taking shots and the obvious stuff here - need to trim leg parts down somewhat, I'm pretty pleased with this first ever try on.  Was really hoping for the wide shouldered bull-headed look and that seems to be coming through.

Holidays not over yet - looking forward to cutting out many parts and ordering paracord for that girth belt tomorrow!

[Hik'aari]

Every update I see has me in shock and awe.

You make me want to try upping my game eveyrtime I see your work.

That all together shot is amazing, I can't wait to troop with you both!!

[Kavryn Falco]

Yup, you're channeling Jango there for sure.

Y'know, it's not often that I'm impressed at the "wearing the templates" phase, but damn, you just wear them so well! (It helps, of course, that you decided to do all of the hard parts first )

And yeah, those thigh plates gotta get trimmed - they always do, they're too big in the template file. The WOF templates are a bit quirky in some spots, but they're still better than starting from scratch.

[jett drexel]

looking awesome mate.

[Ashen Kelborn]

the Boba cod and Jango thighs imo really don't do well together, have you thought of filling the space with leather work of some sort, holster, large pouch?
possibly Boba leg pouches?

its only an idea

Darn you make this look so easy 

[Zharatustra]

looking great! i want to thank you for documenting so much. its a very good reference and most helpful to my own progress.

[Syko Voss]

Thanks guys, as always.

Colin - agree with you about the cod area - those thighs definitely need some taking down (I understand from Kris that the WoF templates are generally considered too big at their default size) and will start by looking at the Jango pattern's cod to understand what to do with that area (which, tbh will mean attachment will be a lot simpler and likely more comfortable!).  I'd started with Boba but hadn't recognised the subtleties in the difference in patterns when I began building.

But as a first shot, I'm pleased with the results.  Busy day today so building plans may be scuppered.  Hope you're all having a great time and thanks again for all the feedback and comments!