In Santa's Workshop

[old man emu]

2020 has been cruel to everyone. Even Santa's workforce has suffered the ravages of layoffs due to COVID. Santa didn't like letting them go, but he couldn't elf it. So he has sent out a plea to all the Grandfathers, Poppys and Granddads to assist him by making the toys that the grandkids have asked for. 

 

Back in the day, any good kid could expect  Santa to leave a Davy Crockett coonskin hat,  or a Lone Ranger six shooter with cartridges that you could load with caps. But Time moves on. Heroes become has-beens. Even the mighty Spiderman is losing the popularity stakes. But cometh the hour, cometh the Man, or actually cometh the Mandalorian, a lone  bounty hunter in the outer reaches of the galaxy. He is hired by remnant imperial forces to retrieve the child Grogu,  a infant of the same race as the well known Jedi, Yoda.  Instead he goes on the run to protect the infant  While looking to reunite Grogu with his kind, they are pursued by Moff Gideon, the leader of a remnant of the fallen Galactic Empire, who wants to use Grogu's connection to The Force.

 

The Mandalorian wears armour including a distinctive helmet:   and it is this helmet that our grandsons want.

 

Santa has provided those who need to make one of these helmets with a set of templates which can be used to cut the various shapes which go together to make the helmet. These are some of the templates needed to make the major parts of the helmet. 

 

and here they are marked out on a sheet of rubber mat - available from Bunnings for $10 for four sheets.

The rubber is easy to cut with a hobby knife. You simply have to be careful to cut slowly and keep the blade vertical. If the cuts are rough or angles, the edges can be sanded straight with a disk sander. You have to be sure to transfer the alignment marks and lettering to the pieces. The template set has left side drawings only, so the template for each piece has to be flipped over to get the right hand side part .

 

This is what you end up with after a bit of careful cutting.

Then all you need to do is heat each piece with a hot air gun - not a hair dryer - too cool - to put some curvature into them. I shaped mine using my late father-in-law's safety helmet.

Then you stick the pieces together using contact adhesive. You can expect to get gap lines at this stage,

but these can be eliminated by mixing some talcum powder with PVA glue to make a firm paste and applying it to the gaps as a filler. Once it is dry, you can sand the filler back. I still have some filling to do on the right hand one.

 

 

I am up to the stage of gluing all the helmet parts together. No pictures as yet.

 

 

[Yenn]

Why not make it of aluminium, rivetted with AN 426 AD rivets to get that smooth look/ You may need an English wheel to get the domed part.

[old man emu]

Well, for starters, the original has invisible seams, so rivets are out. Secondly, do you think his Nanny would let him go racing around with a tin can on his head so that he could get hurt? 

 

The foam turns out to be easy stuff to work with, and the pieces go together remarkably easily. When you have these factors, it is a pleasure to work on the project.

[Marty_d]

Excellent work OME, I'm looking forward to seeing the finished result!

 

Cheers, Marty

[old man emu]

Here are some pictures of the work completed today.

 

Three views of the helmet with the components of each half glued in place, but the two halves temporarily joined.

 

 

 Just to give an indication of size 

 

You can see in these photos above that the joints have visible gaps that don't appear in the finished product. To fill the gaps I used a paste of PVA glue and talcum powder.

 

This is how that turned out.     All I have to do is gently sand those seams with a rotary tool, then I can give it a coat of sealant and start fitting the trim bits.

 

After I had cut out all the pieces for the body of the helmet, I had half a sheet of rubber mat left over.

 

So I resoled a favourite pair of yard shoes.