Mandalorian Helmet with Electronics: Dome construction, Vacuum Forming, Cheeks, and the Rear Vent

Its been a while since my last post, so I have a lot of pictures to put up!
In this post you will find:

Dome construction
Vacuum Form table construction
Cheek construction
Rear vent construction

Making the dome might be my least favorite part about making the helmets because of the time and attention to detail required since the dome can make or break the helmet. In the last post you saw that I was using a triangle template out of card stock and using some paper machete on the inside to give some more rigidness. After taping these triangles together I tried two different processes, the first was using Easy-Flo 120 (a two part plastic resin) and the second being Bondo. I ended up abandoning the Easy-Flo since painting it on the shape resulted in a lot of paint drips which were painful to remedy. I defaulted back to Bondo, which was what I used to make my first two helmets. It is very ridged and takes a little bit less energy to sand and shape.

The biggest thing with the Bondo is to make sure the you have the dome covered all the way down to the helmet lip. Next hardest thing is to try to get the closest to perfect rounding that you can. It generally take 1 coat with major sanding followed by 3-4 touch up coats with more detail sanding to get the smooth rounded shape.

In the next section you can see the fully sanded dome sitting on my homemade vacuum form table. As I mentioned before I do not enjoy the lengthy process of making each individual dome. In light of this I spent about $30 at Lowe's using plywood, some 1x2's, and peg-board and created my own vacuum form table to make domes faster and easier.

In retrospect I am confident that I made the table too large for this particular project, in addition to having a frame to hold the plastic that could not fit into my oven.
The hardest part about the vacuum-forming is the taper that occurs where the helmet meets the pegboard surface. It is very important that the edges are straight in order that they can fit intro the helmet frame. It would also be a good idea to sand the lower edges slightly more to create more of inside taper to slip into the helmet frame.

Since the bottom edge will not be seen it doesn't need to be as smooth as the rest of the dome.

Here you can see the rest of the setup. A hole drilled into the plywood on the bottom to allow for the shop vac to be attached. The 1x2 frame that holds the .40" plastic sheet that you can get from US Plastics. The best part is that the leftover plastic will work great to make a sturdy and clear visor. This setup works great in my kitchen, conveniently next to my oven. (Did I mention you need to measure the width of your oven before you build your vacuum table? Anyway, you should.)

So now to the cheeks. Here you can see both the inside and outside views of the two ways I made the cheeks. the version on the left is made with card-stock with a cardboard support. On the right the cheeks are made completely from cardboard. You can see a little bit, but low temperature hot glue is a pretty good medium to use on this part of the construction.

Cardstock Pros: Its generally easy to work with and has an ability to allow for sharper edges while maintaining the intended shape for the cheeks. It also allow for some easy trimming. If your pattern goes over the edge a little you can run a razor blade over the edge and clean it up nicely. Cons: a downside is that it is not a sturdy as other materials. Because it is so thin you need to be careful with the hot glue so you will not have to clean up golds the sneak out under the edges.

Cardboard Pros: Its a very sturdy material that will hold the shape you want very well. Cons: it tends to be hard to get the right shape since it likes to crease with the configuration of the inside ribs. The edges do not meet with the plastic as sharply as the cardstock. Some of the creases require a Bondo touch up.

For the Third practice helmet I am going to try a third material of cardboard from a cereal box and see if that gives me the right middle ground.

The main reason for painting before finishing allow you to judge how close you are to having a final version of your helmet since the paint will reflect the flaws in the current version (Bondo holes and cracks, uneven surfaces, excess glue on an edge). I normally have at least two practice coats on to do touch ups.

Next is the Rear Vent. These were constructed out of cardstock and held together with hot glue. Looking back I think that the inner construction is done well with cardstock, but the outer rectangle should be something with a thicker material. I think that It makes the vent more sturdy and makes it easier to blend with the rest of the helmet.