Cardboard Boba Bucket - Electronics

A huge gap here, bringing us closer to the present. Now working on some rangefinder electronics.

Rangefinder Electronics

Originally Posted 27-July-2009
I haven't posted anything in ages because I've been away (doing an Architecture degree)

But now I'm back and have got thoroughly stuck into making my rangefinder.

First of all I purchased a metronome kit from Maplin as well as some green LEDs.

As soon as I got the kit I assembled it according to the instructions and then began to sync the lights up to the right speed (2.13 Hz), by adjusting the two pots to 40KΩ each.

That was fairly easy and formed the basis for my rangefinder circuitry.

Next I desoldered the 9v clip, the LEDs and the capacitors. I re-soldered the capacitors, leaving longer leads so I could fold them down flat.

I had to extend the leads of the LEDs, this was fairly simple, I just soldered on some short lengths of wire and added heat shrink tubing.

I then re-soldered these longer LED's into place.
Also I filed off the unused areas of the board.

Until I could scavenge another resistor (maplin only sell them in massive sets) I'm leaving the circuitry here.

Total spend is now £9.58.

- Large card for main helmet & mask : £2.00
- Pint o' PVA Glue : £3.00 
- Metronome kit : £3.99
- Superbright green LED : £0.59

Cardboard Boba Bucket - Indentured

A slave to perfection. That's the problem with this build, the longer I spend on it, the more I want it to be right (definitely never redoing it).

Redoing The Dent

Originally Posted 26-Oct-2008 Very small update, I wasn't happy with my dent. It was too deep and lacking in detail. It's probably in the wrong place too but I can't be bothered moving it.

Any who I filled it up with polyfiller and sketched a design onto it with pencil. I over exaggerated the shape because I knew I would loose some detail when sanding. 

Then using a small half round file I began to etch out the main lines.

After that I filed out the main, depressed areas.

Then with the file I began to round off the raised areas. After that I moved to sandpaper and ended up with this.

Not perfect. But I think it's better than before What does everyone else think?

Cardboard Boba Bucket - Venti

Something about a bucket of coffee? I dunno,  I'm redefining tenuous puns.

Anyway this time I'm constructing the vent.

The Vent

Originally Posted 04-Oct-2008
Tiny update, I still have none of the proper materials at my new house but decided I wanted to carry on anyway.

With no printer I had to construct the keyslot pieces using a pencil, ruler and set-square. It took forever.

After that It took me ages cutting out the delicate vent piece. Going over each line several times very gently.

Its worth doing this slowly to get those sharp, square edges.

These are all the pieces necessary, the frame has an extra bit of trim so it will attach to the rest of the helmet.

Unlike the rest of the build for this I had to use Uhu glue. It left the piece a bit scrappy, not generally how I like to do things. Hopefully with a bit more work I can tidy it up.

Note: remember when wetting and bending the vent, the good (best looking) side should be the inside curve.

That's all for now

Cardboard Boba Bucket - Dome Wax

The following is a documentation of the hours I spent at uni polishing my helmet. 
Note: May be unsuitable for minors.

Finishing the Dome

Originally Posted 28-Aug-2008
This part wasn't following Antman's tutorial, because he hadn't posted that stage yet.

Still it was fairly simple,  get out my pot of dodgey polyfiller and cover the dome in it.

You may also notice I've painted some of the edges, this was just to stop them from being damaged too much during the next stage.

I was fairly happy with the finish on the cheeks and didn't see the need to cover them in polyfiller.

Next ( after hours of sanding )  The dent.



Originally Posted 22-Sep-2008
Right, only a little bit of progress. I bought some Tesco value sandpaper for about 50p. Then started sanding away at the mass of polyfiller. Working down from 60grad to 100. I wrapped the sanding paper round a block of wood to try and get better control.

After a lot of sanding here it is.

I also started on the dent, This is where accuracy went out the window. I cut a random sized hole in roughly the right position. Glued a bit of card behind and filled it in with polyfiller (had to do this in layers)

I then made the main lines using a small file. After that I've been slowly shaping it with 60 grad sandpaper.

That's all for now I need to finish the dent and then when I get some supplies I'll work on the vent.



Note: these are now camera phone images as the camera I used previously wasn't mine and I couldn't bring to Uni.


Total spend is now £5.50. 

 Large card for main helmet & mask : £2.00
 Pint o' PVA Glue: £3.00
 Sandpaper: £0.50



Originally Posted 23-Aug-2008

This was taken with the webcam on my laptop, hopefully its a bit better.

Cardboard Boba Bucket - Dome

Dome

Originally Posted 20-Aug-2008

The dome was pretty much like applying the curved cheek sections. It was fine as long as you took your time.

I was farily happy with how the whole thing was going, all praise to WOF* and his flawless templates.

Looks pretty good right?

Until you  look at it from above.

Hmm.....

Not sure what went wrong there**

Nothing that can't be solved with a bit of newspaper ;)

* WizardofFlight a member of thedentedhelmet.com who provided the amazing templates I'm using for this build.

**It seems I printed out the wrong templates, how was I to know there were different ones for European printers.

Cardboard Boba Bucket - Cheeky?

Well they can't all be winners, I'm too tired for punning.

Cheeks

Originally Posted 20-Aug-2008

Several steps missing here.
Cut out cheek areas and added the plates. Then added the dome arches. 

The cheeks took some time but I followed Antman's instructions and am very pleased with how they came out. If you're trying this leave a good couple of hours, as you need to hold each section, letting it dry before moving along the line.

Also the top visor part has been cut out ('cos I wanted to try it on)

Hellboy Corpse Locator - First Finished Piece

The original item was cast up in polyester resin, gilded with Rub 'n Buff and weathered with pigmented plaster. Leaving me with my first finished piece.

Completed: 10-Feb-2012

I was very happy with my first attempt but over the coming months I made almost 15 of these and I'd like to think each one was a little better.

The following posts are an amalgamation of various different build ups, logically ordered. Most of it is written as a tutorial.

The Build Up 

Originally posted: 25-Jun-2012

This is one full kit of parts

The main pieces are cast in polyurethane resin, and the dome cast in a clear polyester resin.





First up is pretty standard clean up, removing flash and filling in lil' bubbles.

Occasionally one or two of the tiny thorns won't be properly formed, so they'll need fixing. This is much less of a problem with new kits, since I changed the mould.
You can use bondo, but given how small they are I prefer to use milliput, which is how I sculpted the original.

Also the side of the compass at the top of the mould is prone to sub surface bubbles, you can just paint over them but, for a long lasting paint job, I prefer to open them up and fill them with bondo. 

When cleaning up the seam on the lid don't go overboard sanding it completely smooth, there is supposed to be a linear texture running round the edge, so don't go taking it all off.

The same can be said for building this up in general. Don't go OTT trying to smooth things out like you might on other builds. Any texture you leave looks great when you dry brush it with gold, and just looks a bit off and fake if you try to make it perfectly smooth.

Cardboard Boba Bucket - Doesn't Hold Water

Forming the Bucket

In the last post I just had a few pictures of my first attempts at making the ear pieces.
This time I begin actually making the bucket.

19-Aug-2008

Unfortunatley the largest helmet pieces won't fit onto the A3 bits of card I salvaged from sketch books, so I went to an art shop and bought a large A1 piece ( 4x size of A3 ) of cardboard (£2) and some more, stronger PVA (£3).

Which meant I could make the main helmet piece.

I don't really have a decent set of clamps so to hold this together while drying I used a combination of Quick Grips (yellow things), G - clamps, rubber bands, and for the hard to reach spot at the bottom I clamped it with a pair of rare earth magnets. :D

Basically whatever you can find.

PVA is definatly the best glue for this, easy to use, strong and inexpensive.

As long as you don't get the watered down stuff, meant only for paper.

The next part is poorley documented (starting to see a pattern here :s ) because I was frantically trying to get the mask to stick.

This shows the mask attached to the helmet and the wooden blocks clamped to flatten out the ear areas.

As I've said the hardest part was getting the mask to stick on evenly. The clamps I have only allow you to reach about 10cm from each edge, I needed more magnets really, but I had to make do.

That's all for now, next time I'm working on the cheek sections.

Cardboard Boba Bucket - Intro

So far this has just been repostings of my Hellboy Corpse Locator project.
What follows is still old work, it's a project that I started over 4 years ago, a Boba Fett helmet built entirely out of cardboard.  I've been stuck on the painting stage for the past few years, but hopefully posting all the old photos will give me the motivation to finally finish it.

Boba Bucket

Originally posted: thedentedhelmet.com 18-08-2008

Sady this is before I started taking loads of pictures. 

For making my helmet I'm using 2mm fibreboard type stuff, which is actually the stuff on the back of sketch books. So for these first pieces I just printed out the templates and began cutting out the pieces.

The primer was a solvent based primer I found in my shed claiming ' good for wood and metal'

Unless you're picky I reckon almost any primer will work on cardboard with fairly good results, and definitely anything made for mdf will work.

19-08-2008

As you can see the edges aren't quite as sharp as they could have been. In my constant refusal to buy any proper stuff I was sanding these using a fairly rough file, and some old sanding blocks I found.

The biggest problem I had was when I was clamping layers together. It was hard to find a flat surface in my room, and they often skewed during drying. (I have a workbench in my shed, but this is England I'm not freezing my arse off out there all day)

19-08-2008

My favourite thing about this method is that, however bad it initially looks, you just cover it in polyfiller and get a nice smooth finish.

Again whilst rooting around the shed I found some old polyfiller, from the 80's, it was grainy, had lumps and came in a tub not a tube. But it seemed alright and has served me well so far. 

Next I went and got some proper materials so I could actually start making the bucket.

Hellboy Corpse Locator - Weaving with Epoxy Putty

Previously I created the dome, this post shows the creation of the main body, focussing on how the vine details were sculpted.

Originally Posted 18-Feb-2012

The main body was constructed out of layers of grey cardboard, just like before, nothing too complicated.

I tried to add a 1mm step to help me place the detailing later. But it was a bit uneven, that's what comes from designing in a computer. It's only worth designing to a tolerance you can achieve with the tools at hand.

Here you can see the beading added to the underside.

And a close up of the inside detailing, I tried really hard to copy reference for these bits and I'm pretty happy with the way it came out.

This is definitely one of the odder ideas I've ever had. 
Epoxy putty has a 3-4 hour working time so I had to work fast, most of the time was spent trying to roll long, consistent 'sausages', which I did using a sheet of perspex.

I then put all the strands in their starting positions and began to weave, because the rolling had taken a good 90 minutes I actually didn't have too much trouble with the putty trying to stick to itself.

I didn't do stage by stage on the side detailing, but it was a similar process. I sculpted the eyes first then did the vines around those. 
This picture shows it after filling and a quick prime, I quite like the odd ivory/porcelain look of it : )


Long post today, almost done.

In the next post you can see the first finished piece.

Hellboy Corpse Locator - Dome

This post details the creation of the amber dome that will sit in the middle of the dial I created last time.


Originally Posted 17-Feb-2012

Bit of an abstract image , but all these paper circles were laminated together to create the dome shape for the centre of the compass.


The whole thing was then spot filled and wet sanded on a lathe to give this.

I then made a 1 part silicone mould.

And began castings, anyone who has ever tried to cast with clear resin knows how tricky it can be.

First cast, the surface didn't cure and was sticky, I polished it up just to see if it was useable, but all the gunk I cleaned off meant it was about 2mm too small and didn't fit.

Second cast, I pre-heated the mould, the surface did cure, but too fast which meant it pulled away from the surface leaving an odd, crinkly texture.

When I cast another I think it will help to reduce the amount of catalyst used, but for this one I just wet sanded the dome down to 3000 and then hand polished it and it looked really good.

Don't have the dome on it's own but you will see it in the final picture.

All that's left is the main body, where I show more details of how the vines were created and then lots of moulding / casting.