lonewolf

I originally had my mp3 music player into a front pouch but it distorted the shape a bit so I utilised the back hump to hold the player and speaker. The echoing space gives a great sound and the 501st Biker Scout Radio Chatter is very good. This leaves me space for the Rom FX behind my chest plate and separate to the radio chatter.

Hang on to your helmets for a while longer I hope to get a few vacformed once I finalise the molds, mainly cutlines to be hopefully added for a bit more ease of build. If I sell a kit I will try to make a decent instruction sheet, it is a difficult build, I have built up four now and every one has differences! Thanks everyone for the kind and constructive help and thanks to BikerScout.Net for the great reference pictures, and Jez at Star Wars Helmets. Yes it isn't perfect and yes unfortunately it isn't a direct casting from an original helmet but it is where I am stopping for a while, JD.

Hi Paul, buy good quality 3mm line/masking tape and line off the area you want blackened, carefully mask of the rest of the helmet and tape up., use panel wipe or white spirit to clean the nose area, use black matt or satin finish and use a very light spray to cover the snout, too thick may weap under the masking. This is how I do it anyway, seven helmets and no problems so far. Use the gallery to see how the originals were masked off under the chin area and distance out from the nose detail, it is pretty much the best way to finish it. The different types of helmets have varying widths of flat nose area so this makes it more or less tricky, you are aiming to have a small section of white all around the sides and arch. Once the backplate and nose detail are fitted it will pop out and look great , good luck.

Thanks Lou, yes these parts are a bit off ,the moulds have been adjusted since this lid was vacformed, the new lid , which is in the pics, has the visor position changed, again, and the whole face plate has been reduced very slightly. I will get the moulds tidied up and hope to be able to get a few kits pulled to sell.

Hi Andry, it is all the same part number, I checked with the company I got the new ones off and he assured me they were the same but updated. They are black, same thread, same length , same square back,same circumference, same plastic nuts but ever so slightly convex with a less than smoothe finish surface. I hope he was telling tales. I am going to try the other supplier this week. Please check it out for me either way, thanks. Could the grey bolts become collectable :(

Thanks Skip, I have given up on the spraying , my younger brother sprays my lids now.

It is almost there , insides to be finished and a couple of decals to get, the visor is temporarily fitted. Heavily modified CB left, my lid middle KS right

I have almost finished my latest helmet, I am quite pleased with the finish. It is as close as I can get to owning an original, there are still some guesses as to what the black material is behind the ear openings but with all the original pics I have studied it will have to do. The 3M Speedglas bolts have been changed lately so they are now black and very slightly different. I will use the few old type sets I have for these two builds and will fit them using a square hole in the visor and a large round hole in the helmet to match the plastic nut. I am not certain if this is the original way but if I cut a small hole in the helmet, the 3M bolts haven't got a good enough grip of the threads as they are quite short screw bolts. Pictures seem to show the nut close to the inner sides. Pictures will be up later once my son comes home with the camera.

Hi Mathew, the bottom "jaw" line has a slight curve only, the "blinkers need to be pointing inwards a little bit more, this will make the helmet look best. Most of us who have modified a Don Post/Rubies have done exactly what you did and cut the face way too far in , also if you can get the new nose flat base to go in a bit more than the original place this will look much better once the baseplate/ nose detail are fitted. Good luck.

Happy new year , yes the KST has been a great addition to BS.N . I never thought I would say it but the Emerald Garrison KST Borotrooper/ Michael really stole the attention from the Biker Scout squad at the last big troop, maybe a costume I would go for next time also.Well done David on your BS.N input, sorry we had to miss you in the last part of the year, hope things are getting better for you, roll on 2011.

It is a correct size but I have read about this place as being dubious.

Wow, a lot of tricky work there, good job Mike.

Yes I see what you mean, I suspect if they do narrow at the end it is by a very small amount, it doesn't appear they do.I would check out my gloves but they could be wrong. Sorry Mike.

Go to the Gallery, the pics there are very good.

Hyperfirm, PA yes, anything Hasbro/recast is not the right size. There are lots of folks making decent versions as long as you can identify an accurate looking one for yourself the only things which you need to decide on is price and resin or rubber/drop proof material. I am sure somebody here will send you a pm.

Hi Darren, I built up Borotrooper's lid and cut the snout out slightly, if you do this you will need to put a dark material over the back as the gap is very close to your nose when you wear it. Painting it instead would work fine also. As far as I understand the slot is on the movie troopers so needs to be on yours as well. It is a nice hark back to the concept pics of the Biker Scout , regarding dimensions of it , well it changes from picture to picture in ROTS , some longer than others, just take a few measurements and mark it out well, the centre of this lid is a few mm off to get the centre of the hole and not too close to the front edge of the visor and keeping far enough away from the face plate below. Take a screen grab and go with it!

Hi Too Much Garlic, I think this picture is great to see the nice concave cheek areas and the "bags" uder the eye area, yes my present lid suffers a bit here, the vac mould is nice and deep but I have tried to use 2mm ABS on the pulls which isn't taking the sharpness just as well as the styrene I was using to test the moulds. The ridge above the eye area is nicely shown on this pic , thanks, I will try to get this detail into the moulds for next time. I have looked at the eye upper curve many times and don't think it is too far away. When the helmet is photographed from higher, this curve can appear almost straight, likewise from below it is very curved. I have adjusted this area many times, I also tried to get the curve of the visor to be a similar curve as the eye area, yes they are a bit different but not so far away. Thanks for the help, everybody has been great with suggestions and I do try to see the helmet through folks different perspectives. I really have tried to be unblinkered whilst doing this, it has become quite an obsession and I have made sure I take comments in the spirit they have been given.Nobody can be a worse critic than me , this is why this lid has taken me so long.

It looks like the last Starfortress version but there are some differences. I suspect it is where SF got their sculpt from as this is equally bad, the age I have no idea about , it could be 10 years old. What a terrible helmet.

Some updated pics, I have tweaked various parts of the faceplate, KS and SC on either side.

Hi Paul, welcome, there is a post somewhere showing webbing or elastic going from the shoulder bell to somewhere towards the neck?. Take a good look at the gallery, some pics are very revealing, great to see you are theorising like the rest of us! We all want Facts!

The MLC V3 is so much better, they are leagues apart. I own a CB lid, it was a long time eventually coming, the guy said it was lost,I received a very damaged lid , it is so inaccurate and yes it was his Version one which he had been selling for a long time, but the build quality was bad, very little fiberglass, more resin and very weak . Please avoid this lid, there are three lids better , MLC V3 , KS and Rubies, good luck.

The Don Post /Rubies is a very accurate shape although a bit smaller than the original, the vinyl material that it is made of is the main problem . I don't know the history of the Don Post company, but it is pretty unlikely that the lid was made without use of the original LFL moulds. All the original details are on the Rubies so a good modded DP can look better than anything else, good job, maybe the visor could be pulled in more at the bottom.

Hi Manny, yes it is a bit of work to do, I agree. I wanted to have a lid that was as true to an original as I could do. Not everyone's cup of tea for sure. A kit form of this lid could really have folks pulling their hair out . The MLC V3 or a finished KS is the answer to most folks prayers.

Thanks for the great comments guys, I have been working on the jawline, again today, it is a bit longer, the whole build has been an obsessive task, I just don't want to offer something that isn't right, the ABS pinseal is nice and strong, pretty nice to shape and sand. I will try to get a final lid together and see about making a few to sell. Time as always is hard to find, I , like everyone else just wants a nice lid to troop in.

Yes a bit tricky, mark the centre , take the three piece sticker and half fold the backing paper back on itself, stick the grey stripes on gently and pull back the rest of the backing strip if you have a three stripe sticker, if not I suggest you always refer to the gallery pics for spacing or you are just relying on us to guess a measurement for you, mid line is centre of face plate and centre of forehead, sorry this is getting too hard to explain