Great Lakes Garrison & Base

My husband's senate guard bucket came in the mail yesterday (thanks to a nice tax return!) but it needs a lot of work. I was hoping those of you with bucket experience could give us some tips.

I'm not sure if we can correct this, but the spine is very crooked, and the shoulders of the helmet don't line up front to back...

We need to redo the lens, because we were given a thin blue piece of plastic (almost as thin as a sheet of paper) but the senate guard lens is black, and I'm sure much more rigid. Any advice on replacing lenses? We'd like to be able to take it out so Jason can use the helmet for the Ep 1 & 2 version as well.

Also, any tips on cutting into fiberglass (to remove the portion where the lens will go), padding the inside, hooking up fans, etc...? Thanks!

If it's fiberglass, I'm not sure what CAN be done with it, but I'll leave that up to those more experienced in various materials.

For lenses, it can be really simple. For my TD's lenses, I went to Meijer and bought a replacement faceshield for dirtbike helmets from the sporting goods section. Clear, flexible, seems blue but that's because of the protective contact film. You can also get protective faceshields from Home Depot. I also bought a roll of the darkest window tinting from Meijer's automotive section.

Remove the contact film from the faceshield, and trim a piece of the window tinting slightly larger than the shield. I believe the instructions on the tinting is pretty accurate, so I might be repeating here, but it just required a spray bottle of water with a drop or two of liquid dish soap and a credit card.

Spray the shield with the water/soap solution, peel off the backing from the tinting, then slowly and carefully apply it to the shield, working from the center outward. Use the credit card to push outward in all directions to smooth out any bubbles (the liquid solution acts like a lubricant to help in the adjustment but there's not enough soap to dissolve the adhesive).

Once the tinting is applied smoothly, lay it flat to cure. Probably about a day or two (or whatever the instructions on the tinting say).

Then trim to shape and voila! Discount lens (well, maybe not the cheapest, but definitely much more DIY and instant gratification )

Thanks for the tips on the lens. We'll have to give that a try. I'm not 100% sure about it being fiberglass, but it looks like fiberglass filaments on the inside, under the priming.

Here are pictures of everything: http://costumesandartwork.blogspot.com/ ... elmet.html

Mieal_Deneb wrote:Thanks for the tips on the lens. We'll have to give that a try. I'm not 100% sure about it being fiberglass, but it looks like fiberglass filaments on the inside, under the priming.

Here are pictures of everything: http://costumesandartwork.blogspot.com/ ... elmet.html

where did you get it from? if it is a bad recast, you might not have very good luck infixing it

if the spine is a resin. you may be able to heat it with a heat gun and reshape and then stick it in or under cold water. this may ormay not work. I got it to work with my fett bucket.

I got it from: http://www.sithplanet.com/ Other than a woman in the UK that is just starting to make some really nice looking helmets (for about twice what we paid for this one...) this is the only guy who offers the Senate Guard helmets, so we're sort of stuck since we don't know how to make our own helmet.

I do think the spine is resin. If we had a heat gun, we'd probably give that a try. Would hot water work?

If you can't streighten out the spine you can build a new and lighter one out of sheets of Styrene.

Hot water can work, depending on the type of resin and such. But it's a little less likely than the heat gun.

We can give it a try, but I have this feeling we're going to have to create our own spine. We are already going to be making our own of the Ep 1 & 2 spine anyway...if we can find the plumes, that is!

Heat gun it. Wear some gloves to protect your hands and keep heating and slightly bending/moving it until it's about where you want it.