Great Lakes Garrison & Base

A few months ago, I got together with several members of the GLG at Wags place to hang out, and learn from more experienced builders. I took all the Tusken pieces I had accumulated, but never had the confidence to get started on. After working with those guys, and messaging back and forth with Roger, I dove in.

So here's my Tusken mask build thread. I started with a Studio Creations mask, a batting helmet, and a set of resin face pieces.

Here's my Studio Creations mask with holes cut out for the eyes and mouth. Roughly 1" diameter cuts.



I had to trim a little crescent from the top edge of the mask to allow it to mate with my batting helmet better. This was just trial and error. Hold them together, cut a little material, see where I was at, and repeat.



Here's my batting helmet with the bill cut off. You can see some black lines where I held the SC mask to the helmet and marked where the two would come together. This helped mount the mask to the helmet later.



Front view showing the same.



Here's the mask resting against the helmet. I then drilled holes in the helmet and mask at the top middle, and both bottom sides. I then riveted sections of elastic strapping to both pieces holding them together, but allowing a little give.



Here's a shoe of me wearing the base. You can see the top and one bottom strap. I also added a strap at roughly the 10:30 position, too. The mask was fitting a little goofy, and snugging it up on that side helped the fit.



Side view better illustrating the straps and extra "fit" strap.



I bought a pair of leather pants at The Salvation Army, and used them for my leather pieces. (I felt bad tearing the pants apart. They were a pair of HIGH grade Nieman Marcus pants. Best guess is they were several hundred dollars brand new. $6.99 to me!) First, I cut a small piece to wrap over the snout at the top. Next, I tacked the leather around the mouth from the outside using hot glue.



Using the hot glue gave me some flexibility when placing the leather and making the pleats. If it tdidn't look right, it was easy enough to pull up, and redo.



I started my pleats in the bottom middle and worked up both sides simultaneously. I liked the way the symmetrical pleats looked. Hopefully it's still authentic. Not that it matters, 'cuz I like it.



Once the pleats were set on the outside, I pushed all the leather through the mouth and spread it out. I used liquid nails on the inside to really secure it.



Finished pleats. Once I decided I like it, I went back around the outside edge, lifted the leather, and applied more liquid nails. It's pretty secure now! I drilled the holes in the snout for the tooth, and you can see the mounting holes for the blood spitters. I put down a quick coat of brown primer thinking it would look better than white plastic showing through anywhere that deosn't get covered up by something. Most of it has since scratched off, so I think I'll be applying more leather around the eyes, blood spitters, and cheeks.



Just quick shot with the tooth and spitters attached.



3/4 view of the same.



I'll more pics posted in a bit.

Looking good so far.

Very nice!!

A batting helmet, SC mask, and resin face pieces are exactly what I used on mine. Looks good.

Thanks guys!

Let me start out by apologizing for this set of pics. I took them with my Droid.

I ran into a problem wrapping the leather straps around the mouth. I got the first one on okay. Sort of. I used an old leather belt ($3.99 at Goodwill) for this. Great suggestion Roger! As you all know, a belt bends great. In one direction. It does not want to bend, at all, in the other plane. For this application, I used two-part epoxy. I roughed up the mask with sandpaper, and scored the back of the leather with a razor blade to give the epoxy more to bond to.



The leather looks pretty good to me.



I had a REALLY tough time getting the leather to follow the edge of the mouth, and line up together under the chin. I couldn't bend the leather to my will, so I had to cut a wedge shaped piece of leather out, and pull the cut edges together. You can see the resulting seam below. It allowed me to bend the leather strap so the ends would meet. I'll cover this with some sort of weathering to hide it better.



I didn't want to leave a cut in the second layer as it will be more prominent, but I'm had an even tougher time getting the strap to wrap properly. This is how it wanted to come together underneath.



After posting my problem over at the Krayt Clan, it was suggested I could steam the leather and possibly bend it that way. Steaming it didn't really help, so I dipped it into the boiling water. I could then bend it to fit.

If you do this, BE CAREFUL. You can burn the leather. If it burns, it shrivels, shrinks, and gets REALLY hard.

More pics. Hopefully not overdoing it in this thread!

Here's a picture of the hole I cut out to mount my fan. I soon gave up on the fan idea. Once I did a test fit, I couldn't get the fans away from the top of my head. I was worried about my hair getting tangled up in the blades and scalping me.



I didn't want the hole to go to waste, and I did want to increase ventilation, so I cut a bunch more holes in both side, back, and top.



After getting the mouth wraps attached, I knew I wanted to cover the areas around the mouth and blood spitters with something. I used more of the leather pants to cover the faceplate. With the way it naturally wrinkled as I wrapped it around the various rounded edges, it started looking really creepy. Like old skin.




I gave the leather the same shoe polish treatment, and trimmed it to fit snuggly against the mouth leather. In the highlight, you can see where I missed a spot, and had to tack a little filler piece under the main section.



I totally forgot about the vertical strip of leather on the nose. Here it is. Great use of the end of my belt! Thanks for the idea, Roger.



Here's a better view of the face leather fully attached, and trimmed back. You can also see the strip of fabric I'm using to cover the hole allowing for peripheral vision. I couldn't find a good semi-transparent fabric to cover the hole, so I went with flaps that can open and close as needed.



Here'a closer look at the flap.



I took pieces of left over foam mat material I had left over from my son's Jango Fett costume and glued them around the interior for padding, and to keep the whole thing steady on my head.



While test fitting the helmet, I knew I was going to have problems concealing my neck. I took four wide strips of weathered cloth, and riveted them around the bottom edge, planning on tucking them under my robe. The strip on top is un-weathered and just to show the weathering.



As you can see from these views, a great deal of my cheeks, chin, and neck are still exposed when wearing just the helmet and faceplate.




I added a neck wrap to hold things together.



I added this strip of cloth just behind the mouth are to better cover my exposed chin.



And with the neck wrap in place.



I didn't want to wrap so close to any face pieces or head spikes that I couldn't replace them down the road. For the head spikes, I just used used squares of fabric mounted under them to ensure the helmet base was covered.



Here's a shot of the peripheral vision flap closed, and tucked under the adjacent strips.



And open.



Here's the start of my head wrapping. I first lightly tacked a strip all the way around the front edge near the cheeks, blood spitters, eyes, and nose to define and edge. All other wraps are tucked under this strip, and glued in place.



And the front.



And the side.



And the back.



Whenever a wrap crosses the seam between the faceplate and the helmet, I created a little pucker to allow the helemt to give a little when putting it on and taking it off.



I hope to have the rest wrapped this weekend, and hopefully I'll have another update early next week.

One way to avoid the "hair tangling in fan" is to cover the fan with window screen, available at any Home Lowe's Depot Aco Ace It's effectively a low-grade fan grille, but it works. Take it from me, the long-haired trooper who got a couple of strands of hair caught in the left fan during the Pasadena march, resulting in a lens so fogged up that I only had half vision for the 2nd half of the parade!

Since I covered the fan with the screen, my hair doesn't get caught in it, but it still cycles enough air inside the helmet.

Awesome job man!!! Looks really good!!

Looking great so far. Nice build up!

Looking good. don't forget once your done to dirty it like crazy and i mean go nuts. camera flashes wash out a lot of the dirt. there's still times when i look at pics and i think "that's still not dirty enough!" drives me nuts. lol

I'm pretty much done with my mask. For now. I think I'll have to hit it with a little more weathering once it warms up, and when my robes are done, I'll finish off the neck and neck wraps.

But here it is for now:













And here's a few closer shots to show the first layers of weathering:







How's she looking?

I need screens still on the insides of the eyes and mouth. Other than that, and additional weathering, anything missing? Anything else you'd recommend?

Thanks for the feedback so far!

I like it, looks great.

Nice job!