For the 2018 costume, Debbie decided to do Dark Helmet from Spaceballs.\u00a0 My task has been to make the portion of the costume from which it derives its name: the helmet itself.<\/p>\n

The helmet needed to be fairly sturdy and is curved, so the material needed to be fairly easy to work with in that regard.\u00a0 Because weight was also a concern, I decided that fiberglass would be the material for the shell of the helmet.\u00a0 My plan was to first sculpt a plug out of some other material and once I had the plug the way I wanted it, I could lay the fiberglass on it, pull it off the plug, and have my shell.<\/p>\n

Since the plug was something that was just going to be set aside anyway, the material needed to be inexpensive but it also had to be something that I could easily work with hand tools.\u00a0 Those criteria led me to start off with spray insulation foam.\u00a0 It’s cheap and once it is dry sanding it is pretty easy.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

This started as a much taller pile when I sprayed it out, but as it dried it collapsed and spread out a bit.\u00a0 I got another couple cans and piled it on a little more slowly.\u00a0 Once I had a good stack, I got to sanding.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

As I was getting in to the finishing stages of the sanding, I realized that I was going to need to build up some areas and smooth out some others.\u00a0 I chose plaster of Paris for that job and went through about 30 pounds of it.\u00a0 Definitely not the right tool for the job, but at the time it seemed to make sense.\u00a0 I built up the plug and then sanded it down.\u00a0 And then built it up.\u00a0 And then sanded it down.\u00a0 And then built it up….\u00a0 etc etc<\/p>\n

<\/a>\n\n <\/div><\/div>

<\/a>\n\n <\/div><\/div>

<\/a>\n\n <\/div><\/div><\/p>\n

Finally, I was left with a plug that was roughly shaped like the helmet I was trying to form.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

For the 2018 costume, Debbie decided to do Dark Helmet from Spaceballs.\u00a0 My task has been to make the portion of the costume from which it derives its name: the helmet itself. The helmet needed to be fairly sturdy and…
Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-592","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-cosplay"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.putrescence.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/592","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.putrescence.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.putrescence.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.putrescence.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.putrescence.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=592"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.putrescence.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/592\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":640,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.putrescence.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/592\/revisions\/640"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.putrescence.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=592"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.putrescence.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=592"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.putrescence.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=592"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}