Praetorian Guard Samurai

[CadBane3]

Hello everybody! I jumped at the chance to be a part of this build group because these guys and gals just look so cool and if we can field a whole unit of them to protect Kylo, instead of trying to kill him, that would be pretty epic. I chose the Samurai because I liked the double bladed weapon he has. I'm not crazy about his helmet, but it still looks pretty cool.

The first thing is that I ordered were the gloves and boots from Imperial Boots before they closed down again. These are probably the most comfortable shoes I own now. Certainly the most comfortable for trooping. The gloves are a L and are a bit tight, but I'm sure they will stretch a little with use.

20180430_141347 by Michael Halstead, on Flickr

Our crack team of 3D printers and modelers have been hard at work in trying to get parts that will work and I volunteered to see if I could clean up and assemble the helmet for the samurai. Here are the raw prints for about 60% of the helmet. The flat top piece is still being created, so I'll have it in a few weeks.

20180505_124722 by Michael Halstead, on Flickr

20180505_124725 by Michael Halstead, on Flickr

20180505_124735 by Michael Halstead, on Flickr

20180505_124739 by Michael Halstead, on Flickr

20180505_124747 by Michael Halstead, on Flickr

20180505_124750 by Michael Halstead, on Flickr

The clean up involves removal of all these support pieces:

20180505_125720 by Michael Halstead, on Flickr

And the clean up on the mask is a bit tougher:

20180505_130149 by Michael Halstead, on Flickr

I used the back end of an exacto knife (ie not the sharp part but the back of that) to gently coax all the extra parts out and then used a very small file on the parts that were extra stubborn.

20180506_122456 by Michael Halstead, on Flickr

The one "issue," and I'm not even sure you could call it an issue but more of an area that you need to be careful with is that some of the faceplate print came out a bit stringy and isn't quite all attached.

20180508_134343 by Michael Halstead, on Flickr

Here's a demonstration. At rest:

20180508_134422 by Michael Halstead, on Flickr

And moved with very slight pressure:

20180508_134431 by Michael Halstead, on Flickr

I talked with Mike K and Luke who both have a lot more experience with 3D prints than I do and it was suggested I pick up Z Poxy as this is will sort of coat everything with resin and hold pieces together. I bought this stuff (the adhesive next to it will be used later).

20180508_125119 by Michael Halstead, on Flickr

The nice thing about that Z Poxy is that it is truly odorless so I didn't feel like I was killing brain cells in using it (that's what whiskey is for!). The other nice thing is that it totally worked. I gave all the parts a coat and then let them sit overnight (drying time on the bottle is 2 hours, but they still felt sticky). I then gave them a second coat and let them sit overnight again.

20180508_144804 by Michael Halstead, on Flickr

Then, today, I got to the dirty and powdery business of sanding them. Started with the 150 and worked my way up to the 400.

20180511_105201 by Michael Halstead, on Flickr

2 passes with the 150:

20180511_113930 by Michael Halstead, on Flickr

After this, I gave them a third pass:

20180511_135713 by Michael Halstead, on Flickr

Then I used the other grits:

20180511_154023 by Michael Halstead, on Flickr

Ended up at a pretty good point for now. My plan is to get these three parts glued together so that I can bondo the seams and get started on more sanding as I'm certain that I will need quite a bit more sanding once the seams are put together. Then, I need to do all the same with the flat top head piece.

Any input or suggestions are certainly welcome!

[CadBane3]

Decided to glue together what I have so far so that I can start filling gaps and finish the sanding. The back part connects to the top part...

For this, I used Mike K's suggestion of Bob Smith InstaCure CA glue, and it certainly does cure quickly!

20180511_192627 by Michael Halstead, on Flickr

Then, before I put on the face plate, I tried to clean up the vision slits a bit more, but there's only so much you can do before you start to hear the plastic make cracking noises, which is it's way of saying "STOP!" This is about as good as it will get. If any other samurai's out there want me to try to assemble your helmet, I'd probably try to clean it up even more before the Z Poxy step, but it's just such a delicate area that real care is needed.

20180511_193142 by Michael Halstead, on Flickr

Then, I put on the faceplate and it's starting to resemble a bucket!

20180511_194000 by Michael Halstead, on Flickr

I figure I'll let this stuff dry and then fun with bondo and more sanding!

[daryldoak]

Very cool!  <chomping popcorn emoji here>

[Rat]

Very cool.

Sent from my VK815 using Tapatalk

[DStep]

Wow, can't wait to see how this turns out!

[CadBane3]

Was able to make a little more progress on this over the last week or so. Slow going. Luke got me the top pieces:

20180519_210825 by Michael Halstead, on Flickr

20180519_210848 by Michael Halstead, on Flickr

So, I cleaned them up and added 2 layers of Z Poxy:

20180523_102703 by Michael Halstead, on Flickr

Then I gave them one pass through with the 150 grit and then attached them together. Figured since they will have a rather large seam that needs to disappear, it would be better to do most of the sanding at the same time:

20180525_191813 by Michael Halstead, on Flickr

I glued them together with a piece of spare ABS as an additional support since they are not completely flush and there are minor imperfections.

20180527_133708 by Michael Halstead, on Flickr

20180527_133716 by Michael Halstead, on Flickr

As you can see, the four parts are not completely equal and there are some rather large raised areas that will need attention:

20180527_133733 by Michael Halstead, on Flickr

20180527_133754 by Michael Halstead, on Flickr

This is supposed to be flush:

20180527_133800 by Michael Halstead, on Flickr

To start, I used Z Poxy in the gap areas as I figured that it would be best to add some epoxy to help strengthen the bond from the super glue.

20180527_173450 by Michael Halstead, on Flickr

And on the side of the main bucket, it nearly closed the seam completely. Not quite though.

20180527_173314 by Michael Halstead, on Flickr

This put me at a good spot to test the size and finally be able to put the helmet on to see what it would look like:

20180527_173635 by Michael Halstead, on Flickr

20180527_173702 by Michael Halstead, on Flickr

Visibility is difficult and it is rather large. Definitely going to need some padding in there to keep it up higher so that I can see through the vision slits. That can all wait.

I started sanding down some more:

20180527_175256 by Michael Halstead, on Flickr

But, it's starting to look like a pretty cool helmet:

20180527_175308 by Michael Halstead, on Flickr

So, now I need to make the seams disappear and make sure everything is as smooth as I can so that I can start the painting stages. Never used Bondo before. Watched a 7 minute youtube video and said my famous "doesn't look so difficult" and just started working on it.

20180528_104228 by Michael Halstead, on Flickr

Put it on pretty thick and pretty wide as I really need to build up the area that is sunk in so that it slowly rises to meet the other part of the helmet. The rest of it will be sanded down so that it all is flush and, hopefully, very very smooth.

20180528_105924 by Michael Halstead, on Flickr

20180528_105939 by Michael Halstead, on Flickr

20180528_105942 by Michael Halstead, on Flickr

So, that's it for now. Letting the bondo cure and I'm going to go see Solo. By the time I get home, I should be able to sit on the back porch and sand for awhile and see what it looks like.

[CadBane3]

Saw Solo and loved it. Came back home and the bondo was ready to be sanded. Hit it with the 150 grit, 220 grit and then 400 grit:

20180528_165744 by Michael Halstead, on Flickr

20180528_163851 by Michael Halstead, on Flickr

Getting pretty smooth by the end.

Couple areas that I may need to apply bondo to again and do the process over:

20180528_175834 by Michael Halstead, on Flickr

20180528_175840 by Michael Halstead, on Flickr

20180528_175852 by Michael Halstead, on Flickr

But I'm wondering the if the Z Poxy would do the trick or if the filler primer will take care of those. Anyone?

[CadBane3]

Added a bit of Bondo to the areas that needed it and then did a bit more sanding today. Figured now was as good a time as any to finally glue the pieces together.

20180529_153454 by Michael Halstead, on Flickr

Then, I gave it one coat of filler primer:

20180529_170703 by Michael Halstead, on Flickr

20180529_170729 by Michael Halstead, on Flickr

Starting to look pretty cool! I think the filler primer will expose areas that need more sanding, so I think I'll still be doing a bit of that but it's really coming along!

[CadBane3]

Primer, sand, primer, sand, primer, sand, primer, sand... You get the point. Each time, the helmet looked better.

20180530_094916 by Michael Halstead, on Flickr

20180530_111822 by Michael Halstead, on Flickr

And eventually, I got to a place I was somewhat happy with:

20180530_145130 by Michael Halstead, on Flickr

I ended up using almost 2 whole cans of filler primer and many hours of work, but it got to a point where I didn't think I could make it any better, so I moved on to the next step:

20180531_102202 by Michael Halstead, on Flickr

20180531_104526 by Michael Halstead, on Flickr

20180531_104529 by Michael Halstead, on Flickr

So, that's one coat of paint on it and I need to wait 48 hours to put another coat on, so I'm going to let it sit until Saturday. Once that is done, I'm going to add a lot of foam to the inside to see if I can get it to sit properly on my head and then I'll share some photos of what it looks like. I would estimate that I've put roughly 10-15 hours into getting it to this point.

Is it perfect? No. There are still some imperfections and bumps, but it's much better than it was and I can live with that. Will a GML be able to live with that? I dunno, we'll have to see once I get the final coats of paint on it and see how good it really looks.

[Lidocaine]

I think it's looking good! Two cans of filler primer, you're a sanding machine.

One of these days we'll get a CRL... In the meantime thanks for being our guinea pig beta tester on the helmet file! Like we talked about I'll probably scale the file down a few % and see if someone with a smaller noggin can fit into it ok.

[CadBane3]

It is quite roomy. I can do the work on the smaller one if you want as well (if the eventual owner is ok with that). Kind of out of projects until Chris gets me the Rose City gun that needs work. Again, it's not perfect and it's not flawless, but show me a TK with a symmetrical helmet...

[CadBane3]

Brought the helmet to Starlight and some folks saw it, but forgot to share it here.

20180601_113241 by Michael Halstead, on Flickr

20180602_101909 by Michael Halstead, on Flickr

It's not flawless and seeing is difficult once it's on but I'm happy with it. Looking forward to continuing with this build! Anybody else in the build group that wants a samurai, if you want help with your helmet, let me know. I'm happy to assist (or just do it).

[nukem25rs]

nice work Mike. you are def a sanding machine. now the question is orbital or belt.. 

didnt know you had it at starlight! oh well ill see it soon enough.

[CadBane3]

Figured I may as well put this up here as it is a part of a build, just not for myself. I was given this double blade and asked to repair it and prep it for raffle at Rose City. The print got wobbly in a few parts so I figured I may as well see what I can do to repair it and it'll be good practice for me when I build one for myself.

As you can see in this picture, some of the detail pieces near the blade are missing on the one on the right:

20180716_130727 by Michael Halstead, on Flickr

It still looks pretty cool when put together!

20180716_130753 by Michael Halstead, on Flickr

Here's a close up of where it was missing the largest part:

20180716_133059 by Michael Halstead, on Flickr

So, I built a replacement piece out of two layers of craft foam, which came to almost the perfect height:

20180716_152140 by Michael Halstead, on Flickr

Going to need to blend it and remove any transition points, but here is a rough draft of what I came up with:

20180716_152237 by Michael Halstead, on Flickr

And you can see in this pic, there were a few other areas that were missing parts that needed to be built:

20180716_152958 by Michael Halstead, on Flickr

Then, I added the "bullet" details and the greeblies. I'm missing 4 greeblies and those will be received soon, but I may as well chug forward:

20180718_120754 by Michael Halstead, on Flickr

Lastly, I added the first coat of Zpoxy to coat all of it and fill in some of the smaller gaps.

20180718_132010 by Michael Halstead, on Flickr

This will need to dry overnight and then I will add a second layer and then the sanding begins!

[CadBane3]

Kind of forgot to update this as I went so this will be brief. I'll leave out multiple layers of filler primer and the hours and hours of sanding that I did and we'll jump straight to the painting stages.

Gave it the base coat of red:

20180810_081605 by Michael Halstead, on Flickr

And then had to hand paint all the silver. In hindsight, I would tape it off better or spray the silver first and then tape that off as this hand painting stage takes about 4 hours per each half blade and was about 6 coats:

20180810_155525 by Michael Halstead, on Flickr

And, today I finished it:

20180812_135233 by Michael Halstead, on Flickr

20180812_135301 by Michael Halstead, on Flickr

It's not perfect and I see flaws in the print as well as my work, but for a raffle prize at RCCC, it should bring in some money for Magic Wheelchair. Not bad considering we may have just thrown it away. I've learned a lot about how to build and paint these in the future, so I'll have to have another go at it. Perhaps painting before final assembly would be much easier. I'm eager to get my hands on another and have another run at it.