Stormtrooper helmet mods

POSTED BY DANNY CHOO On Mon 2006/04/24 16:17 JST in Tokyo Stormtrooper
The Battle Spec stormtrooper helmet by Shepperton Design Studios is a rather nice helmet - it should be because Shepperton are the original makers. BUT! (but?) if you want to go trooping with it then the helmet needs a few modifications...
If you haven't done so already, take a look at what the helmet looked like out of the box to see why some of these mods are needed.
First off, the helmet needs to be taken apart and can be done easily by removing 6 screws. The sponge is loose and the brow comes off easily too. The green lens that comes with the helmet should be set on fire and the ashes should be flushed down the toilet together with your morning dump.
This is the inside of the face part - very simple. Notice how there's no glue around the eyes unlike the AFX.
This is the problematic part as I mentioned in the previous post. The tape used on the frown is quite pathetic because it peels off easily and doesn't wrap behind the teeth.
Enlarge this shot to see what I mean.
Be brave and peel off the frown tape where upon the frown will look like this. Now you also have the option of painting it but I chose a different method...
Stick the tape that you peeled from the frown to some cardboard lying around. If you are feeling rich, you can use 10000 yen notes instead.
Cut out the tape that you stuck down to the cardboard leaving extra room to wrap around behind the "teeth" in the frown. The pieces that you end up with is the "template" that you will use to cut out pieces from electrical tape.
Now stick on the new pieces of tape around the teeth on the frown.
Use a cotton bud ( preferably a clean one ) to ease the electric tape into the nooks and crannies in the frown.
This is what you should end up with.
The frown is not symmetrical so keep all the pieces of the template that you made earlier for when your new frown starts to peel off.
I really didnt want glue around the eyes so screwed the lens in place by making additional holes in the side of the helmet and the forehead.
The mic (not sure what this piece is called) is stuck on using glue and will fall off when trooping - pull them off and take them apart...
Once the mic is in pieces, make a hole in the bottom of the mic.
Once thats done, make a hole in the chin and screw on the mic. This will make sure that it wont fall off while you are having a pee. Peeing on your mic would be most unpleasant especially when you have to stick that mic back onto the front of the helmet - the smells may cause dizzyness.
The inside of the helmet with a chin strap that I added. The helmet is very light and a chin strap is needed to hold it in place.
Another thing I done was to add a metal mesh behind the teeth just like the one in the AFX. Without the mesh, one can see that there's a human inside which will shatter people dreams.