Buffalo Beskar, Part 3: Beyond the helmet

Welcome back fans of the Buffalo Bills, Star Wars, DIY, and overly complicated projects. If you’re just joining us, the extremely short version is that a friend of mine bought both of us Black Series Star Wars helmets. The goal? We make them look Billsy.

As I tend to do, I go overboard. In the last chapter, I revealed the color palette for my helmet along with a design for a bison/mythosaur hybrid logo to adorn the side. I ended with pictures of the base coat for my helmet and the mistake I made that cost me more than a week of time to correct.

While I was forcing myself to be patient on sanding my painting issue, I felt it would be best to start on some other parts of the project to keep myself occupied and give me something to do so I don’t rush another paint step on the helmet.

Previous installments for this project:
Buffalo Beskar Part 1
Buffalo Beskar Part 2

Starting the Armor

Yeah, you didn’t really think I was going to leave it as just a helmet, did you? Yeah, I know. In Chapter 1, I explicitly stated that this was not going to be game-day gear for me. I already committed to my Skarekrow costume. While I do have one mask variant already (and a third design in the works), I think “Bills + Star Wars” is already plenty to try to blend.

I don’t need a Skarekrow-Star Wars-Bills costume in some super convoluted concept in order to justify this being another entry into the Skarekrow game day attire. That doesn’t mean I can’t make a full set of gear for fun though, right?

Materials — What can I say, I’m a cheapskate

I need to come clean about something. I’ve never made cosplay armor before, and what you’re reading about is my first attempt. Researching techniques and materials took a good chunk of my time and it sounds like there are some really cool crafting plastics that come in sheets that would be PERFECT for this project. Just simply, absolutely, perfect.

I went with none of them. To save money I used some plastic I had laying around that I could create decent-sized sheets of. Before curiosity kills you, here’s what I had laying around.

Yeah, that’s right. Cat litter buckets. My armor will be freshly scented and help me turn my enemies into tight clumps. Aside from those things, what are the primary benefits of this material for this particular project?

I had a lot of them laying around because we have a cat and buckets are useful.

That’s the whole list. Cat litter buckets are good to store salt for the winter, dye burlap for skarekrow costumes, stack to make a platform to spray paint helmets on, and many other things in their natural state. What they are not good for is shaping to make cosplay components out of.

Through this project I’ve learned to take a hard look at recycling codes on plastic, and these buckets are stamped with a number “5.” Number 5 plastics are polypropylene or “PP.” This plastic is known for being very durable and food safe. PP is also known for:

Having a great “memory.” This means it loves to return to the shape you found it in. This means it’s hard as hell to reshape.
Not bonding well with most paints. Ha ha ha! Yay!
Being incredibly inert for almost all epoxies and glues. That super glue in your kitchen drawer? Useless.

In other words, it’s hard to pick a worse plastic for what I’m doing with it. Did I mention I just happened to have a **** ton of it laying around?

Reclaiming plastic sheets

I started with the breastplate for the armor, which I think is a logical choice. Based on the estimated sizing, I was able to get two sheets per bucket. The term “sheet” is a little loose here, as the buckets contain curves (square buckets with four rounded corners). I need mostly flat pieces to make it work. The usual technique for shaping plastic is a heat gun. Remember that I said PP hates to be reshaped. I had to buy a heavier-duty heat gun than the little guy I already owned, as well as break out my thicker work gloves and get creative.

I used gravity to start the unbending process as you can see in the first picture. The copper pipe held the end in place so the heavier main part would “flop” down. Once a little flatter, I was able to flex the angled part over the pipe and roll it to further flatter it.

Incidentally, while typing that last paragraph I was watching a game show. The contestants only needed one more answer. The clue was “____ melts easily” and the final word they needed started with a “P.” Somehow I spaced out on the obvious and correct answer. That’s right, I didn’t think “Plastic’ while literally writing a section on melting plastic.

Design

Do you know what’s a lot easier to work with than PP? Paper. When it came to designing the armor, I have the ability to draw it out, which is one use of paper. But also, you can use paper to create easy templates for fitting the armor to the person it’s meant for.

Yeah, I went cheap again. I opened up a sandwich bag for my template. We had purchased these for a different craft earlier in the year and they come in packs of 100, so I had plenty left. You’ll see how things translated to the plastic in a moment, but if you’re curious as to how I did this, it was mostly straightforward.

You want the plates to be symmetrical so the paper template is only half the final plate. I put the edge of the paper up to my chest at the mid-line. Then I made small marks with a marker at key points (collarbone, armpit, a couple lower points to create the bottom edge). Once the dots are set, you can draw the rest and cut it out. Don’t worry, the scissors created clean lines. In the image, on the right-hand side there are two sets of lines. I corrected the first sketch and then only cut out the correct lines. Who cares if there’s a little stray marker?

I’ve put you through enough of the process this time around, so I’ll leave you with a gallery of the first four pieces that will provide the main shape of the breastplate. As a quick note, I took pictures of both the back and the front. The back is the gray plastic, which will face in toward the chest. As of right now it looks more “complete.” The Tidy Cat side will be painted. Why? You might remember that I said PP hates taking paint on. The side with the graphics appears to already be prepped for it as testing I’ve done so far suggests it’s holding paint just fine.