Flametrooper Project: Prototyping and Molding the Armor

A little over a year ago, I got really excited about the flamethower trooper from Star Wars Episode VII. 

So I made me some helmets:


You can read about that build here: LINK.

The only problem at this stage is that I'm an overgrown child who has no impulse control. 

But what I do have are a very particular set of skills; skills I have acquired over a very long career.  Skills that a wiser man would put to use turning a profit and that'd be the end of it.

But not me.  Because I started on this silly project, I will continue.  I will finish it or it will haunt me for all of my days.

To see what happened next, read on...

Force Awakens Flametrooper Helmet Replica

It turns out there's a whole new Star Wars movie coming out.

I promised I wouldn't get myself excited enough to build any of the stuff from the film until after I'd actually seen it.  Then I saw this guy:


That's a stormtrooper.  He has a flamethrower.  This is who I want to be when I grow up.

Since the State of California has very specific restrictions on the ownership of flamethrowers,* and the action figure just isn't quite enough, I'm going to have to settle for just dressing like this guy.  As luck would have it, the Lopez twins (my Carvewright CNC machines) were sitting idle in the shop.  So I hit up my friends at DO3D.com and had them crank out a quick 3D model for me:


After the Lopez twins were done chewing it up and spitting it out, I molded it, cast it, and painted up a rough-draft version like so:


For more (better) photos, the final draft version, and a step-by-step explanation of how it was made, read on...