spidermanna
New Member
Welcome to the next chapter in the Book of Boba Fett Building--and like that show, this one is pretty weak as well. This one is almost embarrassing because 1) I didn’t take a lot of pictures and 2) There isn’t much to it in terms of building thing—its mostly just weaving and painting and burning things. I’ll start with the Wookie Scalps, or Braids since there isn’t any actual scalp material (aka tuffs of skin).
The original specs for the braids called for horse hair—probably like those used in violin bows and whatnot. Those are expensive and hard to come by the real thing, even living in the Midwest. I thought about going to weave shops to look for hair extensions and those aren’t cheap either, so one day I stumbled on this wig at Johnny Broch’s Dungeon (if you know where that is than you know where I am). It was perfect and not too terribly expensive. The mannequin on the right is wearing a poncho because you have to spray a lot of water on this stuff to comb it straight and separate it…
I mean seriously—check out how frizzy this stuff was. Use a brush with pretty wide teeth and prepare to be combing/brushing for a while. Once you do though, use cheapo hair bands from Dollar tree to hold the strands together. By themselves, these strands won’t be long enough to make the overall length, but gluing them together with superglue and wrapping thread around the glue joints does the trick.
Keep in mind that there are about 6 or so different braids and each one of those needs at least 2-3 individual strands, and some of those need doubled depending on the length of the overall weave. I don’t remember how many strands I needed and had to cut out but I chopped the hell out of that wig. Also keep in mind that each strand might be a different thickness—nothing about this part of the build had any consistency unfortunately.
I was really struggling to figure out the cheapest, quickest, and least intrusive way to paint these and make them look organic. Keep in mind that they are essentially spaghettified PVC or similar plastic so they aren’t too keen on taking color and spray paints are too thick and not very organic. So, in the end, I opted for Minwax wood stain because it has all the natural browns and tones but also cuz I had a crapload of it in the garage. Again, don’t do this stuff on your expensive kitchen countertops…when your wife is around. And again, Dollar Tree to the rescue with these wonderful little disposable bottles.
Each bottle was marked for the specific color (I didn’t make note of which strands were which colors or the patterned weaves/lengths but you can find all of that on DentedHelmet.com). The colors I used were Classic Dark gray, Red Oak, Ebony (Black), Dark Walnut, and White silver. For the blondish strands, I didn’t apply any colors. Coloring was attained by spraying with the squirt bottles, flipping over and spraying again. Make sure you let them dry for a very long time as the hair still isn’t keen to take the color (that will be fixed later with the acrylic spray).
Those aren’t looking too terrible. Keep in mind that the long strands we made longer with the glue and thread I used to also make the boots. Also, the wood stain tends to dissolve the cheapo hair bands so be prepared to wrap them again. I wrapped the ends with the thread after weaving anyway but left some frilly bit on the end. Also, I didn’t take any pics of the weaving process—there are lots of tutorials or just ask the nearest female or hippy…
Now I am just padding this tutorial. Not sure why I had the lighter. Don’t expose these guys to flames—they are very flammable!
There isn’t too much to tying these together or mounting them to the flak vest. At the top, there is a thick bit where all the weaves come together. I simply superglued a piece of Velcro to that and a reverse piece on the right shoulder of the vest. Never had one fall off at a show. Be sure to spray them when done with an acrylic sealer (not too heavy) or maybe try hair spray--it might work--should prevent split ends at least maybe--I don't know...
I forgot what this knot was called but I call it a curse. For me, this was by far the hardest part—teaching myself to tie these stupid knots. I found a couple tutorials on You Tube and practiced for hours until I got them down. The idea is you make them on a spoon handle or dowel rod, shift them over to a pencil and then keep pulling on each individual strand to make them small enough to be tight around the pencil. After that, you transfer them to the wookie braids and glue them in place.
Some better pics of the threading and knots. I think both this and the cape were put on to hide the potential gappage btwn the shoulder and the back armor…or maybe that’s just me. Either way they do a pretty good job of it. Speaking of the cape…
There really is not much to making one of these look pretty ratty. To be fair, the originals of these were made from Vietnam-era half tents so I am guessing they were both cheap and ratty looking to begin with. I actually found one of those half tents in a surplus store somewhere north of Springfield, MO and the guy wanted like $80 for it—maybe more (everything surplus nowadays may as well say “premium antique” cuz they aren’t cheap like they used to or should be). Regardless, I wasn’t about to buy one and chop it up so I took a piece of canvas fabric I had left over from my Hicks Colonial Marine build (the pouches that they use were not issue and have to be made), stitched it IAW the designs I found on DentedHelmet.com and washed it several times in strong detergent to get it to lighten up. I actually accidentally made it too light (touch too much bleach with does not make things white BTW, but pink) and darkened it back up with Rit Dye. I used tape to mark where the cuts and tears and burns would be and a variety or tolls to make them...
Once I was done with the basic cutting, I marked where the burned areas would be and went to town…easy stuff…can’t go wrong
This was the final product before mounting the shoulder mount which consisted of a couple of ringlets pressed into the corner. I also lightly touched up various areas with brown and black acrylic sprays to make it look more smoked. Do that very lightly…
And it simply mounts over the screw hole of the far left shoulder and screwed in by the computer keyboard key that I also had to make from scratch cuz modern ones aren’t the right shape or symmetrical!
That’s all I have for these two items. They are pretty easy to make and each one took a couple hours. They probably aren’t to spec but they look pretty good and really accent the costume well. Thanks for looking…
