Chest armor

I decided to make some chest armor using the "foam mat" approach. I've seen some pretty amazing stuff made using foam floor mats, so I decided to give it a try.

First I started be cutting out some templates.

once I did that, I heated the areas I wanted to bend with a heat gun, & held them in the shape I wanted.

Then I cut out some accent panels and glued them on with a hot melt glue gun.

Pretty cool, huh?

I used Velcro, nylon straps, & buckles to hold it all together.

Fits great...

BFG

This year I decided to make a big f'n gun to go with my costume, so I started with a sweet nerf gun I purchased on eBay.

It had a removable front section that I'm going to relocate to the bottom of the gun.

I decided to cut some bits out to make the sections fit together. I did this with my band saw & Dremel tool.

I'm going to have to cut some pieces of plastic to fill the gaps & give me a surface to epoxy to.

I took the gun pieces apart & took all of the parts out for paint.

These are the extra plastic pieces I made out a material called sintra plastic. Good material. It cuts easy, & can be shaped with heat.

The first thing I had to do was to get everything in primer...

Ah yes, much better!

After Spraying a base coat of hammered metal finish, I then masked the gun and painted the remaining areas with a gloss black.

Lookin' pretty sweet!

Now that everything is painted, it's time to epoxy it all together!

Lookin' cool!

Now it's time to build the crazy rail/frame for it. 

My work shop

Before I started building, I had to make a good place to do it. My warehouse had become a storage unit again, so I had to get in there & clean it out and make it usable again. Fun!

Before...

After...

Yay!! Let's build some stuff!!!

The road to Dragon Con

I'd like to start by saying as much fun as Dragon Con is, there's always a month or so before hand of intense crafting, fabricating, painting & general prep work on costumes to have them ready in time for the con. This year I'm trying to simplify it somewhat by making some "adaptable" costumes that can be used in different configurations, instead of multiple costumes that are going to take up a ton of space in an already cramped room. 

  I'm going to use this blog as a record of my build process. Enjoy....