The Lessons I Learned Building my Son's Halo Replica Armor

I laughed when I went to different forums and it said it could take up to 300 hours to build a Halo Master Chief Spartan Armor.  

Well Im not laughing now!!  Over 200 hours of work.  Researching, cutting, sanding, gluing, soldering, swearing, spraying, painting, sanding and then lighting this suit. 

Same suit in different lighting

I used a couple of great resources to build this suit for my son and they give you all the instructions and guidance you could ever desire; however, they missed a few things that I thought I could pass on from my experience building this costume.

First piece of advice I can give is if you plan to build this replica, take up drinking.  If you don't drink, now is a good time to start, if you drink in moderation you will likely need to up your game.

Secondly forget seeing daylight for well over a month.  Oh my gosh you really have no life if you start a project like this.

Third piece of advice get a Tetanus shot.  I have had more cuts and burns in the last month then I have in my entire life.  A couple of times it was deep enough to see the bone.  I can't believe how many cuts and burns this project brings.  If it wasn't for the fact the a utility blade dulls after 30 secs of cutting through the high density foam I would probably have no fingers left.

I learned a lot from www.instructables.com especially if you are going to use the Pepakura method, Pepakura is like origami, you make your costume out of paper and then you fiberglass it.  Here is the Pepakura files for Halo http://halocostuming.wikia.com/wiki/Pepakura_File_Index .  My advice here is that if you have avoided nerve medication up to this point in life then perhaps avoid this method because I think you would definitely need it after making an origami head to toe replica costume (if you are already medicated then I recommend this method because it turns out beautifully)

Probably the greatest resource for information, ideas and advice is www.405th.com I bow down to the people over at 405th because their work and knowledge on this subject is amazing. I lurked for 2 months in there while I was building this, I learned a lot from them.

   

If they say use High density foam mats, use HIGH DENSITY FOAM MATS don't go trying cardboard, styrofoam insulation or carpet underlay foam thinking your gonna find something better I already tried it and nope they were "right" so don't waste a week trying other material like I did.  They are available at Walmart or Canadian Tire. Sold as attachable floor mats for working out (in the exercise equipment area)

The helmet, I modified a Replica Helmet that came with the Halo 3 Legendary Edition game bundle.  Some of these are available on ebay.  I found a video on Youtube (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hAPrBQ4-2Yo) where a couple of great guys demonstrate the best way to do this and they walk you through it step by step (I was so happy to find them)  but dude you have a hole in your pants.  The lesson here is, if your going to make a youtube video make sure theres not a big hole in the crouch of your pants, just saying.  (great job on the video though it saved me from making tons of mistakes)  Don't expect this part to be easy.  Even after you do everything thats in the video to remove the junk in the interior you have a lot of soldering, cutting altering and gluing to get this thing back together.  You also need to line the inside and add a visor (see below).

For the visor use a HJC hj-05 visor in gold like the one shown.  Its available on Ebay but if your like me and forget to order in time to get it then the lesson here is to make sure you have a friend that cares for you enough to drive to the HJC dealer thats 45 minutes away because you won't have time to do it.  Fogging will be an issue so you either need to add holes for air to pass through the helmet or get a breath deflector (HJC carries a universal one)

Find a pattern, someone else already made one..so no need to reinvent the wheel.  The pattern I found  I  paid for (dammit) but the guy knew what he was talking about.  Problem is he forgot to tell us what he was talking about  there is NO instructions,  I think I cried a bit during this process (please don't cry at this point if your a man, no one likes a man who cries for nothing), I sometimes stared at pieces of paper trying to figure out how they go together for hours.  When you buy something it SHOULD come with instructions. However I was so thankful to find a pattern that I shouldn't mention the lack of instructions (again).

Once you have the pattern you want to use and you have print and cut your patterns out, time to cut the foam and here is where I learnt another great tip;   To cut out your foam pieces don't sit (or kneel) on a cold garage floor in the middle of October  in Canada. (if you live south of Virginia please feel free to sit on the floor)  I don't know why they missed this advice at the 405th. TWO DAYS it takes to get that chill out of your body. TWO days. 

Ok next is sanding and then gluing the pieces together, the advice I want to share for this step is  don't get your nails done,  ok not that this applies to men but that glue is nasty for your nails..it costs 45 dollars to get your nails done and it takes about 10 mins of work on this project to have them look horrible :-(.

Next you need to harden the suit or give it a plastic coating.  With the foam method a lot of people use plastic dip, I tried this and it didn't work for me. 4 days and this stuff still smelled so bad? and all I plastic dipped was one shin piece yet the entire garage smelled of harsh chemicals.   So the lesson here get SOMEONE ELSE to spray or to coat the suit.  I was sooo lucky to have a friend who has a friend that worked in a facility where he was able to spray coat the armour in plastic creating a hard outer shell and texture, lots of luv there!!! What was used on this suit is the same type of spray that is used to line the back of a pick up truck.

Once I got it back it was time to paint it..realizing after one whole coat of paint that the paint really had nothing to stick because the plastic outer shell was to glossy (oops I forgot to sand) so I had to sand over the first coat of paint to get the second and third to stick.  Lesson here Girls are dumb now I don't need anyone to confirm that or agree with it so let it go..I admitted it, it stops there.

Then I had to rough it up to look used, warn, or real. Lesson here? Red wine, don't splash it onto the suit, drink it, while you paint up the markings.

Then the lights, well here is where I used the dremal for the first time what I learnt here is that..women shouldn't use tools and bits don't last long, so have extra on hand.

You need a black under suit and if your hardcore you should get a body armour used for motocross O'neal and Fox have some amazing looking ones that would complete this suit so well. www.motorcycle-superstore.com has lots to choose from.

Finally you need to buy industrial strength Velcro thats at least 2 inches wide to give a bit of support to the pieces if they are lose.  Placement of the Velcro will greatly affect how the suit looks. In a lot of my pictures you can see the shoulder pieces are not sitting in the right place, thats because I put the Velcro on the inside of the arm.  Ive now changed the Velcro to the opposite end.

The last thing I learned that I didn't see written anywheres on the internet is that If you enjoy being creative and you luv your kid or just luv halo This is a lot of fun to build.

No actually the very last thing I learned is that there is no spell check in this blog software.