The Eternal Darkness - My Costumes - Snowtrooper - Preparing The Boots

Preparing the boots

Most things that were used in the Star Wars movies are hard to come by today since those movies were filmed a long time ago, but fortunately the boots that they used for the Snowtrooper costumes are still to be found, and I got a hold of some with ease. Most people order a few size smaller boots to take out the wool liners, but since I wanted these to be warm in the winter cold, I ordered them in my size to keep the liners in.

Finally the boots arrived in a big box with a camouflaged bag with some other cool things.

Here are the boots as they came out of the box without the liners inside.

These type of boots are originally named Mukluks.

The wool liners are very thick and warm, and are also neatly enough reversible.

The wool liners even came with instructions that tells you not to remove these instructions.

Here's all the other cool stuff that came in the camouflaged bag, all for free.

Since these boots are meant to be tightened with the laces, I chose not to remove them even though they did so in the movies.

Also since these were really used by army guys, they were already weathered.

The boot size and side directions were written on the back of the boots with a marker, so I had to get this off with paint thinner, but then the yellowish weathering came off also.

To get the back of the boots goopy and yellowy again, I rubbed them in with some industrial grease that I once found somewhere.

This long strap was also found somewhere at a point in time, so I chose to use this for the three straps on each boot.

Starting at the bottom of the rubber sole, I marked off where the first strap should be, then marked off where the next strap should be, having two strap widths between them.

The boots were made of a synthetic fabric that would melt by heat, so I made the holes for the straps with the tip of a soldering iron.

This way the sides of the holes will also melt together, stopping the fabric from fraying.

Three holes were made through each boot.

For each hole, there will also be a strap, so I cut the long strap into six smaller pieces of about twenty inches.

Having them this long will make them overlap seemingly too much like they did on the original boots from the movie.

A pointy metal object of sorts were hammered through the straps where they will be attached to the boots.

As you can see, the straps were very much whiter than the boots, so I decided to rub them in with an old tea bag to make them darker.

The straps were pressed down towards the sink counter with the tea bags to get most of the coloring particles into them.

Tea can be used for more than just drinking next to a group of old ladies.

To get the straps dry as soon as possible, I threw them all into the oven and heated them up for a while.

The letters L and R were written onto them after having sorted out which side they were most suited for.

Shouldn't really matter than much anyway, but at least they are all sorted.

The Velcro strips that were added to the straps were made three inches long like they looked to have been in the movie.

Sewing through Velcro with glue on the back with a regular sewing machine will definitely make the needle gooey and the thread will snap, but by gooping in the needle with grease and sewing really fast, it works pretty good.

Many globs of grease later, and all the Velcro is attached to all the six straps.

They seem to have used ordinary rivets that were hammered flat on the other side to attach the straps on the original boots, but I chose to use pop-rivets instead as these look really cool.

Popping a pop-rivet through layers of fabric will most likely result in the fabric getting destroyed, and the pop-rivet falling out again, so I drilled six holes through an aluminum plate to make six washers for the pop-rivets.

The washers were cut out using a tin-cutter.

Now all the pop-rivets could be popped into place, holding the straps securely in place at the back of each boot.

Since a lot of the pop-rivets were still sticking out on the inside of the boots, I hammered them flat.

To prevent the pop-rivets and aluminum washers from tearing up either the liners or my pants, I taped over them with some old cloth tape that looked just as old as the boots.

To weather the straps a bit further, I stroke a brush with shoe-polish against the openings so the weathering would look more realistic when there is no weathering where the straps overlap.

It seems the lengths I chose for the straps and Velcro were just right to make the straps overlap a little too much like they did on the original boots.

Even though the laces were not there in the movie, most people choose to have them on anyway since the boots are better to wear then, and they can't really be seen that much anyway.

Since I chose to buy boots in my boot size to keep the liners, they are very warm to use outside in the winter cold indeed, and I am very pleased with how they turned out looking and how warm they are. Feel free to use any ideas from this tutorial, and good luck preparing your own Snowtrooper boots.

Project details

Boot version - Star Wars Episode V - The Empire Strikes Back.

Project duration - 2 Days.

Costs spent - $60 USD.

Accidents - Not even one.

Thanks to

Army Navy Deals for having sold me the boots.

Whoever made the boots.

The army guys who weathered the boots for me.

< Back to main

Pages - 01