The Eternal Darkness - My Costumes - Snowtrooper - The Assembly Of The Helmet

The assembly of the helmet

Finally the awesome Snowtrooper helmet is finished, along with the custom white balaclava and neck seal, and they will surely help me stay warm when running outside in the winter cold. The helmet liner worked very well also, even though I have never made one before. Feel free to use any ideas from this tutorial, and good luck assembling your own Snowtrooper helmet.

Project details

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

Balaclava version - Custom.

Neck seal version - Custom, inspired by Stormtrooper neck seals.

Project duration - 5 days.

Costs spent - $0 USD.

Thanks to

Dan Laws for having made the helmet kit.

Whoever made the cowl vinyl.

TK-3444 for having sent me the cowl vinyl.

All the people who made everything else I used for this helmet.

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The semi-assembled helmet kit consisted of three vacuformed pieces that were pre-glued together when I got it.

When purchasing a Snowtrooper armor kit, the helmet is usually included as a semi-assembled kit that requires a helmet liner and a cowl. Fortunately for me, several members of the Nordic Garrison were at the time trimming and distributing Snowtrooper helmet cowls for those who needed it, giving me one also. At the same time I would get the opportunity to create my own helmet liner for this helmet kit.

To work as the lenses was a sheet of transparent green film taped to the inside of the faceplate.

The same film was later used to make darker green lenses.

The two helmet cowls that I was provided by members of the Nordic Garrison were cut around a pattern that was made specifically for this type of helmet kit.

Contact adhesive was applied on the faceplate to glue it onto the front cowl.

When using contact adhesive, it should be applied on both surfaces and dry off a bit before putting them together, so naturally it was applied to the back of the front cowl.

After the glue had dried a bit on both surfaces, the pieces were placed together and fused for all time.

Contact adhesive was then applied to the inside of the helmet an the rest of the cowl to hold them together.

Contact adhesive was applied to the back of the helmet, covering the two lowest bumps from the bottom rim, then the same width of contact adhesive was applied to the back cowl.

The original Snowtrooper helmets had a small copper detail on top of the helmet domes that possibly held the helmet lining in place, but even though my helmet lining will be made differently, I wanted to make the small copper part for screen accuracy.

The top of a rivet was grinded round to make it look more like the original part.

After both cowls were attached to the helmet, it started looking more like a Snowtrooper.

Most of the rivet's shaft was removed to prevent it from digging into the top of my head.

After gluing the part into place, this is what it all looked like.

It's not much, but it's there.

To make the custom helmet liner, I used an old white belt and some few other white straps.

While the belt strangely enough had the exact length needed to fit around my head, one of the ends of it was damaged and needed fixing.

A small white strap was glued onto the belt with contact adhesive.

Six lines were made to show where to attach the pieces that hold the helmet lining in place and the elastic strap that holds my head in place in the lining.

After the glue had dried, several stitches were made to hold the parts together.

A white elastic strap was then sewn onto the helmet lining.

Four pieces of leftover plastic from my Snowtrooper gauntlets were sewn onto the helmet liner.

These would eventually hold the liner in place inside the helmet.

Here you can see what the helmet liner looks like so far.

Some old pleather was sewn around the white belt to give it that military used look.

Slits were cut in the pleather in order to let the elastic strap through it.

Eventually the pleather was sewn on all the way.

Four more pieces of pleather were cut out to hold the top of my head in place inside the helmet liner.

The two pieces at the side were made shorter to accommodate the shape of a human head.

The top of the pleather pieces were sewn together to form a tube where a cord would go through later on.

The pieces were sewn onto the helmet liner with the pleather side inwards since this is what you will see inside the helmet.

A cord was drawn through the top tubes of the pleather parts to tie them together.

This also makes the helmet liner adjustable, raising and lowering on a head this way.

Double sided adhesive pads were added to the four plastic strips, then the liner was placed inside the helmet where the strips held it in place.

The shapes of the lens openings were traced onto a sheet of paper, then a rim was drawn around them in order to use them as templates.

The shapes of the templates were traced onto clear Plexiglass that would become the new lenses.

The new lenses were cut out, and their edges were sanded smooth.

Since the Plexiglass was not that thick, I could shape them curved after heating them with a hairdryer.

After a dark tinting foil had been applied to the new lenses, the same lens shape was cut out of the green foil that was provided in the helmet kit.

This would give the new lenses the accurate green hue.

A glue gun was used to attach the green film onto the lenses.

Not what I usually like to use, but it'll do.

The same melted glue was used to attach the lenses inside the helmet also.

Here you can see the new darker green lenses in all their Snowtroopery glory.

The helmet is now complete and ready for the winter cold.

I wanted to have a white balaclava for this costume but did not know where to buy one, so thought I could just make one instead since I already had a black one for my Stormtrooper costume that I could use for the pattern.

An old cotton T-shirt was used as the fabric for the balaclava.

A balaclava simply consists of two mirrored parts that are sewn together in the middle, then the face opening and neck opening are hemmed.

Nothing to it really.

Turning it outside out again after sewing it together, and it was a white Snowtrooper balaclava.

A round piece of fabric was also cut out of the cotton T-shirt that would later become the base of a white neck seal.

The size of the neck was traced onto the center of the fabric, then a series of flaps were traced that would later be sewn to the bottom of the neck seal.

After dividing the center into eight sections, two of the sections were removed along the whole base to give it the right shape to fit my shoulders.

Also it could be said as to remove about 25% of the whole thing, and it should work.

The neck seal was made of a smooth cotton fabric that was lined with white fleece.

Using a measuring part on my sewing machine, each ridge would be as wide as the other all along the way.

The eight flaps of the base was placed in between the fabric of the neck seal before the rest of the ridges were sewn in, attaching both pieces together.

After that was done, the edges of the neck seal were hemmed.

The edge of the base was also conveniently hemmed.

Velcro was sewn onto each end of the neck seal to hold it together, obviously.

The end result is a custom white Snowtrooper neck seal.

A hole was made through the middle of the dome for the part.