The shins offered by the Prop Store of London March 08...




Anyone know who got them? I didn't have the spare change at the time

Lucky you Thomas because some mug's been stitched up. Were they in the skip where all the other originals have been found?

Brian

Cheers Brian,

Actually just as a point of information, I think these were not from Elstree Props....I don't know who was offering them through the Prop Store.

And I know someone with pretty good photos of the originals and these seem to be completely accurate. Do you mean they are not from the original mold or do not look like the clay sculpture? I'd be interested to hear more about that. Thanks.

I love how the styling matches the chest armour.
The shins are always out of sight and it's a shame.

Well seeing as the original mould was probably silicone with a fibreglass case they wouldn't be from the original moulds.
They would have to be from a positive for vac forming.

Well, there is evidence that suggest that maybe they tried vac-forming the armor. There's a promo picture showing Vader with what appears to be a vac-formed chest armor on Jez' site... but maybe that was not meant for screen use?

Someone with a set of fibreglass shins and a vacuum forming machine?
What provenance do they have - just that they came from Elstree?
Is is confirmed that they even came from Elstree?

I said it once before that,regardless of authenticity although for the record I think these pieces are authentic production test pieces,the price was far too high for what they are.
Stephen acquired a number of mold test pieces a number of years ago which included pieces from Vader and C-3PO.I have handled and seen some of these pieces although did not see the shins in person.I wouldnt doubt their authenticity but the price is unrealistic and will not maintain their sale value.

Interesting thead....I was meaning to start a thread due to Brian's comment about the shins being fiberglass as well as the rest of Vader's hard parts. I had always 'heard' that the shins were plastic, which is why this has raised a big question for me.

I agree too that these look legit. It is also interesting that there were rumors that there was a single shin used for the left and right. This seems to disprove that one as well.

Let's not forget that they used both a fiberglass and a vac-formed C-3PO torso in ANH; the latter for the stunt version used in Tunisia where threepio takes a spill during the tusken raider attack. Not to get this thread offtrack, but threepio's shorts and shoes were also vac-formed plastic, changed to urethane in ESB and ROTJ. It is feasible that for some parts Elstree just took the positive plaster cast and vac-formed over them.....you would obviously lose some detail, but the general shape would be there.

I'll admit I considered them..

They got snapped up before I'd made up my mind though. The fact that the originals were fibreglass did sew a few seeds of doubt however their shapes look very convincing.

The ROTJ shins (and I think the ESB) were vacced, so could it be possible these test-pulls are authentic but were made later on and not for ANH?

Jeremy

Wish I knew enough about Vader to contribute something of value to the conversation, but I can say as for the shins that it would make good sense from a practical view that they might have vac formed them in ABS. I don't know, maybe ABS was different back then than today, but for anyone who's had much experience actually wearing the Vader suit, it becomes apparent after you've gone through a couple of sets of expensive fiberglass shins why they might have opted for ABS on those pieces. I have a nice set of ABS shins and I can say that they will take far more abuse than any of my fiberglass pieces. I've always considered fiberglass to be pretty much the cheapest stuff you could make something out of, which is why it's so popular for making movie props, it's cheap and easy. It does have strength, but it takes a person that really knows what they're doing to make it anything other than extremely fragile, and most of the time it's just very brittle. There's hardly a Vader piece I have in glass that doesn't have at least one crack in it somewhere, and I've probably received about 6-7 helmets in the mail over the years cracked all to pieces. I've certainly seen industrial fiberglass that was incredibly strong with lots of flexibility, but I've yet to see a hand laid prop piece of any kind that displayed any of those qualities, yet conversely, all of my ABS pieces arrived in one piece and remain so today. They simply may have gotten tired of replacing Dave Prowse's cracked shins every other scene and just decided to vac form a set in ABS, seems logical to me, but who knows.

Looking at this pic i would say the shins were plastic as it looks like there is a big crease as if its been sqaushed by something heavy or something. FG would not bend like that, or am i seeing things?

Steve, the new owner of Elstree props contacted me and asked my opinion.

I believe he was interested but I as far as I know he did not purchase them.

I believe it's simply a reflection of the boot.

It's pretty obvious that the shins in the Kermit pics are plastic. So, you could infer that since the rest of that tour suit is screen used that the shins were also screen used. A simple conclusion, but speculative as well.