No Humor Man wrote:
Well, we have a few facts to consider. June 24. 1977 the Vader helmet was seen in its screen used state during the tours when Kermit Eller visited Jefferson Starship and was photographed by Corbis. Sometime between that time and August 3. 1977 the helmet was molded - the mold we know as the UK mold. The TD helmet originates from that mold lineage, so cannot have been made during ANH production so has no links what-so-ever to whatever repairs were done to the screen used helmets tusk tubes. Like, at all. The next confirmed appearance is August 3. 1977 and shows the helmet in its repainted state and it is this look we see in the Rick Baker mold casts. So both molds were made approximately around the same time - between June 24 and August 3. 1977 - as Rick Baker confirms he molded the helmet at the time he fixed it up. The reason that this can be narrowed down like this is the filler in the grills that is seen in the UK mold casts is nowhere to be seen on the actual helmet until after June 24. Those are facts that cannot be disputed. Anyone can check the picture evidence and verify this for themselves.
So, within the timespan of one and a half months, both the "UK mold" and the US Rick Baker mold was made. Which begs to reason that both molds were done in the US, but still leaves the question: who made the "UK mold"?
Firstly, there is already evidence of paintwork in the Jefferson Starship images, if you look closely. So much for that theory. If there was paintwork already done to the mask at the Jefferson shoot, then the rest of your time line needs to be looked at. I would consider the probability, and that your theory requires, that the original ANH helmet was molded twice in the span of only 1.5 months in two different countries?
Secondly, what exactly do "we see" in the Rick Baker mold casts in terms of evidence of a repaint? Can you point that out to me please? Because they don't. And what Rick Baker mold casts are you talking about exactly? There is the DJ ANH but that was sanded down and painted. There's the SL ANH which I've gone through in detail to show it has the original paint detail from the Tantive IV close-ups. And? The efxANH? We have no close-up reference of the master casting and it is from the same mold as the SL ANH but like decades later.
The fact is that we see the current original ANH mask with a complete repaint. Complete. I've checked all the surfaces and every single one is altered in some way. The SL ANH mask has the Tantive IV paint, not a repaint. The TD ANH I cannot tell because it is painted itself with many layers (not multiple times because the layers are identical in width), but it has the major paint details under that (like the “rabbit ears” on the right cheek).
So what exact "fix up" did Rick do to the original ANH mask? All that was done was adding a bit of filler material to the tusk tube undercuts, and it looks to me as far as I can tell, although I could be wrong, that the original ANH mask still has the filler on the lower tusk tube undercut (doesn’t seem like it is on the upper tubes). The TD ANH and the other masks from the UK mold do not have that filled undercut on the lower tusk tubes, as you well know. So it would seem the UK mold could have been made before the Baker mold. The Baker mold has the gaps between the teeth filled in more than on the UK mold castings so we don't know whether the "filler triangle" was there already or not.
Could the UK mold have come after Jefferson Starship photo shoot? Yes. Could the TD ANH have come after that? Yes. Since the filler triangle is there today, that would seem reasonable. But there are still many things that beg the question about why it has TD ANH mask has the things done to it that it has.
There is more I need to do to compare the Girod mask to the TD ANH, let alone the SL ANH, but certainly options are open at this point as to time line. But there are still some things about the TD ANH that pre-date the SL ANH, but we know that the Rick Baker mold masks do not appear later as far as serving the ESB lineage....the UK masks do that.
The tube ends do change during production of ANH, that I'm sure of but the fact the TD ANH tube ends are cut back are only probably coincidental rather than related to that, as you suggest. Anything I study about a mask is to attempt to put it into some kind of time frame, just as we are attempting to do now. As new material appears, such as this original screen mask, there will certainly be revisions to some ideas.