I am putting together an X-wing costume for Megacon this weekend and I got this chest box for the time being from a friend in Jersey (Reaper)

Well needless to say it was in pretty rough shape so I decided to redo the whole thing. Strip it down and completely refinish it. I wont have the helmet done before the con unfortunately since work is eating up alot of my time. I figured I would share the pics of the costume coming together.





I didnt get all of the pictures for each layer of paint on this thing. There were 3 finished layers of paint on this and a coat of primer in between each layer. The top layer seemed to be a latex wall paint. I'll post more as I go.

Yeah. That was looking real crappy. What did you use to strip off all those layers of paint and how long did it take?

Looking forward to seeing the finished result!

I couldnt use paint stripper or acetone because that would damage th styrene and resin, so instead i used "Easy Off" oven cleaner. It is a foaming spray. I applied about 4 times to get the piece stripped to where it is almost completely paint free. I waited 2 hours for each application to set then wiped off with a clean rag. Any residual paint that was not coming off with the cloth I took a paint scraper and gently pulled the paint away until I got a good roll that would continue to move.

Nice. I may have to look into that. Btw: there is currently a Don Post X-Wing helmet on eBay... don't know if that would be of interest.

Well I didnt get it finished before Megacon because my flack vest wasnt ready so I would have had to wear my ROTJ Y-wing gear anyway. But here are some more progress pics. I painted the buttons up last night but havent had a chance to get pics yet. Just a little touch up left to do and it will be finished. Then I get to move onto the atrocity of a helmet casting that was given to me. I'll post some pics of it later in a new thread.

Not knowing what the real things look like I would say that that looks like pretty good progress!

Great job so far!

Keep us posted.

@NHM: This is what it should look like.

I took a little artistic liberty with mine. I didnt want to have the exact same box as everyone else so the colors are a little different from the reference above. Here are the last 2 pics. One clean and the other weathered slightly. You just have to weather and make it look a little dirty and greasy.





I just clear coated the whole thing to lock it down. Now I just have to put it on and get some pics.

I like how you made it your own... and technically... it does make sense from a military / buy what you can afford standpoint - seeing as the Rebels couldn't really pick and choose, but had to take what was available.

Also love the weathering. How did you do that?

There were actually a few versions of the chestbox seen in the movies. all a little different from the other. (see the pilot tutorial on obi wans jedi academy) I took a little from each box and mixed it up a bit.

The weathering is a pretty neat technique that I happened across while painting in the rain once by accident. Take a spray bottle and spray water onto the part you are weathering. Then dust it over with some black spray paint and let the droplets roll off or wipe off with a rag to get some streaking. Really quite easy to get a cool greasy dirty effect. Glad you liked it.

Looks very good, nice job.

Yeah, I like it. Looks very real and naturalistic.

Could you post dimensions and measurements? It might be helpful to some people on this forum might be able to fabricate one from scratch.

I'll try to get some dimensions after work tomorrow night and post them up here. I know that it is not screen accurate by any means, it seems a bit oversized if anything. But I am 6'3" 215lbs so it looks pretty good on me.