DIY -$25 Iron Man - Mark V Suit Tutorial by FETTS.SOBRIQUET

[STEALTH]

Hey All. I made this thread for anyone curious on how to make some very affordable MARK V IRON MAN ARMOR for themselves and never knew how to do it

The tutorial is courtesy of Fetts.Sobriquet of the theRPF.com
which you can view it in full here
http://www.therpf.com/showthread.php?t=84259

and with his permission I am posting it here so its to the point:

Tutorial:

I've decided to make a tutorial on how to make a riveted plastic Mark V costume. The $25 dollars is the cost of the two buckets you will convert into your costume. Let me preface this with a little disclaimer. I'm kinda running through this build quickly just to make the tutorial. I'm not focusing on making the suit beautiful. It's more about getting all the information to you than me making a suit.

AFettFullofDollars over at TDH figured out that you could make some pretty decent Fett armor out of a trash can 5 years ago.


I guess I also assumed everyone knew about this method since the Fett builders have been doing something like it for so long.

It actually turns out pretty nice and is cheap and easy to do.
You may think that you've never seen anyone do this before. Well, odds are you probably have seen it, you just didn't know it.

I'm not kidding. Go to walmart, buy a trashcan (comes in black too) it already has the curves you need. You don't even have to heat the plastic up with a heat gun and shape it, although you can a little if you want.

Here I'm going to build the Mark V step by step. I'm posting my templates but they are a work in progress. You might want to keep an eye on the version of the template that is currently posted so you know what is the newest.

Current Template version is 1
templates so far are of the Chest - Arc, Breast plates, Ribs and pectoral section.
Download Templates

* Note about the Templates. Make sure you check the scale some will be 1:2 scale.

* Note about the Templates. Make sure you check the scale some will be 1:2 scale.

I'm currently drawing the templates so some are missing. I'm posting them now so you can get an idea of how they work.


The first thing I did was to go to Walmart and buy two 13 gallon plastic trashcans. Cost me $24 dollars plus tax.

You'll also need some tape to tape the templates to the trashcans, a hand riveter, rivets, washers, a drill, and a hobby knife.
I went with 3/16" 5mm rivets and washers, but it's up to you what size you wan to use.


All you have to do is print out the templates at the appropriate scale, cut them out, and tape them to the trashcan.
Try to utilize the curves in the can and match them up with how you want your part to bend. Then just carefully cut the part out of the can. Make sure you score everything. Make multiple, calculated, shallow cuts. Don't try to cut this out with one deep cut because the blade could slip and you could cut yourself very badly.



One you get most of the chest cut out it will look like this

The trashcan will look something like this


Now just rivet it together. Where ever you want to place a rivet drill a hole in the through both layers of material, and pop a rivet.

When you're ready to place the tread detail on the on the upper chest area, simply cut out the shape and super glue the detailing on. You can rivet it of you want, it's your suit.


So, today we finish up with something looking like this. Not bad for about 2.5 hours of work.

[STEALTH]

Abdominal section


This flexing ab section thing is not very hard to do and Finhead hit the nail on the head. All it's made of is elastic and plates of plastic. Those arms you see on the side, those are not necessary to the function of this part. They are only for show.

Let's start with the ab template. The main ab plate can be whatever shape you want, so feel free to change it up, play with the templates, etc. The arms on the template might not be the size you need. I made them longer in case someone had a larger midsection and needed the extra length to make it look right. I'll show you how to put it together and find out what's right for you.


I bought 4 yards of 2" wide white elastic.

I wrapped a strip around my chest, where I wanted the top of the first Ab plate to sit. I cut the elastic to size and put a safety pin in to hold the two ends together.

Then I riveted the top of the main ab plate body to the elastic.



You will need to use washers on the back of these rivets. The elastic won't hold if you don't use a washer.

You should use washers on the back all of your rivets, but if you get in the habit of not using washers this is not an area you can do with out them.

At this point if you do this 3 more times, you'll have a nice abdominal chest piece. So, if you are doing War Machine you wouldn't need to add the little arms that come off the main plates. Since we're doing the Mark V, we'll add the arms.

I drilled a hole for the arms to attach to the main plate, which you can see in the above picture.

I cut a quick strip of plastic out and riveted it to the main plate, then attached another strip of plastic to the first one to form an obtuse angle. Some what of an exaggerated "L" shape. The top of the "L" is attached by rivet to the top of the same strip of elastic that the main plate attaches to.


Somehow I missed taking a picture of this, but you see what I mean in the pic below. I'll post a better picture later.

So, like I said, do this 4 times or more depending on how many plates you want to do. If you decide to make the plates smaller you might need more.


When I made this, it was before I uploaded the most recent Ab templates and the arms are too thick. I made them thinner in the templates that are available now. I also had them pined on the elastic to test it out.
At this point you should have something like this:
I just threw this together very quickly to give you an idea of the articulation.


If you want to hide the rivets, you can cut out the fins on the template and glue them over the rivets.
Like so:


I decided not to hide the rivets, so I skipped this part.

My advice is to lay it out how you plan on assembling it. Hold it to your stomach and see about how long the arms should be for you. Some will need longer arms than others. This is one of those parts where the template won't work for everyone. Luckily it's pretty simple.

Any questions, let me know.

[STEALTH]

ARMS


Arms are very different sizes obviously, so this is an instance where you are going to have to play with the templates to find YOUR size.

I tried to make the templates easy to understand and adjust.

Upper arm:

Print out the triceps and bicep templates. You're going to need to print out 5-6 plates for the triceps and 5-6 for bicep. You'll know how many you'll use depending on your arm length. I went with 6 for the triceps and 5 for the bicep.

The first thing I did was cut out the 5 tricep and 5 bicep paper templates. then I assembled them. I held them to my arm and taped them together so I could see exactly what size I needed to cut the plastic.

I marked the templates accordingly and cut out the plastic. The bicep part wraps around your bicep and the tricep part around your tricep.

When you have a nice paper upper arm built and you're happy, take it apart and cut your plastic. I would cut one bicep and one tricep strip at a time assemble them, then the next. That way you can better gauge how much the thickness of the plastic comes into play when cutting the length of the next strip. Since they over lap, each one has to be a little bit longer to accommodate for the increase in size.

I cut mine out and test fitted them but didn't rivet them. before assembling I heated them up with a heat gun and gave them a little bend just to help me assemble everything.



Now just rivet each section together.



Test everything as you go to make sure it is all fitting together.


Once they are all assembled you can rivet each section to it's neighbor to form one upper arm section.




As you can see I made my bicep strips a little shorter toward the elbow to create a taper.

[STEALTH]

Forearm




For the forearm I basically repeated the above steps.

Cut out your three (might need four) forearm sections in template form and test fit everything in paper. The forearm sections are just one strip, not two combined like the upper arm. When you're happy with your fit, cut the plastic parts out using your modified templates.

Cut the the strips out and assemble each part.


Trim and do another one.

Test fit as you go.




To connect the sections together I cut a long strip of scrap plastic about 1 inch wide and riveted the sections to it.





Lastly, I cut two elbow sections out and riveted one to the upper arm and one to the lower arm. I cut out a circle and placed it over the elbow and rioted the elbow sections together in the center of the circle. the elbow pivots on this rivet.

The little squiggly line above the elbow is silver sharpie I was using to mark the plastic.

My circles suck because I free handed them. Use the template to cut nice circles.






Testing the size is most important here.

This might not be the best way to do this, so experiment and have fun.

I'll answer any questions but I won't be back online until this time tomorrow.

[JAM]

This is a great suit build, TRASHCAN IRON MAN!
High Impact (poly)urethane plastics (trash cans) are great for this style suit, Polyurethane plastic is polyurethane plastic, if it was anything else it would be called a different name like Torlon or Sintra, and by the way there is no classification for urethane plastic, (Urethane by itself has been found toxic and is not a compond in Polyurethane).. maybe urethane rubber, but that's not plastic, its rubber. Regardless of what anyone says, unless anyone can prove the chemical make up, composition and polymer backbone and side chains of a "high quality" or "movie quality" polyurethane its all the same regardless..

Some people just want to sound important I guess. What is "movie quality" Urethane plastic anyways, is it better then industrial grade polyurethane plastic? I think not! Its the same thing.

Besides using high quality plastics is like putting Carbon Fiber in a helmet instead of fiberglass. Why do it? The results are the same, maybe you get a little weight savings and a harder material, but the cost is outrageous and not worth it for the everyday costuming purposes. Sorry for the rant, chemistry happens to be a side hobby that I like to indulge in, and ignorance bothers me.

That being said I'm building one of these with my 15 year old brother in-law.. He's excited to build this cause it soo simple to build and its well suited for a kid. We've already got all the pieces cut out, just need to rivet it up!
Thanks for sharing this here!

Cheers,

-Jay

[vampyredh]

As I said on a couple other forums I am allowed to post on this is GREAT

[STEALTH]

well I just figured it would be nice to post the updates here since not everyone
can afford to sculpt, mold and cast their suits

Fett's is being nice enough to do this in a rush and isn't going for extreme quality or accuracy. He's just trying to get it done in a general sense so people can get it.
They should really look outside the box and let their imagination go wild because its a very easy method

[IronMan]

this costume is beautiful

[Zenoxen]

So Cool! I am so doing this. (I'm always broke) It'll turn out lovely with the ARC Reactor that I'm planning to make...

[mariomonster20]

does anyone have the templates for this build? im starting tomorrow and really dont want to have to try and figure this all out myself lol, any help would be greatly appreciated

[D.Maho]

Do you stil have the templates?

grtz.

[D3V3R]

Hey guys I really wanna build this for a school compotion and I was wondering if anyone had the templates?!? If you do could you email me at crash957@hotmail.com