I never really liked the way the kill stripes turned out. The first helmet I got had too many. ROTJ should have 18 of them. The kill stripes sit approximately 5mm from the headband, are approximately 2cm tall, 4mm wide and have about a 3mm gap between them. Don’t like metric? Get over it. It’s easier than fractions of inches.

These are all approximate measurements so don’t quote me on them. I will provide exact measurements in the next post.

I had initially printed the stripe guide from TK409.com and copied it to a piece of acetate film (ok, plastic from a mattress cover bag).

In case it vanishes (or, if I’m too lazy to search for it) here it is:

I then cut them, taped them to the helmet (in 4 pieces) and sprayed them on with a rattle can. As you can see the curvature of the helmet was a challenge. Not only did the curvature present a challenge with the mask, the mask did not stick well at all, allowing significant paint bleed.

Dissatisfied with the outcome I stripped them off with a razor blade and some lacquer thinner.

One could argue that any damage on Fett’s helmet is good. I disagree. Less is more. It needs to be as closely related to the screen prop. I have been meticulously following the 501st databank CRL.

I then touched up the scraped areas with silver undercoat, added Maskol and hit it with a couple of coats of camouflage green. It is now in the oven curing. Next post: blending the paint and making and painting the kill stripes.