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Myself, my two younger brothers, and two of my good friends have been talking about making our own custom, and fairly modified beskar'gam for months now but had (until last night) not done much more than collect parts and plan out design details. Last night my buddy Jonathan decided that it was now or never and so the two of us went to Wallyworld and bought some trash cans.

At first we mistakenly got four square 8 gal and 13 gal trash cans to make our plates out of. upon realizing our error we returned to the store only to discover that they only had two 8 gal trash cans in the oval shape. Not to be dissuaded we improvised. We bought two oval 8 gal and one square 13 gal.

Since Johnathan is taller and lankier than I (read less barrel chested and without as once of fat) he cut his chest plates out of the square 13 gal and I cut mine out of one of the two 8 gal.

We have yet to cut the collars (they'll be coming out of my 8 gal), bells (they'll be coming out of the second 8 gal), or anything else but I thought I might as well go ahead and post pics and ask for advice.

How do you make a cod for trash can armor or is it best to buy one from some one who molds them?

What grade sand paper do you guys sand with before paint with primer?

Any tips on type/size of trash can to use for leg and arm plates? (I have one I'm thinking will work for my legs but not sure about arms.)

Lastly this will be a slow WIP: my wedding is in a few weeks and after that classes start back, but I'm figuring this will be one of my main de-stress-ers from school.

Any tips on how to get my pics to upload, I can't get jack to work (either off this comp or from an image hosting site.)

As far as the armour goes, i think an oval 8gal can would work really well for thighs/greaves/knees/biseps. Just get yourself a heat gun ($20 at harbour frieght) and then you should have no problems in forming those plates.

The cod takes a little bit of thought and some work. It is actually three pieces that have to be glued together. I'd try and do a paper version first, then go for the plastic one. That way if you dink it up with the paper you wont be at any loss as far as the trash cans. And if you give the paper a try and decide it is a pain in the rear to make, you can go get one off of evilbay and save yourself the trouble.

true on the paper cod.
Follow A'den's advice on that one, you can make it from paper, then lightly coat with bondoglass, and there ya go, its not too expensive, and like he said if you mess up, fleabay, but watch out for some of the sellers, they're recasters there.

Just go for the paper, you do almost anything in paper, I just started making my son's magic wands from paper, and hot glue.

Ok since my fiancee figured out that the text in the upload boxes is really, really faint, and that you have to wait FOREVER for the pics to up load, (she worked on this for me while I was at work, is that awesome or what?!) I can now show you pictures!

We started with printing and cutting out our templates and then stenciled our cans. we got rather meticulous about it because we wanted to be sure the plates had good (and matching) curve. (I've seen some guys just slap their out line on the can any old way...)

We cut them out with razor knives. The edges need to be cleaned up and the rest of the pieces cut out but it was after 12 and we had to work in the morning so we called it a night after we got the chests done.

The lightsabers you see are ones I made from scratch. The first two are from the pairs I made for my younger brothers and the third is mine. If I can get a hold of more of the yard sticks I use for the blades I'm going to start selling sabers on here and elsewhere so if you (or some on you know) would be interested let me know!

Yeah, Potter, a coworker introduced me to the novel before the first movie came out, and I read it, it was cool, so ok I'm a Potter fan, and I will admit the wife took me to see Twilight, then I read the books, and those are cool too... OH MY GOD I READ TWILIGHT .

Tell your fiance thank you for helping you post the pics, they are really good, a great start.

How much are you gonna be charging for your sabers? I converted one of the ones from ultrasabers dot com into a staff.

I do have my kama for my bucket, I just need to attach it, and work on it.

I did post the wands I made for my kids on my WIP, they only took me like an hour to make the three of them, paint and all.

Adonian: I'm not sure about the cost of sabers. The first ones I made from spare/old parts from the family vacuum cleaner business and the blades were from yard sticks I had on hand. I'll have to buy parts now (my grandfather retired and closed the business) and I don't know how much the blades will cost because I haven't heard back from the company that I got them from (for free) the first time.

Ultimately they'll be parts cost plus time, but I'm figuring $50-100. They won't have sound or light up, just have a solid blade you can easily remove, and yet is strong enough to beat the **** out of when fighting. I'll post a thread in the Cargo Hold when I have blades to work with.

Aden: Yeah I was really careful and anal cutting them out too. My blade slipped once and it let a scar across my ab plate and I literally yelled in frustration before I realized that it will just make for battle damage if I don't sand it out. Thanks man.

If you need more material, go to a sign shop, and ask for extra sintra. I went and got enough to make my self 6 suits of armor (Jango, not Boba) a custom Mando, a bucket and a backpack. SOOOOOOOO If anyone needs some replacement armor, I can get it to ya for cheap, like $40-$50 for all of the chest armor. Also, a jigsaw works well, just cut OUTSIDEthe mark so you can sand it down.

Hello, fiance : ). Since the game's up, I thought I might as well comment on your thread now as well.

A quick side note about SaberMaker's sabers: not only does he make them to look cool, they're also really durable. He and his brothers fight with them anytime we visit his family and they don't go easy on them. They've definitely withstood quite a bit of bashing and make for a lot of fun times with the bros.

The other day when Nomad and I went to my buddy Jonathan's house (so his seamstress mother could fix some lace on Nomad's wedding dress) he and I managed to steal a few mins to work on our armor as I had stashed it in my trunk. Basically all we got accomplished was the cutting out of shoulder bells, but it's something. I'm not sure how much work I'll get done between now and the wedding, but I've asked Nomad if she would mind working on armor on our honeymoon...

Hey guys! My wife and I are slowly getting together stuff for our custom mondos. Right now we are both jedi scum. Its been lots of fun doing the
extreme SW fan thing together (just got into the costuming and prop making about a year ago though). In fact we'll be spending our 10th anniversary at a con (in costume) with our 3 little ones (also in costume).
Looks like you are off to a good start on your project! Ill check into your
thread again -Im a sucker for the couples builds! Take Care guys!
Mike