El Top Hat

Here is the process for a top hat I made recently. it's cheap, it's easy (relatively), and it looks good. You'll need a few things first.

Ingredients:
1. Cardboard from anywhere. Any cardboard will do as long as it's the same thickness.
2. Black Felt or Fleece.
3. Bristol Paper
4. Hot Glue Gun
5. Razor/ Scissors
6. Ruler/ Tape Measure
7. Pen and Pencil

The first step is the measure is to get the correct measurement of your head or at least close to the correct circumference. For this top hat the circumference was somewhere around 23 inches. It will differ from person to person. Once you have your measurement make a couple cardboard test pieces. Cut an oval shape out and fit it over you head to make sure it fits. Too small and it will balance on your head like a pile of books, too big and it will cover your eyes. Make sure to also add at most another inch to the circumference. The stacking of material plus your own hair, can make it too tight if you don't give yourself some room to work with. Instead of dragging the razor across the cardboard, poke it down to perforate it. This is much easier and faster. Also make sure to keep the cut out solid oval because you'll need it later.

Test it over your head and look like a fool. I know i do! Also, make a strip of card board to put inbetween your head and the test oval. This will determine how much space you need to work with.

Once you have the correct size oval you can start on the "Stove Pipe" of the hat. Take a piece of cardboard and make a line all the way across with a height of 6 inches. The divide the piece with your ruler into 1 inch wide strips. The circumference you use will match the number of strip you need. Since my hat was 23 inches I only needed 23 strips. Make sure to hold the ruler down on your edge when cutting to get all your strips straight. Crooked is bad. Unless you want your hat to be crooked.

Next, take the test board that worked well enough and make a border around the cut out about 2 1/4 inch wide. This is the rim of the hat. Perforate the rim.

This is optional. If you want a hat that tapers make sure to bend all the strips like so (also do the same with the rim by bending it in a U - shape). If you want a straight top (and rim) then don't do anything at all to them! It will save you a step. Take the solid oval piece from before and glue the strips around the very edge of it with hot glue. You should end up with something like this when you're done.

Make sure to take bristol or any other paper that's a little hard and glue it around the top rim. This will hold the hat together better and create a smooth edge when the fabric is glued on. DO NOT glue the fabric at the step. These two pictures are an example of a mess up. If you glue the fabric on at this stage it becomes very wrinkled and rigid looking (it's also a huge pain to take it off and it will most certaintly ruin a section of the hat). Unless you want that kind of look, then by all mean proceed. Also, when the step is finished, perforate around the inside as close as you can get to the

strips to make an opening.

After making a border on the rim you'll want to cut several strips of bristol (or another hard paper) and glue them down part way inside the hat and on the outside of the hat. Make sure to press well so that the paper is snug.

Now we can start to put the fabric on! This is the easy part. Take a large piece of fabric and make sure it's a little over half the length of one side and also make sure the piece is WIDE. You'll need the extra material. Start with end and glue part of the rim down on the top. The lay some glue down on the outside of the hat and take the fabric and pull it making it as flat as possible. Pull it over the other edge and glue the insides down. The inside doesnt matter too much since no one is going to see it if you're wearing the hat. Repeat this process by gluing down small sections of the fabric as you pull it across the face of the hat.

Now take your cut out rim and lay it on the fabric. Outline the inside and outside. Make sure add a little extra to the inside outline. Make two indentical pieces and the take one and lay glue on the edge of the fabric. Then take the other piece of fabric and lay it on top of that one. This makes a cheapo-quicky seam. Turn the fabric inside out and you'll have a fairly smooth edge that looks as if it was sewn togther. Take the rim and slip it in like a book cover. Pull the inside fabric to the edge of the rim to cover the cardboard and glue it down. Use the hot glue and glue around the bottom of the "Stove Pipe" and the insert the Pipe into the rim. Try to push the rim against the pipe to close any holes in the rim as the glue dries.

When that's all done you can move on to the cover over the top hat. Make an oval shape that only leaves about a 1/2 inch of rim. Do the same process with the fabric by pulling it and gluing. Take inside of the hat and gauge how far the cap goes down. Take the hot glue and make a ring on the inside of the hat where the cap will lay snug. Lay the cap it and it should glue without any glue being visible. You can also press it in a little to make sure there are no gaps as the glue dries.

And there you have it! Your very own cheapo Top hat that's a little more than mediocre. Take some masking tape and dab it against the fabric because there will definately be strands of glue and debris all over it, to clean it up a little. Get creative and do whatever you want with it now. Add bows such as the image below. Or just wear it plain as you go on a bike ride downtown. You're sure to turn some heads and get some compliments (and maybe more than a few stares and odd looks).

The Drill

Alright here's the drill part that I started on. Honestly, it's much easier than I expected. So here's the progress run down. I started by making circles out of cardboard, this is an idea that I got from http://iamsubjectdelta.com, which was incredibly helpful.



After the circles were made, I made a second pair that were solid. The center of each circle was found and I made a hole in order to run the metal rod through. I set each circle down 4 inches apart so it would be proportional to myself and hot glued each piece to the rod.



After that I hot glued paper around the circles making a cone shape. Several layers were applied to make it even. Then holes were drilled so I could fill the empty areas with spray foam for extra support later on and also to make it stronger and hold better. Finally, the cone was fiber glassed. I will post more updates as I continue to finish the drill.



Update 1: Ok, So the drill was a little bit of a disaster. When I tested it, to see how well it spun, the drill cone continued to spin after the drill stopped. I ripped the metal rod out and I'll be making a new one except this time holes will be drilled into the rod and a pin will go through each hole. The cardboard pieces will have a notch where the pin will rest into it and then they will be epoxied in. For a little more reinforcement duct tape will be used to hold the cardboard pieces in place.

Update 2: I got a drill! All thanks to my friend E.J. Thank you E.J.!! The drill will be used to power, well, the drill! So much exclamation because I'm excited. Anyway, I took apart the drill and I will extend the wires so they can run up through the back. I'm going to get started on the drill again, once I get a few things. My father suggested that instead of using a solid steel pole that I should use a hollowed one with a thread so that I could put washers and nuts on it to hold the cardboard. This was an amazing suggestion because it solved the annoying "loose" problem I was having with the pole. When I get the nuts and washers I can put the cardboard in place and then tighten/ epoxy the pieces together, that way they do not continue to spin and the parts will be fairly secure.

Drill Before:


Drill After:

A Couple Additional Accessories

I was thinking about a few things that might improve the costume. The first thing that might help are fans. These will be put inside the back of the helmet with the grate over them so they don't stick out as much and also so I don't die from overheating.



The next addition are these nifty speakers. These will be put inside of the chest lights with a similar grate for the fan, so it still looks like a lens for the lights. The speakers will be hooked up to an Arduino with buttons running to the hands so I can play a specific Big Daddy sound when I need to.



Luckily I found all of these things in computers that had been thrown away at my local dump. I'm sure if anyone needed to find any of these things, they can be bought at a RadioShack..... or found at a local dump.

The Visor Rim

I did the same thing for the visor rim as I did with the Diving Weight. Drew up a sketch and the cut it out to make and outline. It will be two layers of MDF thick so I can cut out a portion of the helmet where the visor rim is suppose to go and insert it. Details such as bolt heads and the clear visor piece will be added soon.



Update 1: The visor is almost done! Woo! I cut out the visor finally and added the "glass", and everything else. The bars, which are just wooden dowels cut in half, of the visor need to be fixed to it with epoxy and then the gritty inside of the visor will be bondo'd to fill it in.

Head Camera

The Camera on Delta's head! This was probably the easiest of all the pieces to do. I have no progress pictures of it because I was having too much fun making it... It's composition is easy though. The camera was made but cutting out pieces of green Dry Foam (from Michaels) and sanding them down to the correct shape. For the camera lens I used a thick cardboard tube and cut out a circle piece of cardboard to be put inside the tube to act as a lens. When I get my Ureshell I can harden this and finish it.

Here are a couple pictures of the camera on the helmet. When I able to Ureshell it I can paint it. The lens will be painted black and the coated with Future Acrylic Floor Finish to give it some shine as if it were glass.


Update 1: Tested some fiber-glass on a piece of spare green foam. It doesn't warp it in anyway and its fairly smooth when it's dry. When I get around to fiber-glassing the helmet I will be fiber-glassing this as well.

Diving Weight

Here is the next piece of the Delta suit, The Diving Weight or to others, A Pendant, or a Lock-shaped diving weight. I drew up a sketch on a 11x17" sheet of Bristol paper, cut out the shape, and then drew an outline on a piece of MDF. I took three pieces of MDF and held them together with two screws and cut out the shape with an electric jigsaw. The first piece I made was straight cut with the help of my father. We took turns holding the piece in place and cutting it out. I tried to sand down the edges but to me it didn't seem consistent.



The first piece was a guinea pig. I hit it with a Maul a few times to make it look worn and beat up to match Delta's.

For the second piece I did almost the same process except when it was cut the jigsaw was changed to cut at an angle, a great deal of thanks goes to my father who thought of cutting it at an angle and again helping me cut it out. This made it so the slope on the pendant was consistent all around. After it was cut out, the 3 pieces were glued together with good ol' fashion wood glue and then the holes were made for the rope to go through.



All that's left is some fiber glassing and some paint to add the finishing touches.

Delta's Helmet

The first part of the suit I started on was the helmet, only because it would probably be the most difficult for me. When I first started the helmet I thought of two ways to make it. The first was to make a skeleton and fill it in with expanding spray foam. At the time I was in my college dorm room and I didn't have the proper materials to create the helmet. I also didn't have a good stand. As you can see I used my chair in my dorm room, which wasn't a good idea because the slightest amount of weight makes the chair lean back like a rocking chair. As soon as I put the spray foam on, the skeleton fell. The skeleton broke and the foam got all over the ground. Long story short it was a complete disaster. Sometime later I thought of another idea. For my next idea I put insulation foam layers together and carved the helmet out. Again it was a disaster because I didn't have the proper tools (I carved the helmet out with an old rusty spoon...).

My failed attempts left me a little discouraged but I continued on. My buddy Jason (aka Jeddy or Jeddychan "http://jeddychansproductions.alters1.com" ) suggested that I try Pepakura. I never used it before but I figured it would be a good time to try it. Unfortunately I didn't take any pictures of the paper craft once it was finished but the end results were outstanding once I modified the helmet a little bit to fit my own body. The helmet was fiber glassed to strengthen it and then I put spray foam on it to give it a layer in order to add things (visor, tanks, hoses, etc.) 24 hours after the spray foam dried I started to carve it to make it a little more smooth.


I finished smoothing the helmet out and also doing a little bit of cutting to refit it. Here are some images of the helmet as it is right now and what it looks like when it's worn. The jumpsuit, gloves, and boots will be modified and recolored. The thick edges of the helmet will also be sanded and smoothed down.




Update 1: Making some progress on my helmet. Removed some of the foam on the inside of the back so it would be less "chunky" and I also installed the visor into the helmet and now the next step is the one I've been fearing to do. Fiber-glassing! Here are some pictures of the helm before I fiber-glass it.



Update 3: Finished fiber-glassing the helmet! I was surprised that the fiber-glass resin didn't effect the foam in anyway and also incredibly happy. Now the helmet is fairly solid. I filed down some of the rough edges here and there. Now all I have to do is bondo it a little to fill in the holes and also add a thin layer to make it have a smooth surface. I also adjusted the visor by spreading the bars out a little further.