Building the Rebel persona: 5.1a – ‘Endor Donut’ Helmet

After finishing construction of my Rebel ‘swoop’ helmet last July, I started to feel that it might not be the best fit for a Rebel militiaman on Sulon, or more specifically, that it wasn’t the most practical choice.

Although there are a few other designs from EU sources, the Rebels’ only other proper helmet we know from the films is that worn by the Rebel strike team as seen in Episode VI, so by September I had begun weighing the pros and cons.
Aside from the improved camouflage (the swoop is bright gray), the Endor ‘Donut’ Helmet (EDH) is smaller, more maneuverable, better balanced, (no big swoop sticking out the back), and the use of soft elements should make it somewhat quieter: while giving a talk as ‘Citizen Olis’ wearing my swoop helmet last summer, I had to take it off about only about five minutes in, since it created a weird sort of reverb/echo that I found very distracting.

Construction details:
Standard Elements:
-AN-H-15 WWII flight cap: fan interest must be a little low right now, because I snagged mine for $57 (including shipping) on eBay. I hear these tend to run small (folks weren’t as big in the ‘40s), and even though I have a smaller head, and mine is a size Medium, I soaked it in warm water and gave it a little stretch with my [hat jack?]: much less headache-inducing!

Modifications:
-removal of rear elastic (further headache reduction)
-removed leather keeper straps on back of head
-removed tongue buckle for chinstrap
-removed velvet padding on chinstrap
-stitched down one end of chinstrap, trimming the snap end to fit under the…
-Leather flaps I stitched onto the cheeks. Used 6-7 oz ‘tobacco’ cowhide.

Hard donut:
From what I can tell, Rebel Legion types have two choices for their ‘donuts’: either buy one pre-made, or an unassembled kit that must be glued together and trimmed to fit. I’ve seen reference to cast resin being used, which would be very brittle if dropped; the kits are vac-formed ABS plastic, which while stronger, is still just a thin (1-2 mm) plastic shell. What’s inside an EDH? We don’t know, but it’s certainly not thin, hollow plastic.
ADDENDUM: Since writing this, 3D printing has taken off and really nice printed helmets are now an available option.

Rather than go one of these routes, I wanted to beef up my Pepakura game. 4 sheets of cardstock gave me a serviceable (not perfectly accurate) shell to tweak appropriately before applying resin, ‘Rondo’, and Bondo…at 5.2 cents per sheet, this ran me 20.8 cents.

My final Bondo’d donut wound up being 4-5 mm thick on the top surface, and perhaps 3-4 on the sides? With a 110-lb cardstock core and a rondo inner coat, it’s pretty damn indestructible.

To weather the donut, I started with a basecoat of silver enamel, then beat on it with files, chains, and assorted handtools to give it a selection of dings. Each of these dings received a dab of yellow mustard, and then the whole donut got a few coats of brown before the mustard was wiped off, revealing the silver dings showing through!
After final assembly, I opted to add coils of foam ‘rope’ (normally used for weatherproofing or making Nerf darts) to fill in the empty space, and add some insulation value.

Soft goods:
The main body of the soft flight cap was left as-is, but I did have make the ribbed top panel that would be visible poking out of the donut. I scratchbuilt this panel using cotton twill material from a pair of khaki trousers I cannibalized (thrift store – $2). The fabric was dyed with very strong black tea in order to better match the fabric of the flight cap. Instead of simply pleating the top ribs, I opted to spend the time to Do It Right. I used the zipper foot on my sewing machine to sew many, many ribs around cotton clothesline-type cord, and then encased the edges in bias-cut strips of the same fabric. The completed panel was then stitched onto the top of the flight cap at fore and aft.

Front visor:
This was made by deconstructing an old ballcap for the visor’s plastic core, which I then trimmed to a more appropriate size/shape. This was covered in the same material I used for the top panel (khaki uniform material, dyed with strong tea to match flight cap). As with the on-screen helmets, the visor was permanently attached to the hard donut.

When most costumers build one of these helmets, it seems to be made of two separate parts: the donut with the attached visor, and the flight cap with the top ribbed panel. The helmet is worn by putting the donut over the flight cap, but the two assemblies are not permanently attached. This means that if one was to remove the helmet from one’s head, the flight cap could easily fall out of the donut. As I expect to use this item in interactions with children—who are always up for playing dress up—I needed it to be one cohesive helmet. To achieve this, I stitched the flight cap/top panel to the donut at the upper rear rim, and to the visor in the front. To help reinforce the shape and add to the illusion that this is a single connected item, I installed a piece of 14-gague steel wire inside the rear hem at the back of the neck.

Were I to undertake this project again, I would taper the front and rear of the top ribbing, instead of keeping the two sides parallel; this would prevent creasing of the enclosed edges. I am still not 100% satisfied with the shape of the visor, which still retains far too much of its baseball cap curve.

The visor’s cloth cover also has a few wrinkles from extra material on the bottom surface, which I was unable to iron out 😉 These could possibly have been eliminated if I was able to stitch through the plastic core, but my sewing machine is incapable of dealing with such a thickness of material. However, in altering the front curve of the visor, it is still much closer than others I have seen, which simply recovered a ballcap’s flat-fronted visor.

Deviations from on-screen versions:
Because I’m building this for a Sulon-based persona, and because the whole point of this venture is to get away from uncreative, dogmatic adherence to on-screen ensembles, I opted to take a page from Battlefront!2015’s Rebel troops based on Sullust (of which Sulon is a moon!):
Aside from ear cups that look more like earmuffs, the only noticeable difference is the use of a brown donut instead of the familiar forest green. It’s also a dead ringer for the cheap brown spray paint I already had kicking around in my arsenal.
I also took a page from the Rogue One interpretation of the donut, which has the ‘vent’ on the helmet’s back as actual three-dimensional elements, instead of simply painted-on details as in Episode VI. I’m sure this was what was intended, but the over-budgetary issues of that film meant such a small detail was overlooked.

After four months of piecemeal work (mostly figuring out how to make the ribbed panel and attach the whole thing together), Citizen Olis’ Donut Helmet was finally complete! It’s not perfect, but it’s certainly better than some of the junk knockoffs that are out there (click with caution–you may want to bleach your eyeballs after seeing this monstrosity).

Since originally posting this, I’ve gone back and tinkered to make a much more accurate front visor. That of the Hoth technician hat is too short and still has more of a baseball cap curve, so I had to do a little scratch drafting of a pattern. This was sewn from cotton twill, and instead of using a plastic core I stiffened the brim with a couple layers quilted together.

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