Project: vintage thermos facelift

Greetings from quarantine!
While the world may presently find itself in the grip of a pandemic, one silver lining does exist. While it can be stressful in other ways, a month-long quarantine lockdown has the unexpected benefit of suddenly giving crafty-minded folks a lot of time with which to finish ‘backburner’ projects, and so—as several of my other WIP projects are currently stalled due to quarantine-created supply-bottlenecks—I thought I would share one item I have been able to finish up during the current situation.
Back in December or January(?) I snagged the above gaudy orange thermos from the thrift shop for (I think) $2. It didn’t look especially Star Wars-y at first, but my ‘propmaking eye’ saw that it had definite potential, and I’m very pleased with how it turned out! “The Star Wars aesthetic is also grounded very much in the ’70s and ’80s, and it’s also in the era…where George was when he was making those movies in terms of the materials and the designs that he was influenced by. …” – Doug Chiang, 2016

At first glance, a vintage-orange thermos might not seem like it belongs in the Galaxy Far Far Away, but it definitely looks like it belongs in the ’70s, and as I’ve discussed in a previous Thermos-based project,the galactic aesthetic is a product of this specific period; all it needed was a bit of spicing up to give it some increased visual interest.
The stock thermos—made by Family Products of Tyningsboro, Mass.—is about 9.5 inches tall and 4.5 in diameter, but only had a capacity of 32 ounces. As before, by removing the inner chamber and taking out the insulating foam, I was able to double its volume to nearly a half gallon! In addition, having two screw-top seals means it has a fair degree of waterproof-ness. I measured the pieces I salvaged from ripping out the inner chamber and sketched up a few designs to see what would look good. After a day or two of measuring, hand-cutting, filing, and polishing pieces, then epoxying into place, I wound up with this:Definitely improved, but it was still missing something. Even if I went ahead and added some weathering, it wouldn’t yet have the total Star Wars ‘look’. I solicited the SWLH facebook group hive-mind for ideas, and we decided it needed some contrasting accent stripes to set off the bottom of the canister. After some careful masking, spray-painting, clearcoating, followed by brown- and blackwashing, here’s how it turned out:

(The random chipped paint pattern was actually the result of a happy accident I discovered as I peeled regular masking tape (not the less-sticky painter’s tape) up from spraypaint!) With everything weathered and sealed, the only thing left for me to do now is to decide what I’m going to store in this sweet canister in my backpack! I have some ideas, but I’m always open to suggestions. Leave a comment below, or join the conversation in the SWLH group!

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