Full-size Lego Space Helmet

When I was growing up the vintage Lego Space sets were my favorite. This past year, The Lego Movie featured some of these old-school spacemen. I've always loved their iconic cylindrical helmets. I thought it would be cool to make a full-size, wearable version of the helmet worn by the Classic Lego Space minifigs.

For the Lego nerds: The Classic Space Helmet has actually gone though a few modifications over the years. The character Benny from The Lego Moviehas a cracked chin strap because the original late 70s helmet design was notorious for breaking. They thickened the strap on subsequent designs. Mine is going to be the original design – sans crack.

I took careful measurements of one of the helmets I have from my childhood Lego sets. The helmet is essentially 1:1 tall and wide. I scaled that up to a size that would look proportionally correct on my head.

Plastic Mixing bowl with 10" diameter

12" Cardboard concrete foundation form – I had to cut and reduce the diameter to 10" for my mold.

Smooth-on 300 resin casting kit

Bondo automotive body filler

Automotive body spot putty

Rustoleum 2x Primer

Rustoleum 2x Red Paint

Rustoleum 2x Clear Gloss

Sandpaper: 100grit, 250 grit, 800 grit

Rubbing compound and Polishing Compound

EVA floor matts

First, to create the mold for my resin helmet, I found a plastic mixing bowl that had the correct diameter and curvature. For the cylinder part of the helmet I used a cardboard concrete form from the hardware store. These were measurers carefully and hot glued together. I also added a piece of EVA foam on the inside that will create an indent to mark the open visor area. This creates a quick mold to dump resin into.

After coating the inside of this with mold release I slush cast Smooth-on 300 resin into the mold. After about 6 coats of resin I was able to pop out a white helmet to begin finishing!

You could create a "master" helmet a more conventional way out of clay or Pepakura. I chose this way because it got me a resin master that would be perfectly cylindrical very quickly.

This white resin master was touched up with Bondo to smooth out the surface.

The entire helmet was primed with matte auto primer and sanded and filled with spot putty to get the surface smooth.

The little dimples on the side of the helmet were created by drilling 3/4" holes in the side of the helmet. From the inside I glued small 3/4" PVC caps. The edges were smoothed with Bondo.

The rim around the visor area was also smoothed out with Bondo.

The visor area was cut out of the helmet with a Dremel.

The entire helmet was again primed, and painted with Rustoleum 2X Red.

I wanted to create a "finished" look to the inside with a sort of liner. The product I worked with was EVA foam floor matt. The top dome area was covered with a disk of the foam by heating it with a Heat Gun and form it into a bowl to create the form.

The final helmet turned out quite well. I'm thrilled that the proportions seem very close to the actual helmet. It's "wearable" but not for very long. It tends to rotate, because my head is not a cylinder. The yellow face visor is a Photoshop mockup. I plan on creating a removable yellow faceplate.