Working Cardboard Mandalorian Gauntlet: How to Make It

I'm really proud of how this turned out. After weeks of brainstorming, drawing, and cutting cardboard, I was able to come up with the gauntlet I'm sharing with you guys today.

"I'm a Mandalorian. Weapons are part of my religion." --The Mandalorian

Here's what you'll need:

• Cardboard-both cereal box and shipping box type
• Utility knife/scissor
• Paper
• Super glue
• Hot glue gun & hot glue gun sticks
• Cutting mat/board
• Paint & paint brushes
• String
• Rubber bands
• Jumbo Popsicle sticks
• Tape-both packaging and Scotch

The very first step is to collect images of the Mandalorian gauntlet. It took me a while, but I managed to compile a few images from the show into a Google doc. When you're looking for pictures, try to find ones that show the detail and color of the gauntlet, but also, where each weapon feature is locating on the gauntlet. Even though we'll be taking a few artistic licenses for the sake of better gauntlet function, we still want it to be as close as possible to the real thing.

The first building part we'll have to do is constructing the gloved fingers of the gauntlet.Take a piece of thin cardboard and trim it to the size of your finger. Fold the cardboard along where the joints of your fingers are, and curve it lengthwise to conform to your finger's curve.Take strips of cereal cardboard and glue them into loops around the rectangle. The loops should be as big as your finger, gradually getting smaller as they get to the fingernail part of your finger. Use more pieces of cereal cardboard to cover your finger. The front of your finger should be fully covered. Glue a piece of cardboard to the top of the finger. Trim the piece into a circle that fits over the top. Make all five fingers using this method. The thumb is basically the same thing, except the structure piece is wider and one fold short.

If you want to make the fingers of your gauntlet look more realistic, you can add rounded edges to the top of the cardboard. Cut curved structure pieces out of cardboard and arrange them in a spiral pattern on top of the finger. Cover the structure pieces with strips of paper until no more cardboard is showing.

For the palm part of the glove, trace your hand on a piece of thin cardboard. Once you're finished, simplify the shape to triangle and square. Next to it, draw a rectangle to fit the thickness of your hand. Replicate the first shape we drew and align its straight edge with the rectangle's edge. Draw a rectangle near the top of the hand and a trapezoid at the bottom of thumb. Draw flaps of cardboard on the edges of the glove, where you will glue it together. Leave a hole for your thumb to stick out of. Cut the piece out and fold it along any lines we have drawn. Curve the rectangles and trapezoid we made for the sides of your hand. Glue everything together using the strips as gluing points.

By now, you've probably realized that the glove looks a little boxy. To solve this problem, cut the trapezoid that holds the glove together under your thumb out. Glue it at a slant so that it fits your hand more snugly. On the other side, cut on the lines to make slits, and fold the edges of the cardboard in. Glue the cardboard like that to mimic the slanted frame we made on the other side.

Glue the four main fingers to the longest top part of the glove. Glue the thumb to the slanted trapezoid of cardboard. It should be glued as if sideways, with the structure of the finger facing you with its thickness.

Take a flat piece of thin cardboard and curve into a tapering gauntlet shape. It should be smaller toward the wrist, and larger toward your elbow. Glue it together. Cut two parallel notches into the arm, one on the bottom and the other on the top. These holes will allow your wrist and elbow to bend naturally. Glue a piece of paper where the ends of the cardboard meet to smooth it out.

Cut out three strips of thin cardboard. Bend all three in half horizontally, and use them to attach the glove to the arm of the gauntlet. Once everything's glued in, bend the strips of cardboard so that you'll be able to bend your wrist naturally. Cut out two more strips of thin cardboard and bend them in half horizontally. Use them to support the opposite side of your wrist. Bend and position the strips so that your wrist can still bend well.

Cut out a strip of paper and roll it into a cylinder. Mine was 5 cm wide. Glue the paper together and keep rolling the paper into a cylinder until you get your desired thickness, which, in my case, was 0.2 cm thick. Cut a rectangle on one side of the cylinder measuring 1.2 cm long by 0.7 cm wide. Harden the cylinder by applying super glue to it (looking back, I should've just super glued the cylinder together instead of using normal glue and then using super glue to harden it).

Take a piece of paper and roll it into a smaller cylinder, one that can slide easily through the cylinder we made in the last step. It should be as long as the first cylinder. Use super glue to keep the paper's layers together. Cut two strips of paper measuring 1 cm wide and roll them around the right edge of the smaller cylinder. This should stop the smaller cylinder from sliding all the way through the larger cylinder. Cut a notch near the other end of the smaller cylinder, the one without the extra paper strips.

Cut a popsicle into four, small pieces. Make four more, smaller pieces. Super glue the smaller pieces to the bottom edge of the bigger pieces. These will be the rubber band hooks. Super glue the hooks onto the cylinders according to the pictures above and let dry. Take a jumbo popsicle stick and cut it in half. Wrap a piece of tape around the two pieces to make a hinge. Cut a small rectangle from a popsicle stick, one that will fit inside the cylinder's notch, and super glue it onto one of the ends of the hinge. Glue the outside cylinder of the trigger to another jumbo popsicle stick. Glue the hinge to the bottom of another jumbo popsicle stick, and trim the popsicle stick to the same length as the hinge. The hole cut into the edge of the larger cylinder should be positioned right above the popsicle piece on the hinge. Wrap a rubber band around the hinge and popsicle stick, and attach two more rubber bands around the hooks. Glue the finished trigger mechanism to the cardboard gauntlet with the middle of the hinge right above part of the glove that acts as your wrist.

There are two different kinds of ammo for our mandalorian gauntlets. The first type is a small rocket-like bullet, which is probably the easiest of the two to replicate. The second type is like a Batman-style grappling hook. The basic structure of both bullets is the same. Take a piece of paper and roll it up into a cylinder. Super glue it together and let dry. This is your basic ammunition.

To make the rocket, make a paper circle. Cut a slit running from the edge to the middle and curve the paper to make a cone. Solidify the tip of the cone by feeding excess hot glue into the inside of the tip. Glue the cone to a piece of wooden dowel, and glue the dowel on top of the bullet.

To make the grappling hook, take the paper clip and cut it into 3 equal pieces. Bend the wire to make it into a grappling hook shape, and super glue all three hooks together. Take the three hooks and super glue it into the inside of the bullet. Take some string and glue it to the other end of the bullet.

Now it's time to put those references to use. Cut pieces of cardboard to replicate the little details on the mandalorian gauntlet. For the base of the gauntlet, I cut out a trapezoidal piece of cardboard and cut a hole in it for the trigger to fit through. For the piece of cardboard the surrounds the trigger barrel, I added a piece of thin cardboard to mimic the grid-like pattern on it. I split the gauntlet into 4 sections: front, right, left, and back. Using my references, I was able to get down all the details, such as the tubes near the back of the front. I like to switch between thin and thick cardboard depending on the amount of detail and strength each piece will need. The more detailed a piece, the thinner the cardboard. I also detailed the glove by first covering the popsicle piece with paper. Next, I covered it with a piece of cardboard, topping it off with a thin cardboard triangle.

For the painting, I used the brand Apple Barrel paint (the brand doesn't really matter; it matters on your preference). I mixed an equal amount of Pewter Gray to Timeless Gray in order to get the light gray sheen of the gauntlet. Sky Blue was a good fit for the triangle on top of the glove, and Black filled in the bottom half of the glove, along with the straps connecting it to the gauntlet. To get clean edges, I placed scotch tape around the areas that I did not want to get painted. Then I painted over them, and took the tape off. This gave me precise edges. Nutmeg Brown finished off the tips of the fingers nicely. For the bullets, I painted the main body of the rocket Pewter Gray, and the main body of the grappling hook Black. The cone of the rocket is painted with Outrageous Orange.