Category: Crafts

Band Hat Construction – reference for cosplay

I’m making a Jagermonster (from the Girl Genius webcomic) costume that can also function as a Steampunk / Victorian costume of an unspecified hussar (it’s a type of light cavalry with really cool costumes). Of course, that means I need a nice hat.

A horde of Jagermonsters in varying uniforms.

To make life easier, I bought a vintage band hat (shako) off ebay. So this post is how that hat is constructed in case somebody else wants to do the same thing. I’m sure construction varies depending on company and decade, but this should give you an idea.

One of the ebay photos

The historical shakos were made of stiffened felt and leather. Naturally, modern ones are much cheaper. From the inside out: the base is molded ABS plastic. It’s covered in twill fabric in two pieces – the top and the main part which is sewn in front with the seam hidden by the plaque (the big brass thing). The trim on top is also sewn in front, but the trim on bottom is sewn on one side. The whole fabric cover is glued on the inside and the outside under the trim pieces.. I suspect you could pull the fabric off to use as a pattern, but it would probably have some tears.

Showing the plastic body. Ignore the hole – I added that. The clothes pins are holding the headliner out of the way.

Over the twill covering goes the visor with the edge trimmed (printed on the visor is washing instructions: Don’t.) Mine seems to be a layer of stiff card and a layer of vinyl. The visor is sewn onto the inside. Sewn over that is a faux leather (vinyl) sweatband with a headliner attached. The headliner allows some size adjustment. Mine is fabric – I specifically looked for that – but the newer ones are vinyl.

Photo from ebay showing the inside of the hat, with the visor, sweatband, and headliner, as well as a tag.
Inside the shako, with the stitching holding everything in place removed.

You can see how things go a bit better here, hopefully. The large hole is a vent that I suspect doesn’t help much. The bottom hole I added, so ignore it. The twist ties show the position of the hole for the brad (see below). It looks like a button, but has long metal arms like a brad. Naturally, I can’t get that so I’m using buttons and temporarily holding them with twist ties. The brad holds on the cord and the chinstrap.

side of the hat, showing the button-like brad

The last detail is the plume holder for the plume, pompom, or whatever decoration, which also secures the plaque. This is a flattened plastic tube that goes in a hole in the top of the hat.

the top of the hat
inside the hat, with a screw on the back of the plaque through a hole in the plume holder

The holes are far enough up the hat that you shouldn’t ever feel the screw (which has a small nut that should go on there, but I didn’t bother for the photos). The plaque can turn freely, but I suspect you could solder or glue on another screw to prevent that, since there are three holes.

I think that’s everything. I’ve made a new pompom and I’m going to add fancier cords, like a military shako, that hang from near the top. I’m sculpting a new plaque using the old one as a base. Eventually I’ll make a new, black leather visor, but I think I’m going to run out of time. This is my very rough and ugly mock-up (the plaque will look like brass, not embroidery). I’ll probably also replace the blue trim with gold at some point.

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Dice Tower out of Paper

I got the pattern for this from here: https://papermakeit.com/index.php/products/freebies/pmi-projects/the-dice-tower/detail Note that it’s designed for A4 so a couple of pages get cut off if you print it on letter (I moved the pages up so I could print it full-size)

There are no written instructions and the photo instructions aren’t complete. I also made some alterations. I added the stone details in the top floor windows and in the tall turret I added the inside walls and roof (all of these were cut from pages that didn’t print correctly the first time). Also, the clear acetate and the crenelations on the roof were apparently supposed to just be glued on, but I added tabs and slits for them instead and they ended up needing no glue.

I disagree with some of the designer’s decisions, especially the grey buildings on the top which were an absolute bear to build. I may redesign it to make my own version, but if I do it won’t be anytime soon.

It’s simply printed on cardstock and is designed to be sturdy for the most part. I added reinforcement with scotch tape along the ramps and I expect it’ll last pretty well. I’m not going to use metal dice with it, but I don’t think I would put metal dice through any dice tower.

I’ve made a video of it in action and it sounds quite nice:

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Papercraft Progress

I haven’t made any more customs, but here’s some stuff I’ve built lately:

Clockwise from top left corner: IT, Paper Totem by Admskt, Rumbolt, handlink from Quantum Leap, and Tubby Eat Coin
  • IT is from Made in Paperland (site is in Russian). I have an original I’m going to make inspired by it, based on the Kaypro II computer.
  • Paper Totem was a platform toy by Dolly Oblong.  They’re not easily available anymore. This was one of the customs.
  • Rumbolt is from Fold Up Toys. It was really fiddly to make.
  • The handlink is from mikedaws.
  • Tubby Eat Coin is from Zerolabor. I have two customs sketched out for it, but I’m not sure if I’m going to make them.

I’m on a papercraft Discord, where we share models that aren’t available anymore (like the paper totems)

Nanibird custom and Happy Turtle

Nanibird is another platform toy, which is no longer available, like at all. This one is by Ivan Ricci at Kawaii-Style (site is in Italian). There are two more by them, but I’m going to make the other Nanibirds smaller.

Happy Turtle is by Fold Up Toys again. It was fun to build.

Some detail shots below the cut

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Recent-ish Stuff

I’m running two communities on Dreamwidth that you should check out.

I was given the Writers Cafe from the previous admin and I made Just Create. Every Friday I post a check-in to share what people have done, seen, made, or read and then Saturday or Sunday they each get a session for making stuff. 

If you’d like a community to encourage you on, come check them out.

We had a roadrunner in the yard. If you haven’t seen them in person, they’re pretty large birds – probably the size of a parrot.

Roadrunner sitting on a fence
Closer view of a roadrunner sitting on a fence

I also finally finished the sampler I started before I went to the Netherlands! (I worked on it very intermittedly). The plan was for every line to be a different stitch, but one of the ones I planned didn’t look good as a straight line so I reused one.

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Papercraft Challenge – Heartbreak

As I said before, I’ve gotten into papercraft models. I also decided that as much as possible, I wanted to do a custom for each model I have (or at least a lot of them) – thus the Papercraft Challenge!

I showed the WIP of ex-tyrannomon before which I only need to build now. (It’s the pink thing to the left up there)

I finished a simpler one first and here it is:

It’s based off the voodoo model from MadeinPaperland.ru (site is in Russian).

I altered the template in Adobe Illustrator and I think it’s adorably creepy. Because the Made in Paperland said for personal use only, I kept they’re label on it and I won’t be sharing the template.

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The Captain’s Bed

I’ve wanted a captain’s bed ((also known as storage beds, chest beds, or cabin beds)) for a while now, but never bothered because I had a perfectly good futon and no money. New ones go for hundreds to over a thousand and the ones I found cool take up a lot of space.

22_935_xx_captains_bed_twin_with_drawers_cabi
So cool. Look at all that storage!

I had never thought about it, but my parents’ bed is a captains bed – my dad had built it and they had moved it with them from Ohio to California and through three house’s there. (It comes apart into three pieces, so that helps).

Once I moved back in with my parents, I was using their futon which has free floating drawers underneath. But the cats loved to sleep in the drawers and I was afraid to let my rats run around in my room because I wouldn’t be able to get to them behind the bed. Mom was also getting frustrated with the cats always sleeping in the drawers where we couldn’t find them, so finally she said she’d buy me a new bed at Ikea.

contemporary
Space to shove stuff you never need to see! Bookcase!

I started looking for Ikea Hacks to make a storage bed, then figured, if I’m looking, let’s take a look at Craigslist. Which is where I lucked out!

I don’t have a pic of the ad, sorry. The pictures were awful. It was shoved into a corner, with two much stuff so you couldn’t really see much. But it was a captain’s bed, for 80 bucks, that could go from a full-size to a queen, ((I have no plans of ever having anything but a full-size bed, but, y’know, features!)) so why not go take a look? So me and my dad went off in his truck.

It was beat up, but made of real wood and the guy accepted my offer of 60 bucks. Score!

I figured I’d fix it and repaint it and be good. Yeah…

When I started taking a look, it turned into a bigger project than I figured. Some of the drawer fronts were beat to hell. The hinges were all either busted or frozen. Worse than that though, was the body of it, which seems to be made of the cheapest, splintery-ist, knottiest pine plywood the builder could find, held together with staples, half of which missed their mark. And I didn’t want my dad to help, because he’d take over and end up doing all of it.

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The two pieces of the body of the bed. Already did some sanding on the one.

Quality manufacturing!
Quality manufacturing!

I removed all the hardware and decided I would try it without any handles so it’d be lower profile. So I started filling holes. And sanding. And patching. And sanding. And patching. And sanding.

Two weekends in, I’m still sanding. (Part of this is getting started late in the days and taking breaks, but still).

Did I mention the quality craftsmanship? Because look at this:

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Yeah, that’s a place the wood split from one of the staples.

And a ton of the staples on the body stick out a half inch from the wood (as seen in the two pictures above). Which means anything put in the center space – which closes with a door (sorry about no real before pics) – would snag. So I cut those off with wire cutters, then used my rotary tool to smooth them, then covered them with wood filler.

Better no? I also filled in big knot holes, cracks, and all the places the even longer staples split the wood.
Better no? I also filled in big knot holes, cracks, and all the places the even longer staples split the wood.

But mostly I’ve been working on the drawers and doors. I have most of them done now. There’s three drawers left to do, all of which have been puttied and sanded to some extent, and then the two body pieces.

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Making progress!

But look at this poor wood!

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Sorry about the crappy picture. I was really tired and in pain by the time I was taking pics. This is the worst of the drawers.

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Doors!

I’ve still got plenty to do (finish sanding, prime, paint, put hardware back, figure out how I’m handling the mattress surface), and Mom wants me done by Saturday so she can have her garage back, but as long as my bosses don’t expect me to work five days this week, like last week, I should be able to get it done!

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Finished bookmarks

Those of you who follow me on Facebook have already seen pictures of the finished bookmarks. But those were crappy pictures taken on my messy desk with my phone. So, here’s all the bookmarks in the display boxes I made.

Why are there spoons? I was testing how it would work for the craft show on Saturday. The spoons are in case it’s windy, to weigh down the boxes.

I promise the next post will be vintage stuff, and I’ll be doing another Cocktail of the Night soon.

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