Tutorial for Storm/Boarding/Combat Shields?

[Azazyll]

Does anyone here have good suggestions or tutorials for making one's own shields?  Especially boarding shields?  I'm a novice with plasticard, and the idea of trying to bend it to have the right curved shape is intimidating.  

[micahwc]

I think the easiest way would be to find a length of rod with the radius you want for your shield, coat it with a release agent, and then put a flattened sheet of green stuff over it. Wait for it to dry, pull it off, and shape it as you want to.

[Major_Gilbear]

Cut the shape you want from thin plasticard. Dip it in hot water (not boiling, but still hot). Fish it out and wrap it around something that's a sightly smaller diameter than you want. Use elastic bands to keep it tight. Return it to the hot water for a bit.

 

If you take two of these, and glue them together with some superglue (or even better, a little solvent weld), they form a sort of laminate that's the curvature you want.

 

An alternative is to get two or three thin pieces of plastic, apply some plastic cement, and then elastic-band them tightly to your mould. When the glue is cured, they will be laminated to the curve you want.

 

Suitable moulds are 40-60mm diameter pipe, which I'm sure you can buy a small piece of cheaply in a hardware store. Alternatively, you may have a small jar (like a spice jar) which is the right diameter.

 

Whilst I do use both techniques, I generally prefer the hot water version for thinner items, even though it is more fiddly. The lamination is also a convenient way to achieve that layered look that many of the SM shields have.

 

 

Edit:

 

Of course, you can just make flat boarding shields! These are even simpler (because they don't need bending), and you can still overlay different pieces to get the desired look and thickness. :)

[Hrolf the Cunning]

Gilbear with fantastic advice once again, the only thing i could think to add would be possibly exploring some of the molding options so you can duplicate your custom shields with a high degree of consistency, instant mold is probably a pretty easy to use option if you want to head down this path.

[Brother-Chaplain Kage]

I made a custom terminator-sized breacher shield for a praetor out of sheet plastic.

 

http://i.imgur.com/bEpJkAU.png

 

I tried heating it in hot water and using a heat gun it, but it didn't do much.

 

What I ended up doing was taking the handle of one of my tools and carefully bending the plastic sheet around the handle - start on one side of the shield, bend a little, shift the shield a millimeter or two, bend again, repeat. I had to do that 3-4 times all the way across to get the amount of curve I was looking for, but also being cautious so as not to bend it too much and put a big crease in it. A little time consuming, but worth not destroying the shield. Trim was added with strip plastic and plastic rivets.

 

http://i.imgur.com/AG4U0c8.png

[Tyberos the Red Wake]

Brother Chaplain Kage be like 

[Brother-Chaplain Kage]

I guess the explanation wasn't thorough enough?

 

Here's the only decent sized shot of the shield I have between those two pics.

 

http://i.imgur.com/buyCPYY.png

 

My original idea was to sculpt half of the Crimson Sons icon on it but it didn't work out and you can see where I used some thick plastic strip to do the trim and greenstuff for the reinforcement around the gun port.