If you’re planning to dress as Captain America, a shield and helmet are practically requirements. They’re two pieces of the costume that make it instantly recognizable. Instructables user RuckaFett wasn’t happy with any helmets he saw in Halloween shops so he made his own by combining a cheap Captain America half mask (pictured below) and a skateboard helmet. He also used opaque vinyl, automotive interior striping, leather pieces for the ear flaps and chin strap, and a few more basics. He did an amazing job turning the two pieces into a quality helmet.

Here’s how he started after he gathered supplies:

I cut the rubber eye cushion out from the inside of the face mask. Cutting these support posts out was one of the more difficult portions of the project, but honestly the hardest part of the ENTIRE project was removing the dense foam padding from out of the inside of the FREAKING skateboard helmet! That one step nearly made me give up on the ENTIRE project! My advice is to just exercise LOTS of patience, and allow LOTS of time… I should point out that I left the elastic strap attached to the face mask for quite a while. As it was helpful in holding the mask and helmet together while fitting and bonding.

I estimated where I needed to cut the front lobe out of the skateboard helmet, and test fitted the mask over it. I did this a few times, only taking a slight bit off each time. This allowed me to “sneak up” on just the right size without going too far.

Once I had everything placed where I wanted and all was prepped, I spent countless hours bonding, gluing, and sanding until I had the finish looking as damn near perfect and smooth as I could. At that point, I sprayed the entire helmet primer white, then sanded it down again. I then used a computer graphics program to draw and print the graphics I could use to create stencils of the “A” and wings. That way they could be reversed out of the blue top coat (as the white primer would be exposed through he blue).

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