J-Dub's Terminator Skull Vinyl Kit Guide

Terminator Skull

Vinyl Kit Build

This is a guide for those interested in building their own Terminator T-800 Endoskeleton skull from the vinyl kit available online. With some time and patience and a bit of prior modeling skill, you can achieve a great result that rivals the fully built models costing upwards of $1,000 for about 1/10th of that. (and its a lot of fun)

This was my first vinyl model. I had built a few snap together kits in the past, but this was my first time doing something of this level. I'll take you through the process I used, highlight some modifications I made, and some pitfalls I encountered.

I hope you find this to be a good reference. Happy modeling!

The kit is available on eBay. Search for a Endoskeleton skull vinyl kit. When I was looking in 2018 there seemed to be two models available. You want the more expensive one with more pieces since it better matches the cast from the original T2 prop.

I found the model for $50 plus $30 shipping to the US, sold from a seller in the Philippines. It took about 2 weeks to arrive and you can see to the left what spilled out of the box

starting out

The first step is to cut away the flashing and begin to reshape the components. As you see in the face here, these vinyl pieces deform when they are pulled out of the mold at the factory

The best way to remove the flash is with a very sharp razor blade. YOU WILL CUT YOURSELF SEVERAL TIMES, so have band-aids handy.

Once the parts have been trimmed to the point that you can start to piece them together, its time to reshape all the parts. You can do this with a heat gun or hair drier, but I found the best way was to put them under the faucet with very hot water until you feel them become soft and pliable. Then press and pull them into the desired shape and remove from the heat. You can do this over and over until you think its just right.

Once the parts have been bent back into shape, use some superglue to start putting the parts together. For extra strength I reinforced the joints from the inside with two part epoxy after the superglue had cured.

The toughest part for me was fitting the internals into the cut outs on the side of the skull. It took a lot of precise trimming to get them nested.

But, once the top of the skull is bent, forced, clamped, glued and stuck into place, you can see we have a lot of clean-up to do. The vinyl will have imperfections, mold lines and extra material stuck in the details

I primed the inside of the skull black to avoid light leaks and taped some tubing behind the eyes to leave room for electric connections.

Note my taped thumb from a recent puncture wound inflicted on myself when cleaning up the flashing using a razor blade

I forced the base of the skull into place as best I could, although it wasn't exactly centered. I didn't realize how much of an issue this would be until I sat the head on the neck and realized it was off-center. Whoops.

The LED light wiring was run for each eye and protected with plastic straws before filling the head cavity with foam insulation. The foam was used to add rigidity and provide an internal structure to stick the putty to when installing new teeth.

I would skip this foam step if I were to do it again. It was a mess and I probably could have managed a decent job on the teeth without it

Painful part is over, now to the fun stuff

teeth

DO THIS

NOT THIS

The first major modification to the kit was the teeth. I HIGHLY recommend this as it adds a good bit of realism to the finished product.

I used a dremel tool and small grinding bit to carefully remove all of the teeth. In the front there is thankfully a clear line to guide you. In the back make sure to remove enough material that your new teeth can snug up into the skull.

Sand until smooth...

This model was already going a bit over budget so I didn't want to pay for the traditional modelers 'Milliput' epoxy putty. I found some KwikWood wood filler putty at Home Depot that I hoped would be just as good.

This worked surprisingly well. You need to work fast to prevent the stuff from hardening before you are finished adjusting the fit.

Be sure to do a test fit of the top and bottom jaws as you go to ensure that the bite will be correct when its all assembled.

Once you have the teeth where you want them, pull them straight out before the epoxy hardens completely. I waited a bit too long and really had to struggle to get some teeth out.

Sand and Fill

With the jaw and cranium lined up and teeth pulled, its time to work on all those imperfections in the model surface. Take your time here and it will pay dividends later.

I used some Tamaya modeling putty for the small problems, and the Kwikwood shown above to fill some of the larger gaps on the underside of the jaw and bottom of the skull.

Work up to a 220 grit finish across the entire model. Pay extra attention to the transition between the epoxy and the vinyl around the teeth.

My model had a circle shaped gap/mold line right in the middle of the forehead, that took several cycles of sanding and filling to get it flush with the surface

A black primer and microfiller (Alclad II) was applied to spot any remaining imperfections. There were plenty. I probably did 3 rotations of primer, sanding and more filling.

Although I use Alclad paints for this project, a black spray primer and black spray gloss are probably equally as good, just be sure they won't react with whatever chrome finish you apply later.

Apart from the teeth, taking your time on the black gloss finish is probably the most important thing you can do to improve the quality of the final product.

After priming one last time, I used two coats of black gloss (in my case it was Alclad gloss black base).

The paint was relatively shiny, but the finish was uneven and even the smoothest parts had signs of orange peel and a bit of over-spray.

I wet sanded the surface starting with 1,000 grit sandpaper and worked up to 2,500 grit. Still not good enough.

Next I used some Turtle Wax brand rubbing compound (meant for cars obviously). Then their polishing compound. I found both at Walmart for about $3 a piece. DO NOT USE WAX, just the compounds. The wax will react with the chrome finish

Until you can clearly see yourself in the skull, you're not done yet.

After the model was like a mirror, I used Alclad II chrome for the final finish.

Next step was connecting the LED's to the wiring in the eye sockets. Testing the circuit in this picture.

Things are starting to come together now!

Final details and assembly

The next mod for us to take on-board is the eyes. Just sticking the LEDs through the eye holes is fine, but for added realism and depth, I used clear glass marbles painted with X-27 clear red. Then I painted the LEDs themselves the same color. The marbles will serve as the pupils being backlit from the LEDs (which is why we needed those cavities behind the eyes)

After the eyes are glued in with hot glue (superglue produces some chemical reaction that will ruin the chrome paint around where you use it) its time to put his teeth back in. Hopefully you kept track of where they went and how they fit together. I used simple elmers glue for this as they were already very snug.

I did not like the provided base, so I am doing something custom here. I cut the neck off at the bottom and attached it to a metal electrical box I found at Home Depot with Epoxy. This entire assembly got the same paint up treatment as described above.

You can also see some connectors going into place here.

The parts connecting into his 'ears' came from a U shaped metal fitting from Home Depot cut in half

The metal braided hose is designed for ice makers. It was the smallest diameter I could readily find

I mentioned above how important it is to have the hole for the spine centered on the base of the skull. Mine was not, and I had to connect the spine off to the side of the hole and fill in the gaps with about 5 or 6 sticks of hot glue.

Lesson learned.

You will see some nicks in the paint, I am leaving those be for now and will come back at the end and touch up the chrome with Alclad and weathering pastels

The jaw hinges were pretty self explanatory. Only modification I made was to drill out where it looked like a bolt was connecting two parts and replace that with an actual small bolt ($0.10 at Home Depot, and again adds to the realism at the end)