To be updated with more info and photos, but this is about a WW2 Captain America ‘heater shield’.

My good friend Jack asked about making one for his Captain America cosplay / airsoft outfit, and I figured “why not?”, and went about it. Jack helped source some great reference material (mental note, dig that up and link it here).

I had just enough leftover 1/8″ thick aluminum sheet metal at work that I was able to CNC machine out the shield shape. The grade of aluminum (I want to recall 6061) proved too difficult to roll / bend by hand, even with myself and another friend literally leaning over each half. I ended up getting the sheet metal shop that my work does business with to put it through a manual roller which proved to do the trick.

Then came the longest part to tackle – the design. We looked into paint, powdercoat (whole shield’s got a base coat of white powdercoat), ‘dry’ cerakote, wet cerakote, vinyl decals, vinyl masking… everything either ended up taking too much skill, space, or free time. We ended up contracting with a friend-of-a-friend who does custom vinyl work as a business, and he printed and placed the design as seen on the shield. Between the durable vinyl and the powdercoat base, it’ll take a beating no problem should it ever see action on an airsoft field.

As of posting this I still have to fabricate and adhere on the arm strap mounting strips. I’ll update the post as that moves forward.