Mad Max- the Road Warrior

Shortly before Mad Max: Fury Road went into theaters, I decided to watch the original three Mad Max films to catch up. Afterseeing them all, I immediately decided that I had to be The Road Warrior for Halloween. Hence, I spent many months gathering the materials, weeks planning out the construction and looking for advice online, and then many hours putting it together. Before I begin, I want to thank my parents for all their help and patience; for driving me around to get my materials, and for taking time to work with me on this. So, let's get started!

This Instructable requires a surprising amount of supplies:

1. 50's greaser jacket costume

2. Black spray paint

3. Velcro® straps (8' of 2" wide, and pack of four 3.5"x.75")

4. Leg brace

5. Yarn

6. Scissors

7. Leather biker gloves

8. Small crescent wrench

9. Black pants (preferably skinny)

10. Drill and sawzall

11. Carabiners and key-rings

12. Binoculars

13. Football shoulder pads

14. Black t-shirt

15. Knee-pad(s)

16. A patient helper, or two

17. Belt

A good place to start would be the shoulder pad. I bought my pair of pads used for $30 at a local sports resale store. Using a drill, all necessary bolts can be taken out of the right shoulder pad. In addition, strings and velcro straps should come undone relatively easy, so as to get rid of the foam padding.

Also, my pad came with an extra pad that fully covered my right shoulder. It is best to take this piece off as well, leaving only the parts that wrap over the shoulder, touching the back and chest, and the pad that hangs over the right shoulder.

Once all necessary parts have been removed, take a piece of fine sandpaper and gently rough up the pad. This will provide a slight worn-out look.

Next, spray paint the shoulder pad. Once the paint has dried, if needed, take the yarn and tie the front and back of the shoulder pads "together." See picture for what I mean. This pulls the front and back closer together, bringing it in tighter to the body. Match it to your shoulder size.

The next step is the leg brace. To deconstruct it, take the sawzall and cut the metal straps that wrap around the back of the leg. This allows for proper sizing from the back. Next, use the drill to drill out all appropriate bolts. This can be a little tricky, for a lot of the bolts on my brace were rounded off, which made it difficult for the drill bit to stay on the bolt.

To help with this, my dad used a nail punch and hammer to flatten out the tips of the bolts. Once your bolts are flat, the drill bit should have no problem pushing out the bolts. Remember, be patient, because some of the bolts may not fall out first time through, leaving the frontal straps still in place. Just work with it.

After all the straps have been taken off, and all the bolts taken out, set the leg brace aside.

Also, there should have been a small belt-like strap at the ankle of the brace. Hold onto this. You will need it soon.

This is where that belt strap comes into play. To get it to look right, simply spray paint it black. After it dries, set it up next to the jacket, deciding how low you want the wrench to hang. Then, buckle/fasten the belt as you would any other belt, and cut off the excess.

To attach the wrench to the belt, slide a key ring through a small hole created by the belt (see picture), and then connect a silver carabiner to said key ring. Then, connect another key ring to the wrench, and hang that key ring from said carabiner. Now the wrench-belt system is put together.

Now, the small velcro strips come in two pieces, both with sticky sides. Put the velcro pieces together, and then stick one side to the strap, and the other side to the jacket, right under the left collar. Press hard to make sure the sticky sides are securely attached to both the jacket and the belt.

An issue I ran into was that the belt, hanging from the collar, swung around when I moved. To fix this, I took two more pieces of velcro, and repeated the same process as above, this time down lower and closer to my waist. This keeps the wrench from swinging around too much.

Attaching the shoulder pad to the jacket requires more velcro. This time, however, use the 2" wide straps. Just like the smaller strips, the longer straps come in two pieces, working together to fully adhere the velcro to the desired product.

Take each side of the strap system, and cut them into three distinct parts: one for the front of the jacket, one for the back of the jacket, and one for the top of the jacket (on the shoulder). Follow a process similar to that of the belt strap. First connect both parts of the velcro system, cut into the three parts, and stick them to the shoulder pad. Then, place the shoulder pad on the right shoulder of the jacket.

This is where a Helper comes in real handy. It will be best, and easiest, if the shoulder pad is attached to the jacket, while the jacket is being worn. So, put the jacket on, and have your Helper carefully put the shoulder pad in place on the jacket. For best results, the Helper should press really, really hard on the front and back of the jacket at the same time, to ensure that the pad firmly sticks to the jacket.

Also, the lower part of the collar will want to flop around freely as it sits on the outside of the pad. To prevent this, place a small piece of velcro on the tip of the collar flap, and stick it to the pad, keeping the collar flap in place.

This step is really simple. All that is required is to simply use the scissors to cut the right sleeve off at approximately the elbow, and then roll the sleeve about halfway up the upper arm.

It is important to do this AFTER attaching the shoulder pad to the sleeve, so that sleeve length can be determined in relativity to the shoulder pad's placement.

The leg brace is arguably the most difficult of all the components of this costume. Because an old leg brace was deconstructed, recreating a system by which to hold the braces in place for a smaller leg took a lot of patience, work, and effort.

The straps themselves are made out of the 2" wide strips of velcro. To start with, take one side of the velcro system and lengthen it to tightly support the back of the leg, doing this four times for four different spots on the leg: the upper thigh, right above the knee, the calf, and the ankle. When you cut the straps, however, make them approximately three inches longer than is technically needed. These extra inches are for initially attaching the straps to the braces themselves. Take off the sticky, protective seal off of about an inch and a half on each side of each strap, and wrap the brace up in the sticky parts.

Fully extend your leg and place the brace on the back of the leg as if you were about to put it on. This is to make sure that the back is tight enough and that it fits right.

Now, for the frontal straps, take the cut right sleeve scraps and, using the inside of the sleeve, line and cut out the sleeves in direct relation to the size of the frontal straps. After cutting them out, stick the other part of the velcro system to the sleeve cut-outs. This achieves the black look without seeing the stickiness of the velcro pieces, or worse, the velcro logo plastered all over you leg. See second and third pictures for reference.

Now, like the earlier straps, the frontal straps need to be a few inches longer than the length of you leg, respective to each segment of your leg receiving a strap. Once the first four straps have been made and attached to the braces, and the frontal four straps sized and stuck to the sleeve scrap cut outs, you are ready to put the costume together.

Now it is time to put it all together.

The t-shirt underneath is nothing more than a black t-shirt turned inside out, with the collar hem cut off and reduced to a v-neck. Also, the right sleeve was cut, so that it would not show under the shorter jacket sleeve. Throw the jacket on and put on your black biker gloves.

Under the black pants, if you have really skinny legs, wear a smaller, cushioned knee pad or knee brace to bulk up the knee. Then put the black pants on, and prepare to put the leg brace on. To put the leg brace on, fully extend your left leg and lay it on the leg brace. For the back straps, the sticky protective seal should be facing your leg. Then, one at a time, strap the frontal straps to the brace, wrapping extremely tight so that the leg brace does not pop off or slide down. The cushioned knee pad/brace under the pants comes in real handy here. If the leg brace is placed and strapped right, if it goes to slide down, the bulk of the knee brace will stop it. A Helper is really helpful for putting the leg brace on, because they can keep the brace straight with your leg, and help put the frontal straps in place.

To knock the sheen off of the jacket, gently rough it up a little bit with fine sandpaper, and maybe even blow some sand on yourself.

For final touches, slide on some black shoes and even mess your hair up a little bit. For the binoculars that hang from the left leg, take a small strap of some sort and hang a key ring around the strap. Then, connect a carabiner to the key ring. The strap wraps around part of the binoculars, and the carabiner hangs from the left belt loop.

Congratulations! You are done! Post some pictures and let me know if you make this costume in the comments section!