Captain America Shield from used satellite dish

I had been wanting to make a Captain America shield for some time, but had a hard time finding a suitable item to make it from. I originally tried using an old plastic sled, but it gave me all sorts of grief. The type of plastic would not take paint very well (not even Krylon Fusion for plastics), or any type of adhesive that I tried.

I eventually came across a used satellite dish, and with a little bit of modifying this turned out to the be best option for a Captain America shield.

If you are interested in making one of these, you may have to do a bit of searching and asking to find a used satellite dish. I've seen them show up at thrift stores from time to time. Keep your eyes open, and you should be able to find one.

UPDATE: After making this original version, I started getting requests to make a Captain America shield that could be thrown safely and fly like a Frisbee without wrecking it. I recently completed a flyable version, and was very happy with the results. You can check it out here: Flying Captain America Shield. If you want to make a Captain America shield for the movie premier next week, the flying version may actually be the easier of the two to complete. Thanks for looking!

Step 1 Disassemble the dish

I began this project by disassembling the dish and components. Some of the nuts and bolts were kept and used later on to attach the handles.

Comments

[bfranco1]

I remade my shield and what i did different was bolted the straps on, I made it bigger, and used silver paint instead of white, and I think it turned out pretty good :D

[nbennie02]

My first shield is made from a garbage can lid and uses the traditional white.
The second shield is from a satellite dish and has chrome. Also on the 2nd shield instead of jb-welding to back I drilled through the dish and used cotter bolts to hold the straps. I think they both came out well, I hope to hear from others about what they think about them.

[bfranco1]

I like both of these a lot!! theyre really good, Good job!

[seamster]

Hey, those look pretty good! I like the way your satellite version turned out. Very nice. You should wear it with pride.

Thanks for the great photos!

[bfranco1]

I made mine without much of a compas to make the circle and i had the paint chipping problem but now i know how to make another one way better :D and these r some pictures of mine

[bfranco1]

I threw it a few times, its flys pretty well, but it bends out of shape easy,lol and i hand drew the star (Not the best idea) but im going to make a better one soon, Hope its as good as yours seamster... :D

[tleonard2]

Does anyone know where to get the star stencil?

[achutheawesome]

you can get one on the internet and print it out

[madame_web]

Hola:
Asi quedo mi escudo luego de seguir, mas o menos, tu tutorial.
Muchas gracias por compartir.

[seamster]

se ve muy bien! buen trabajo!

[gmurray2]

That's an excellent job, especially the paint. If I may ask, specifically what kind of Krylon primer did you use? I've made Cap's shield myself, although I used a milled dish shield blank made for a local historical recreation group to use in melee combat.

My biggest problem was painting it. It's made from an aluminum which generally didn't take paint very well (the fighters in the group cover their shields with cloth, lace it in place, then paint the cloth) and I had some trouble finding primer that would work. As a result, the paint job on my shield is something I'd love to redo, if I thought it could be improved. I'm guessing that the satellite dish you used is an aluminum too, since most other metals would be tougher to reshape and the shield would be uncomfortably heavy.

[seamster]

On this original shield I used Krylon Indoor/Outdoor Gray Primer. I had some problems with the paint sticking when I would remove the masking tape. Some spots would pull right up with the tape, especially where there happened to be bare metal underneath. From what I could tell, the metal looked like galvanized steel.

Funny thing is, I just finished another one of these yesterday (7/16/11). There were a few things I did differently, and the whole process seemed to run a lot smoother. When I ground off the little nubs, I was careful to not remove any more of the shield's original coating than was necessary, so as to avoid having to paint directly onto the metal. Also, I skipped the primer entirely, and put down a few heavy coats of gloss white Krylon Epoxy Enamel. It's a special purpose paint, and I actually have no idea where to buy it. I won a Krylon contest on here a while ago, and got to order 6 cans of whatever they sell, so I went after the exotic stuff. (Interestingly, the new Krylon contest indicates what specific products you get. Hmmm. Makes me think I might have ruined that for everybody!)

The epoxy enamel is advertised on the label as extremely durable and chip-resistant. So this made a great base coat, and all the other coats took to it perfectly fine. Each coat was applied about 30 minutes after the one before it. When I removed the masking tape, no chips or flakes from the base coat came up. So I definitely think epoxy enamel is a great way to go if you can find it.

Here's my latest version, which was also made with adjustable webbing straps.

[MandalorianWannaBe]

.....Amazing

[gmurray2]

Your painting skills are far superior to mine. Thanks for the info. I'll have to start looking for the gray primer, but your initial experience sounds very similar to mine. A couple of times I had both the red and white paint on before big chunks started to fall off, with the primer stuck to the back of the paint.

I painted my shield five times before deciding that it was as good as I could get it, and I never had to work to get the previous application of paint off, it just fell away. The one paint that worked really well was on the inside, but it's not really paint-local auto repair shops sell a repair spray for truck bed liners, which is what I ended up using. I've thought about trying to prime the outside using it but the black seems to bleed through layers of colored paint pretty bad.

Here are photos of my shield. You can see the detail where the lines are pretty rough, and where the paint is chipping away from the edge despite hardly ever being handled. It usually hangs on the wall in my office.

I also took one of the back. When I couldn't figure out straps that I could both use to hold the shield and to wear it on the back, I made a different system. A lot of the fighters here use a handle/ strap combination instead of two straps, so that's how I hang onto it, then the longer straps are adjustable for wear on the back. The handle is long enough for two handed use, plus when on the back the handle sits across the hips to help distribute the weight more evenly and keep it from digging into my butt.

[seamster]

I like the handle set-up. It's very clever!

I like to spray paint things because I love the clean, smooth finish. But the bleed-under on tape lines can be a real pain. I've gotten better at avoiding it, but if I need to touch something up, I buy the little sample cans of latex house paint at home depot in colors that are as close a match as possible to the spray paints I'm using. I use a toothpick to very precisely cover up blemishes, and most people don't even notice. (I actually painted one entirely with house paints to try it, and it didn't look very good at all.)

[Y0URmathT3ACH3R]

During the snipping step, as I cut out my circle I notice that the original paint on the dish is flaking in some areas. should I be concerned with this or should I try to remove all the original paint?

[seamster]

If there's chipping anywhere where you'll be painting, it will eventually flake off and cause you problems. I'd sand down any areas that are chipping to make sure everything is smooth and uniform. It'll be okay if bare metal is showing, as long as there's a smooth transition to painted areas rather than chipped, jagged transitions.

[Y0URmathT3ACH3R]

When you used the exacto blade on the tape, how difficult was it to not scratch the shield?

[seamster]

It did scratch the shield. I didn't even try not to. So this may have contributed to a little bit of flaking off of the base coat that occurred when I removed the tape after painting the stripes.

However, on a second version I made, I used white epoxy spray paint as the base coat, and this stuff was super durable. It didn't flake off at all when I removed the tape. If you're making this and can use something similar, it should make things a lot easier.

[nbennie02]

I just got finished with my second shield. I'm going to post pictures soon.

[seamster]

Sweet. I'm excited to see how it turned out!

[hollabackatcha]

Hey seamster, well my attempts to make your throwable shield totally failed...but I learned alot from it. On question...what size is this dish. I know some dishes can be different in size so I wanted to make sure I got the right one.

And just out of curiosity...what is the diameter of the shield? is it 22inches like Caps or is it different?

[hollabackatcha]

One more thing...on Caps shield in the new movie it has groves inbetween the lines...If I were to take two sat dishes and use one as a base, do you think taking the second shield and cutting out the red and white rings out of it and jb welding them onto the first shield would work?

[seamster]

I don't know about that. It sounds like an awful lot of work that may not produce the results you'd be looking for. If you wanted grooves, you may just want to paint lines to look like grooves.

You asked about the diameter... this satellite dish version was only about 20" if I recall correctly, but my cardboard version was 22.5".

[dbarrett7]

Can send u my stuff and u put it together for me w/ silver instead of white

[seamster]

why not sure throw it in the mail

[dbarrett7]

Jk sorry me and my grandad fixed one up need to paint it

[Freelyx]

Does it fly at all when thrown? I like the cardboard one you did for safety, but this one rocks too. And the texture's between duct tape and metal are very different.

[dbarrett7]

Yes I made on and it does but mine needs a new paint job

[seamster]

I never had the guts to throw it, but I'm sure it wouldn't fly very well.

[Schmittler]

What specific color of paint did you use? I'm in the process of acquiring all of the items to make this, and the correct shades of blue/red seems like the most important and easily mistakable step.

Is there any page that has all of the requirements in a list? I feel like that would be really helpful.

I've been intending to get started on this project for awhile now and I'm excited to finally work on it. Awesome work.

[dbarrett7]

If u want movie sty
E u cn use silver red and dark blue

[nbennie02]

How much did this whole build cost you?

[erobinson-1]

I honstley love all of your instructables, but this is my fav

[seamster]

Thanks!

[nbartolomeo]

i just started making my own and i was wondering how sturdy your shield is, mine feels a little flimsy

[seamster]

It is a little flexible.

In other words, it won't protect you very well from bad guys if you try to use it as a real shield!

[mjohnson44]

My friend and I are gonna make 2 shields then we are gonna wear them to the movie!!!

[futurefilmaker54]

You should enter this in the spray paint challenge.

[seamster]

You have to publish the instructable while the contest is open. Otherwise, I would!