Functional Mandalorian Armor

Well, that really depends on how thick you're making the plates. But steel armor can weigh quite a lot. I've known medieval suits that weigh upwards of 100lbs. But that's for full plate. So I'd put an estimate around maybe 50-80lbs, depending on how many plates you use, and how thick you make the plates themselves.

Ah... I was thinking of using plexiglass for the chest armor

Well no what i meant was instead of using steel or whatever, i use plexiglass.

You can actually sometimes find an EE-3 resin cast online. But if you want to make it from scratch, I recommend trying to find something with relatively the same style handgrip. Then everything else is just a matter of PVC piping and plastic pieces. So not all that complicated, if you know what you're doing.

As far as plexiglass for the armor plates, I would really recommend Sintra or some other form of plastic over it, because plexiglass is not very easy to mold into the shapes you'll need, and it doesn't take paint very well at all. Sintra is a bit expensive, but all you need is heat to mold it.

So whats EE-3 and where would i find some Sintra? Whenever i search for Sintra i get a country.

Try looking for Sintra plastic specifically. EE-3 is Boba's weapon. If you want a Fett armor, it's good to have all the pieces for it. Also, I'd really recommend using a metal-specific jigsaw or rotary cutting tool for metal. Though you can usually use tin snips for really thin stuff, but your edges will need grinding down if you do that.

Steel would be heeeeeeeeavy...

Most Fett costumers use sintra or styrene. There are some builders that buy fiberglass Fett armor which is a lot better, but obviously not easy to make if you aren't crafty like that.

I've also seen armor made from car hoods. Pretty nice, but has a lot of weight on you costume's soft parts.

If you use sheet metal, be sure to buff the edges out real good so you don't have a bunch of sharp edges.

Good luck.

Hi I am about to start making my metal mandalorian armor as well. And you could to ease the weight use hydraulic and pneumatic pistons.  And you could have smaller joints that way to because you would not need to bend a much. And for the inner parts on the joints you could use hinges to let it bend.