I bought the Hasbro Darth Vader Voice Changer Mask from Walmart (Shown below)which was on sale for $15 and completely stripped it down to it's main parts. The mask even though severly undersized still looks good on my shelf and I was left with a hollow chestbox prop ready to improve.

The empty box measures 5 x 5 inches which a little undersized for the the original prop which measured approx 6 x 6 inches. I am not going to worry about that too much at this point as I am a little smaller than the "Real" Darth Vader anyway at a measly 6 ft 1. I completely repainted the box, removed the voice changer and rewired the switches to operate the electronics from a red LED flashing bicycle light. (Also needed a slight modification to fit the slots) I was really lucky with the voice changer box as the slots were hollow anyway as the speaker used to be mounted behind them. The red button on the front now switches on the lights and the original battery compartment is still being used so battery replacement is easy.

I also added new straps (Also from Walmart from their fabric section at $2 each) so it would be worn correctly and be adjustable. The original prop also has Imperial Code lettering under the slots so I found a font which looked similar, printed out some random words and glued them on. There has been a lot of speculation on whether or not the two square lights actually light up, it's very hard to tell and no one seems to know for sure so I cut out small squares of sticky backed reflective plastic of the appropriate colors and stuck them on. The reflection is more than adequate for the effect without having to get technical with wiring.

What I ended up with looked like this ....

Here is a better look at the imperial code lettering.......

Not bad for now and looks fine on the costume. As far as I can tell, the slightly smaller chestbox is more to scale for an average person anyway. I have seen some people with "Authentic" & "Accurate" costumes and they can look a little silly in gear originaly designed for someone 7 ft 2 and an olympic weight lifting champion. Including the main prop, the paint, bike light & straps this cost me about $30 which is not a bad cost at all. I will be making a more accurate one and will add the build to this page as and when completed.