Rystan

TK 52877 Garrison Excelsior

This all looks good and exactly how I did it as well. Matching the back using the corners of the front traps is exactly how I got it to look the best IMHO. I suggest letting the glue set for longer than 24 hours in this case. And focus a lot of glue & pressure during the drying/curing time to the front corners. When you attach the face plate to the cap and back, you'll be putting a lot of stress along the ear seam. My front right corner came unglued and left a slight gap after I installed the ears as the back pulled inward but the cap part did not. I must not have uploaded pictures of it to photobucket yet, but if you have questions about what I'm saying, let me know. Some general advice: The overwhelming anxiousness does subside eventually. Just plan everything out as carefully as you can and don't cut until you're ready to. The build is going to take a long time for your first time around. The armor is pretty forgiving of "misglues" as long as you're using E6000. When in doubt, cut less. You can always cut more later. The cover strips help cover up a lot of "mistakes", ie jagged cuts, even overcuts as you can leave a gap that gets covered up. My original plan was to work on the torso (to build confidence, to make it seem like I was making progress, and afford better fitting), and wait on the arms/legs. And I ended up lemming-ing everyone else working on the arms first. Although conquering the forearms was a big hurdle in terms of confidence and skill building. This might be controversial, but be willing to ignore some of what you read on the forums. No two builds are the exact same and no two armors are the same either. Build your armor to fit you and so that it looks how it is supposed to look according to the CRL. Matching screen accurate armor measurements to AM armor isn't going to always look right. Buy more magnets and clamps than you think you'll need. Eventually you'll get on a roll and have to stop working because you've run out of clamps/magnets as the glue is drying from previous steps. And for the Emperor's sake, have fun with the build. Include your kids if they're interested. My 6-year-old gets the credit for keeping me to task. I get asked all the time "When are you going to work on your stormtrooper armor again?" Good luck, you've got this.

Hi James, The build is still progressing. I hope to have it wearable for Halloween to pass out candy to the neighborhood kids. About all I have left to do is the thigh ammo belt and the TD canister. I've got a big backlog of photos I need to upload and describe on here. I just reached a point where I wanted the armor finished more than I wanted to document the build. I should be able to recall much of it after I've finished. On the helmet build side, MightyTank's comments definitely helped to get the helmet assembled. Especially in the "don't be afraid to apply some force" department. The left ear was the biggest issue as seems to be the case for almost everyone. I didn't do any trimming beyond how the ears initially came, but I am not completely happy with how the left ear sits, so might go back and trim it to sit more flush later. If the plan is to go EIB and/or Centurion, the AM helmet has other issues so I didn't spend too much time worrying about perfection. (I do love the helmet though, flaws and all, and especially love peeking around corners in the house wearing it scaring the crap out of my wife.) If you have any more specific questions, let me know and I'll try to help.

Yeah, the forearms were a pain...as much as my original plan was to skip them until I got confidence on other parts, I ended up doing them first and had a few moments where I was ready to give up. The final trick for getting mine to work involved bowing out the cuts along the seams to ease some of the pressure when the edges were pushed together...(Part 1: http://www.whitearmor.net/forum/topic/28145-am-20-build-anh-stunt-by-rystan/page-8#entry358287 / Part 2: http://www.whitearmor.net/forum/topic/28145-am-20-build-anh-stunt-by-rystan/page-8#entry358348) I did notice the shoulder bells sitting better further up the page, just figured I'd mention in case it was something needing looking into as they were pretty far out in the recent photo. I hear ya on the Centurion part, but I still haven't found a great explanation about what is wrong with the current back plate. The AM armor has changed so much since the original AM armor it's hard to tell what to believe/trust about people's facts/opinions any more. My biggest hurdle to go EIB or Centurion is going to be building the E-11. I got my resin kit from DDay and everything is still sitting in a ziploc back untouched until I finish the main armor. I'm going to be getting back into my build soon. Real life could only get held at bay for so long while working on the build. But I'm farther along than my build thread shows. I had to sacrifice documenting the build in order to try and finish before Fan Expo Canada. (which I ended up going to but sans armor).

Looking good, Rick! Can't wait until I can start wearing my armor without the support of masking tape. Couple things I see: 1) Can't tell if the shoulder bells are connected to the shoulder bridge yet or not, but you might want to shorten up the strap. The top of the shoulder bell should almost be touching the chest/back armor. (See the ANH screen caps from a previous post.) 2) The forearms are pretty far down the arm too. (And the left one is rotated around to the front pretty noticeably too) You'll probably want to run a strap between the biceps and the forearms on the inside of the elbow. I recall reading somewhere that the forearm and the bicep should look like they're almost touching even when the elbow is bent as well. Having some sort of strap to hinge on the front/inside would help there. 3) I'm not sure if you're going for EIB/Centurion, but for Centurion, you'll likely have trouble with the abdomen buttons going the separate painted button route. I think the ab buttons plate to use (assuming there's no other issues with the AM ab plate for Centurion) is the one with the molded buttons, like below Those items are all minor and "fixable" if I'm correct, but regardless, it's looking awesome and I'm definitely jealous of the progress!

The AM 2.0 shins are really hard to identify correctly from the front (or the back either). Try the method I found and documented here: http://www.whitearmor.net/forum/topic/28321-sure-fire-am-20-shin-identification/ If you got your gear from MightyTank back in July/August, you might have ended up with duplicates and he should be able to replace them, but you should be able to know for sure after checking my post.

Hi Andrew, Thanks for checking on my build. There is a lot of progress that I haven't documented yet. Once I figured out I wasn't going to be finished in time for Fan Expo, I decided to sleep instead of staying up until all hours of the night building so I would be able to function for the con. Then I took about a week to recover and catch up on all the things around the house that were ignored while I was focusing on the build. Then between kid's birthday, school starting up again and getting sick...oh and fear of the sewing machine...it took a bit to get back into things. I finally conquered the fear of the sewing machine (with limited success...pics to follow), I should be ready to start the final push to getting 501st approval soon. Been following your progress (along with others) to keep the fire stoked in the down time.

http://starwarshelmets.com/original-ANH-Stunt-Stormtrooper-armor-helmets.htm Does this help?

Thanks Peter! I will be getting back to working on the build this week. I took a week off getting rested and ready for Fan Expo Canada (which I'm at right now and having a blast).

Can't wait until this weekend! Even if I doubt I'll have my armor done in time for attendance with me.

You will probably want to upload the pictures to a different site, like photobucket, and embed them from there rather than uploading to FISD.

Hey Ryan, which buttons are you referring to? You referring to these? I bought the Tandy Line 24 snaps from Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B003ABMZ7C/ but they appear to be unavailable at the moment via that link. You should be able to find them elsewhere online I'm sure.

Sorry, that's what I get for using my phone to read the forums

Count the dimples on the outside. Twelve on the right and 11 on the left. You can verify the count against ANH screen grabs.

Mine was waiting for me when I got home today!