shashachu

Hi Rodney, Almost there! Could you please include a photo of the inside of your thigh ammo belt connection? This is to check the EIB requirement: Thigh ammo belt is attached to thigh with a solid head rivet, painted white, in the upper corner and fastened to the lower thigh ridge. The rivets used shall be single cap, double cap or split rivets. No pop rivets allowed.

Hey Rodney! Good to see you here. You have the...honor? of being my first DO review. Thanks so much for making the suggested adjustments. We'll be with you shortly.

The kit does not come with the TD clips. I made my own from 1/8" aluminum flat bar from home depot but there are many places to buy them.

Shins look awesome to me. Like was suggested, I'd also trim the bottoms to match. Are the shins being held together with the tape or do they stay closed by themselves? One piece of advice I found helpful is that you'll have a much easier time with the shin closures if you're able to bend them into shape so that they stay closed naturally rather than having to be forced closed with Velcro, bra straps, etc. Side note: I recently got added to the DO team so I will be eagerly awaiting your EIB and Centurion submissions.

Another extremely happy WTF kit owner here. Like others said, it comes with everything you need for the helmet assembly, including the brow trim, neck trim, and green plastic for lenses. It also comes with tube stripe decals but I gave mine away since I wanted a painted helmet instead of decals. I bought my paint stencils from Trooperbay and was very happy with them. Note that if you want a hero, Walt does make hero helmets, so you should be able to request one.

Awesome to hear!

Nice! You seem to have very good mobility in this kit. It took me a while to learn to walk normally in my OTTK...

Aw, yiss. Time to start Fire Team Slanted Shoulders... Re: snap plates, I have not yet had to re-place them, but I'm also kind of terrified of doing anything even moderately irreversible on my kits, so I stuck (ha!) with E6000.

I was originally planning on a suspender system but ended up just using a nylon belt with the thighs strapped. The ab and kidney hang off the back and chest with elastic and snaps - I haven't felt the need to have anything holding up the ab. It's held up well for a year.

The ears look great! Remember - gaps are cannon!

That's a good thought - I hadn't really noticed the difference in shape, but looking at the CRL image, the shoulder bells do seem rounder. I'll probably give that a go - they are definitely large on me.

Thanks! Tbh I kind of forgot about the TD until I was looking at someone else's build the other day... But yes it's primarily the width I'm worried about.

Thanks for the encouragement, everyone!

A bit more progress. Finished assembling the left forearm. It went a bit more smoothly than the right, but still had to do weird brackets. I'll likely need to add more, or I might use a bit of milliput to fill some of the seams and help hold things together. With all arm pieces together, I tried the arms on with the shoulder gaskets. It was all right, but I think I'll need to take in the shoulder gasket a bit, because my bicep piece circumference is pretty small. And a shoulder bell for good measure: Moving along, I decided to go ahead and assemble the back and yoke. (Forgot to take many photos.) It actually wasn't as bad as people had made it out to be. I'll definitely have to do some heavy seam/gap filling, but overall it was relatively straightforward. I started by gluing the yoke to the connector piece, let that dry overnight, then glued everything to the back. I know the chest/yoke/back is going to be one of the most challenging parts of the build because it is just *so* big. KB claims it's meant for average sized people, but it's really quite barrel chested. The first thing I did is trim off a bunch of excess material from the...wings? I don't know what they're called: Next up, a *lot* of heat bending with my trusty heat gun. My goal was to wrap the wings more tightly around me, and greatly reduce the width of the back and chest. As with my TK, I set the heat gun around 450F-500F and slowly heated up the areas I wanted to bend. When the ABS just starts to lose it's springiness, I'd turn off the heat gun. Incidentally, the KB kit is much thinner than my WTF original TK, so I had to be careful not to overheat. Back before: Back after: No individual photos of the chest, but here's everything on me: This whole build has been kind of a rollercoaster for me - I flip flop between feeling really encouraged and being totally convinced it's impossible to fit this kit to someone my size, especially with how tough my GML is. For now I'll soldier on.

Woo! Congrats!!

Great work! Good luck

Awesome, yeah I think it'd be helpful to get as much hands-on help as possible. You're short enough that there really shouldn't be a gap inbetween the ab and cod - on the contrary, they should probably be overlapping. Good luck! You're getting there.

Taylor - what Garrison would you be joining?

Agree with Luc - the cod doesn't need to be so much in between your legs - let it just hang off the ab and it hopefully won't dig into your thighs so much. Definitely try detaching it from the butt and position them independently.

Agree with Luc. The entire ab/kidney/cod area looks too high. None of the back, kidney, or butt should be overlapping. The cod and butt should not be attached. If you detach them, you should be be able to drop the butt down way lower. If the cod is digging into your thighs you should be able to trim in down a bit. The whole ab is sitting too high - drop it down and tuck the cod behind it. On me, the bottom of the ab piece hits just around my hip bones. On you it looks like it could be lowered by a few inches.

I did do a lot of trimming on my forearms. I somewhat regret it not because it didn't turn out well, but because it was a pain in the butt. I think it's more common to leave the forearms a bit bigger and just add foam to make up the room.

Now that I have the right arm pieces assembled, I decided to try them on (with the proper gaskets and gloves as well.) I have to say that it doesn't look too bad in my opinion: And a test to see if I can touch my helmet Here's a side by side of now vs my initial fitting. I'm pretty happy with how I've managed to size things down, although the bicep is still pretty big: I also started work on the left arm pieces:

Looks fantastic! And the way you sanded them actually makes it look like you've got a return edge there as well. Nicely done.

I have the 4 part as well. I feel like I just did something slightly strangely. Oh well will probably work.

I have no idea how it's supposed to be glued down...or do most people leave that area unglued? My hands are small enough to glue the whole thing. Or is it easier if you use a stronger adhesive? Who knows!