shashachu

Took the clamps and magnets off the forearm this morning and it looks...okay? Haha. It's pretty wonky. I think it should be okay but it'll need a lot of filler and sanding.

I'm beginning to see why the FOTK forearms seem to be the bane of everyone's build. The 4-part KB forearms just don't have much gluing surface to hold everything together, and the fact that I've sized them down probably doesn't help. I was kind of able to glue the elbow side of the flat inner forearm piece to the rails (which are not flat so really don't provide that much contact surface for glue), but the wrist side (the box) just had nothing to adhere to. So I ended up making little gluing brackets out of scrap ABS to try to hold everything together: Would you believe this single forearm took me 3 hours? :'( And it's still full of gaps. I'm hoping that the filler with help hold things together some. One detail that I left out was that I've decided to do my build with E6000. It might be something I'm kicking myself over later, but it's just the adhesive that I'm most comfortable with, and with the amount of disassembling and reassembling I've already done, I just don't see this build working for me with a more permanent adhesive.

Personally I'd probably just trim the curled part off, glue with an inner cover strip, then fill the seam. (Caveat I do have a KB kit but haven't gotten to the ab section yet.)

Many of us short troopers cut the first notch (wrist side) off of the forearms. Totally approveable. And I believe you should cut at the other trim line on the inner forearm unless that makes them too small.

Wow can't believe how fast you're blowing through this build! And glad you found the heat gun useful and not that scary - it's my #1 indispensable tool for armor building. I'm just way too impatient to use a hot water bath. From the back, the kidney looks just a tad bit big. I wonder if a touch of reshaping to get it to match the width of the back better would make it look more proportional?

Nice work! Easy pass!

@TheSwede has a newer KB kit and a great build thread: He made some interesting mods to the 2-part forearms so it should be a good reference.

Awesome! Following your build because I have a KB FOTK, so mine will be pretty similar. Looks like you have the upgraded kit with the resin TD and 2 part forearms?

Sometimes it can help to let the E6000 sit for a minute or two before putting the cover strips on so that it gets a bit tacky and will hold things in place better.

Wow looks great!

Actually just found some good photos on Facebook:

Here are a couple not very good photos I downloaded of the Finn mod: Personally i am planning on getting approved first and then doing the mod if needed.

Nice work! The curves looks great.

Thanks! Certainly my experience with my ANH kit has given me a lot of confidence working with armor in general, but also knowing that the TFA is going to have to be filled, sanded, and painted removes a lot of fear of not making everything perfect.

So after looking at more build threads and also checking out some of the KB build groups on Facebook, I realized I had the totally wrong idea about the forearm assembly. When I trimmed the side rails, I'd left some return edge on the bottoms so that they stuck up a lot. If you look at my forearm from the previous post, you'll see I butted it right up against the ridge on the outside of the forearm, making a sort of seam. But after looking at the CRL image, I realized the forearm past the ridge should be flat and seamless: Fortunately, I'd glued it with E-6000 so I just ripped it apart. I had intended to attach the side rails to the outer forearm via overlapping, but the only way to make everything seamless is to use a butt joint with an inner cover strip. So I trimmed off the return edge of the side rails that would face the outer forearm, and did some significant trimming of the outer forearm piece: Another change I made was to cut off essentially all the return edge on the flat inner forearm: In this rough tape-up, you can see that now none of the pieces overlap: Then I went ahead and glued the side rails on using an inner cover strip: I'm feeling much more confident about the forearms now. As that was drying, I also started work on trimming and heat shaping the left bicep, and glued one half: That's it for now! I think I finally have the upper limbs figured out.

Snuck in a wee bit of work last night. Closed up the right bicep: Thanks to @Cricket's suggestion, I got a roll of gaffer's tape, which is super sticky and much better for holding together pieces. I also glued one side rail of the right forearm: For those of you who have completed the 4-part KB forearms, I have a couple questions: 1) For the side rail that doesn't include the indents for the greeblies (so not the one in the picture above), is it glued to the outer forearm piece with an overlap or are you supposed to trim the outer piece and attach them with a butt-and-cover technique? I looked at both @Ruthar and @Anzo's build threads and it's not 100% clear to me. I wanted to confirm before I trimmed the outer piece. 2) How much return edge (if any) do you leave on the inner forearm piece? Should I trim it completely off so that it's basically just a flat piece? If I do leave a bit of return edge (I have a few mm right now) it's not really clear to me how to glue it on, as it would just be sitting on the mounting rails of the side pieces, which gives little surface area for gluing. On the Anovos kits it seems to be totally flat, but looking at some KB build threads, it seems like some folks leave a bit.

Your photos look a lot like mine when I did my first torso piece fittings. I heard that WTF chest pieces are the smallest out of any of the armors so you may not be able to do this, but I was able to get away with *not* trimming the bottom of the chest armor. I'd make that a last resort because although the return edge on the chest is not required, I think it looks a lot better with it, and recreating it is tough. * Like Luc said, trim the neck even more to bring the entire chest up. You should be able to trim the chest shoulder tabs as well if they're overlapping the back tabs too much after you trim the neck. * Your back piece is sitting too low. Do you see how the tabs are below the tops of your shoulders? They should be above it. Anovos shoulder tabs on the back piece come bent at a pretty severe angle. Most people end up heat bending them to be straighter (so the back sits lower), but them being so bent should work in your favor because it will bring the back piece higher. On my WTF kit I heat bent the back shoulder tabs more to bring the back up. The back is also wide on you - you can heat bend it in to wrap around you more. * Once the back is higher, the overlap on the back and kidney will be less severe, but you'll likely still need to trim it smaller. Trim from the bottom because that cut will be hidden by the belt. * Not sure what you mean about the cod and butt connecting - they don't need to touch - they're connected by an elastic strap. * The back/kidney/butt should *not* overlap at all. They all sit below each other. The torso is a bit of a puzzle because of the way things need to align - as you shift pieces around it affects the rest of how the torso needs to fit together. If you haven't already, take a look at this section of my build thread: I had a lot of the same challenges you did.

I'm sure you mentioned this before, but you're doing your filling with ABS paste? How's that working out? Does it have any flexibility to it or does it seem like it might develop cracks?

I used the TrooperBay templates and found them pretty easy to use. The one tip I followed that I read on here is to not wait too long before pulling the template off; otherwise the paint will dry too much and pull up when you remove the templates.

Already congratulated you on Facebook, but I'll make it official here as well. For belts I strongly recommend Rob Kittell's belts (imperialissue.com) - they are made of sturdy canvas and also have a strip of plastic sewn inside. http://imperialissue.com/product/canvas-belt

Haha nope, mostly bragging rights. Very occasional merch.

I have the old 4 piece forearms but thought maybe the 2 piece would be too hard to size down for me anyway. Really nice fix!

This is for Centurion only, but looks like your left belt box is not quite aligned with the edge of the plastic belt. A dab of glue will probably hold the strapping in place.

Talk about a speed build! Looking good!

Nice work! I had to heat bend all the torso pieces to fit around me better as well. (I used a heat gun but same idea.)