shashachu

Thanks, everyone!!

Congrats, David!!

Here's another one that worked perfectly for me on Chrome. https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/photobucket-hotlink-fix/kegnjbncdcliihbemealioapbifiaedg

Yeah Nino!

Yay another WTF trooper! Only comment I have is the gap between your biceps and forearms. Can you drop your biceps? They look better in the side shots but they're very high in the front and back shots.

Oh, and I can't take credit for the weathering - it came that way from Hyperfirm. All I did was paint over some of the brass weathering.

Wow, that was fast! Thanks Tony for the quick turnaround. What a great Christmas present.

General Information Name: Sha Sha Chu FISD Name: shashachu Legion ID#: 19233 (Legion profile page) Garrison: Golden Gate Garrison Mandatory Information Armor Maker: WTF (Walt's Trooper Factory) Helmet Maker: WTF (Walt's Trooper Factory) Blaster Type: Hyperfirm B-Grade Additional Information Height: 5' 3" Weight: 125 lbs Boots: TK Boots Canvas Belt: Rob Kittell Hand Plates: justjoseph63 Electronics: iComm & Aker amp, self-made fans Neck Seal: Soulart aka Theresa aka Geeky Pink's Phantastic Gaskets Holster: Darman's Props Centurion Level Rivets and Screws: justjoseph63 Build Thread: EIB Submission: Photos Full Body Front: Left: Correction from EIB: smoothed out bend in left shoulder bridge. Right: Left arms raised: Right arm raised: (Sorry about the balloon!) Back: Correction from EIB: Reduced (tried to eliminate) back/kidney overlap. Right side detail: Corrections from EIB: back/kidney overlap, butt plate popping out. Left side detail: Action shot: Armor Detail Abdomen detail: Cod + Butt attachment: (uses the split-rivet-in-snap method) Interior strapping: Left side rivets: Shoulder bridge elastic: Thigh ammo box: Sniper knee: Forearm wrist ends: Hand guards: Helmet Hovi tips: Green lenses: Helmet screws & ear bumps: S-trim: Blaster Corrections from EIB: reduced brass weathering on scope. Accessory Details Neck seal: Thermal detonator w/ pan head screws: Holster attachment: Boots: Thanks for your consideration!

I bought a WTF kit in April and had it within 7 weeks. I think the armor looks great - nice quality plastic, and like others have said, customer service is great. eg my kit only came with one set of ears (he usually ships 2 sets) and when I mentioned that on the fb page, Walt offered to send me a second set for free if I needed it. Also, I needed a new TD end cap and he sent me a new one completely for free, even free shipping. The armor is one of the smaller ones, so although I've seen a range of sizes of people in wtf kits, if you're very tall or heavy it might not be the best kit for you. Here's my build thread: https://www.whitearmor.net/forum/topic/42868-sha-shas-wtf-anh-stunt-build/

Bravo!

Looks amazing! Do all KB kits ship in black abs? Or was it because he was having trouble finding good quality white abs and you were going to paint it anyway? Thanks again for this thread - I'm planning on doing a KB FOTK sometime next year and I know your thread will be invaluable.

501st Submission and EIB Submission Finally I was ready for submission! It took a couple rounds (mostly minor strapping/dressing changes, as well as cleaning my armor) but I was approved into the Golden Gate Garrison on October 7. TK-19233 reporting for duty! Since I built with Centurion/EIB in mind, I submitted by EIB application shortly after and was approved as well: They gave me a few suggestions for Centurion, but to be honest the biggest barrier is getting the rubber handguards to stay stuck to the rubber gloves long enough to take a set of submission photos! Since I don't plan to use the rubber gloves for trooping, I don't want to attach the handguards permanently. I tried velcro but the adhesive didn't seem to want to stick to the rubber gloves, so I'll have to explore other options. So far I've gone on two troops: a holiday lights parade and a surprise end-of-chemo party for a 13-year-old battling brain cancer. They were both everything that I had hoped to get out of the experience, and I plan to do many more troops next year. Thanks to everyone on FISD who came before me for sharing all of their armor building knowledge; I hope this thread helps out a few people in the same way. Onward to 2018!

Armor Bin The advantage of 1) using snaps for armor strapping and 2) being small is that I'm able to fit my entire kit in a 25-gallon Husky bin. (Shout out to the guy at the Home Depot who had to go up on the motorized platform to get my bin down from the top of the shelf!) I knew that I would have to line the bin with something to protect the armor from banging around inside. Luckily, I remembered that someone had given my son a Star Wars quilt when he was born, so I "borrowed" it, and used velcro to attach it. The shoulder bells, gloves, neck seal, undersuit, iComm/amp/mic all fit in the helmet: The left forearm is in the left bicep is in the left shin is in the left thigh: The blaster is in the right shin which is in the right thigh: I unsnap the chest/ab and back/kidney, and place the lower torso inside the upper torso. Both thighs go inside of that. The boots, TD, and right forearm/bicep are along the front of the bin: The helmet to the right, and holster and belt along the left and right edge. Here is everything packed in the bin: When I actually troop, the helmet as well as the blaster are in pillow cases. Everything closes easily with no pressure on the armor, and I keep patches/coins/trading cards between the liner and the edge of the bin.

Thanks! I've seen other folks use t-nuts glued into place, which is another option. The milliput felt a bit more forgiving to me, though, and I happened to have some on hand for my Doopydoo's E-11 build.

Thank you! I know that most people recommend a hot water bath over the heat gun, but 1) I takes forever to boil water and 2) I didn't have any pots big enough for the bigger armor pieces. It was a bit of a risk to use the heat gun, but if you go slowly and remove the heat just as the plastic starts to lose its spring, it works really well.

Helmet Interior I knew that I wanted to Plasti-Dip the helmet interior, and before assembling the helmet I went back and forth a few times about whether I should plasti-dip before or after assembly. I eventually decided on doing it after because I didn't want to have to drill holes through the plasti-dip for assembly, but I didn't really know how I'd disassemble the helmet after drilling all the holes in order to plasti-dip it. Retrospectively, I could have temporarily held the helmet together with screws instead of rivets for easier disassembly, but I just didn't think of it at the time. In order to plasti-dip the assembled helmet, I added blue tape to the interior of the teeth as well as the eyes, then taped a plastic bag around the entire exterior of the helmet. I sprayed about 3-4 coats of plasti-dip, leaving around 30 minutes between coats. It worked very well, and there was very little bleeding of the plasti-dip. What little there was was easily scraped off with a fingernail. The WTF kits come with a long sheet of green plastic for the lenses. Originally I was planning on just holding it in place with the ear screws (maybe with a bit cut out for the bridge of my nose), but the piece I had was just a bit too short, so I had to scrap that plan. I recalled seeing other people's builds that held the lenses in with screws, so I modeled my solution after those. I first drew a template out of cardboard, and transferred that to the green plastic. Each lens would be roughly the size of the eye, but with 3 tabs for the screws. I decided to use Chicago screws embedded in milliput. I drilled the holes into the green plastic, installed the Chicago screws, then put blobs of milliput around each of the 3 Chicago screw bases. I'd let it harden a bit, then press it into place. Very carefully, I'd unscrew the Chicago screws and remove them and the lens, leaving just the milliput and base in place to dry. For the frown mesh, I simply used a roll of cheap screen material I found at the hardware store, and held it in place with electrical tape. The whole roll only cost $5. I decided to make my own fan set using simple components found on Amazon. (Fans, wires, crimp connectors, switch, USB charger) I'm terrible at soldering, so I used crimps with heat shrinking to connect the wires. I used this diagram that I found on FISD for reference. Unfortunately, I can't recall which thread I found it in; if I find it again I will edit this post and properly give credit. I installed a length of 1/2" split electrical conduit tubing and held it in with velcro in order to hide the wires. The USB power stick sits near the right hovi tip, also held in with velcro. The power switch is just sort of floating in space, but it seems to work out fine. The fans themselves are also held in with Velcro. I took the advice of many other builds I'd seen and pointed them up towards the lenses. I got a set of tactical helmet pads from Amazon and found that my helmet would bobble around like crazy when them installed. After consulting with some folks on Facebook, I followed their advice and removed the top pad, and everything fits more snugly. My helmet still bobbles a bit if I tilt my head quickly from side to side, so I might eventually investigate other solutions, but this seems good enough for now. Here is the completed interior:

Alas, I will be missing the GGG TLJ screening but I'm sure we'll meet each other soon!

Awesome turnout!

Congrats, Walter!

Following! I'm considering getting a KB FOTK next year, and yours is one of the more detailed build threads I've seen.

I want you to troop more so that I can finally meet you and shake your hand for all the help you gave me and everyone on this forum on our builds.

Congrats, Stephen!

Helmet I know a lot of people start with the helmet, but I deliberately left it last because I was scared of screwing it up. It's by far the most iconic piece of the armor, so I wanted to be sure I felt comfortable enough working with plastic to feel like I could do it right. I watched Walt's helmet assembly video more than once, and found Pandatrooper's ATA helmet build to be invaluable. Finally, it was time to start. Many people use a Dremel for helmet trimming, but based on my past experiences using a Dremel, I wasn't going to let a Dremel anywhere near my helmet. I started off trimming the eyes by drilling a series of holes, and then using both an X-acto and utility knife to connect the holes: You'll notice these cuts are very far from the edge of the eye, because I figured I could always cut off more, but I didn't want to over trim. Bit by bit I hand trimmed the eyes, filed, and sanded until I was happy with the shape: I used a very similar technique with the teeth by drilling a hole or two in each space, and hand trimming out the rest. I had a hard time with under trimming the teeth, but I found that once I started focusing on shaping the teeth themselves instead of focusing on trimming out the space between them, it became much clearer how much to trim. After doing the basic trimming, I used magnets to start to position the two pieces together: Of course I couldn't resist trying on the helmet at this point: (The front-facing camera on my phone really distorts the helmet.) Unfortunately, I didn't take any photos of the rest of the assembly, but I just followed Pandatrooper's ATA build. I also want to say that it is possible to screw up the helmet assembly A LOT and still things will turn out okay, so hopefully that eases the minds of other new builders. For those who are curious, I drilled the hole for the ear rivet in completely the wrong place which made it overlap where the ear screws needed to be, so I had to drill out the rivet, re-drill holes, reposition the ears, and re-rivet it back together. The ear trimming was somewhat difficult, but the good thing is that they can be pretty wonky, and you can just claim screen accuracy. Helmet Paint For any paint that needed a black outline, I used Pandatrooper's method of laying down the black first, and then painting the grey on top of it. While I never tried painting the outlines any other way, this worked out really well for me, and I'm a terrible painter. Although WTF kits come with tube strip decals, I knew I wanted them hand painted, so I ordered a helmet decal set from Trooperbay. It worked out great except when I tried to lay a decal on grey paint that wasn't quite dry. As is true for all aspects of armor assembly, it never pays to be impatient. Helmet Details WTF kits come with Hovi tips cast in black, so I painted the insides white. They also come with hovi tip mesh, and I shaped them over a chapstick tube to get the proper shape before securing them with E6000. The hovi tips have screws embedded in them, but one of mine was pretty off-kilter, so it took some work to get the hovi tips positioned correctly. WTF kits also come with S-trim and brow trim. Currently neither are held on with any glue; the brow trim is held on by the pressure from the helmet rivets + screws, and the S-trim is held on with friction. So far no issues. I prefer a lower brow, so I positioned it accordingly.

Thigh Strapping and First Suit Up Before I actually had my kit, I had grand plans of hand sewing an elaborate suspender system to hold up the abs and thighs. After actually getting everything together, I decided to do the simple thing and sew a single belt with 1" nylon webbing and a plastic buckle: The thigh positioning was something I knew might take a few troops to dial in, so I wanted something adjustable. I used 3" elastic, and attached the armor end with two snaps, and the other end I looped around the belt and secured with velcro that's specifically meant for fabric: I imagine I'll ultimately just sew the elastic in place once I'm sure the positioning is right. I originally only had the thigh strapping in the front, but before my first troop, I noticed the back of my right thigh tended to sit a little low, so I added elastic in the back and looped it around the belt in the same fashion. (No pictures, unfortunately.) The thigh strapping was the last piece I needed before doing my first full suit up. Everyone here can probably relate to the excitement I felt seeing everything come together: There were a few small issues here and there, but overall I was extremely happy with how everything was coming together.

Shoulder Bells and Shoulder Bridges For the shoulder bell trimming, I went off of Cricket's build and trimmed 12" from the bottom of the spine for length, and 5" from the edge of the spine for width. I didn't document it, but I closely followed Ukswrath's build for doing the strapping (black elastic + #10 sew-in snaps), but I attached the elastic to the shoulder bell with a snap/snap plate instead of gluing so that I have the option of easily swapping out shoulder bells. For positioning, I basically freehanded it by taking several photos from the front and the back until both the gap in the front and back was minimal, marked that position with some blue tape, and sewed the female snap in place. The shoulder bridges that come with the WTF kit come flat, so after trimming, I had to heat bend them. At the point I was pretty comfortable with the heat gun, but most people use a hot water bath. After bending, it was just a matter of gluing them in place. The one thing to be aware of while positioning the shoulder bridges is to check their positioning from both the front and the back before gluing - smaller/shorter troopers might have problems with the backs of the shoulder bridges touching the top of the O/II back piece. I don't currently have any reinforcement on the shoulder bridges, so we'll have to see how they hold up; I know many people have had issues with them cracking or outright snapping in half. (Note that I didn't do a very good job bending the left shoulder bridge; this was pointed out in my EIB application as something to correct.) I considered using the bicep hook method to keep the biceps in place, but it seemed difficult to get right, so I did the simple thing and attached the biceps to the shoulder bells with elastic and snaps: After the shoulder bridges were in place, I could finally see the entire torso together: (This photo was taken before correcting the belt position.)