FencingCorvetteTrooper

Thanks guys! Setting my OCD aside and moving on!

Hey Nate - we went with Loctite Plastic Bonding Glue with the Activation Pen and it worked really well. Actually got that from another AP build thread (check out Alay's ANH Stunt build (AP, first build) ). She even has a picture so you know what to look for at Home Depot. Only caution - give the tube a gentle squeeze in the package before you go pay and make sure it isn't dried out. My brother had to go back twice because they evidently had some really old product on the shelves.

For what it's worth, I went to my local Michael's (although I';m sure any good hobby store would have it) and picked up a spray can of Testor's Gloss Gray - #1238. Worked like a charm.

Thanks for all the help guys. I'm thinking I got it! Here's the setup I was using... And here's the result I got... It still leaves me the ability to open the torso in order to get in and out without any rubbing, however, I can't completely open it like I have seen others do (both chest and back pieces lay flat on the floor when opened like a clam). My brother's wound up with just a wee bit of gap (see below). Some of the challenge with his armor is that we have to cut from the abdomen and then reshape the kidney/butt to fit his slimmer frame, so I think it's keeping the two halves from coming together at a level angle. It's about 2mm at the widest point, but thinking that when the belt is on, it will help close some of it to where is it still OK for Centurion? Could someone confirm before we lock down the rivets?

Keep up the good work! No worries on the biceps - they're the same piece on the AP kit. As for the shaping, I've actually found I was able to shape the pieces manually by just gradually massaging them. I've only used the hot water bath to tweak the sniper knee plate.

OK, so I decided to go back to the left side and the rivets after running into some frustration earlier in the week with gaps between the ab and kidney after fitting for the straps. Proud to say that with a little patience and good ol' OCD, I think I nailed it! First, a couple of shots of my strapping approach (courtesy of Mark at AP and a few others I've seen). First one side.... Then a fun balancing act to get the other... And after hammering down the split rivets, it looked promising! Of course, it wouldn't be right without a quick test fit (sans undersuit). Centurion, here we come! So happy the results, had to go spend some time in the armor watching TV and contemplating maybe just sleeping in it! It's a great feeling when you can overcome even the tiniest of frustrations or challenges with the build, especially when we're so close to the end. Let's see where we end up over the course of the coming days!

OK, it's getting real now. Found the last two at my local Home Depot and sale priced! Now to find a suitable place for them to live INSIDE the house since there's no way the armor could withstand the South Florida heat in our garage. My wife's going to kill me....

Thanks Shane! In the grand scheme of things, I'm impressed we've come this far in only 8 weeks since we started!

Ok, thanks! Looks like my brother will need it, still not sure if my son will (but he doesn't go through the official TK approval process anyways), and my forearm has a snug enough fit that it really doesn't move much, so I may forgo it. We're getting close!!

Nice way to look at it!!

Yeah, I started to realize that after I got started and saw the ears on the helmet were just never going to sit 100% flush and by then, it was too late to turn back . I'll see if I get a chance between tonight and tomorrow to give it another whirl and I'll definitely post some pics.

Hi Dave - do you happen to have a picture of the setup? I was also thinking of a setup using Velcro and then the rivets were installed just for show as well.

Thanks guys, I appreciate all the feedback. My OCD has been a bit of a challenge on the builds and probably causing me to judge our work too harshly. I'll go back and retry my original solution, but use smaller holes on the straps and use elastic instead of nylon (thinking I can pull the elastic tighter and it provides the needed give to stretch when we are getting in and out of the kits or need to open the torso fully). And if I wind up with a minimal gap, I will just breathe deeply and move on! LOL

Thanks! I should have mentioned the gap is only a couple of millimeters at best, but as you noted, doesn't look like that will cut it for centurion. I'm using nylon straps instead of elastic with the thought that it eliminates some of the stretch factor that could lead to a gap. Maybe I'll give it another go but really focusing on making the holes in the straps really small so as to cut out any additional movement of the straps and therefore a gap.

Hi everyone! Well, as we get close to finishing our builds, ran into a minor challenge, but one that has proven to be a little frustrating. It deals with the rivets and strapping to join the left side of the ab and kidney pieces. I've seen all sorts of methods from just placing the rivets for show and using snaps separately to join the two to actually using the rivets as part of the mechanism to join the two parts. I went with the second option but found that there was just enough play with the straps that the two pieces still showed a slight gap (despite precise measuring). Questions: 1) what is the acceptability of even the tiniest of gaps between these two pieces at all three levels of approval? 2) What have you all found to be the most effective method to connect these two pieces (considering final look and troopability), especially if no gap at all is the requirement? I've seen numerous examples but trying to see what's best. Thanks!!

Great progress so far. Yeah, the AP sniper knee can be fun when it comes to fitting it. There's some threads out there that talk about it and different ways to tackle it. Feel free to check out mine (the URL below should take you to that section). The key is to remember, it's not all going to line up 100% perfect, but as long as you get the plate to follow the lines and contours of the top of the shin. https://www.whitearmor.net/forum/topic/42075-fencingcorvettetroopers-triple-trooper-build-ap-anh-stunt/?do=findComment&comment=568586

Well, this past weekend brought more progress - not as much as I had hoped as we didn't even touch the belts - but it was progress nonetheless as we checked our overall fitting and the torsos are ready to wrap up with respects to the final strapping and assembly. From there it's just the belt assembly and attachment to the torso, thigh straps and shoulder bell straps. When preparing to glue the molded straps to the chest plate, we decided to add a little more surface area for the glue to grab onto and lay flat against the chest. So we took some left over cover strips and cut out pieces to glue to the back... From there, it was just glue and clamp. We went with lining up the first 3.5 bars against the chest plate (I've seen anywhere from 3-6 in other builds). We also installed the snaps on the butt piece and the rivet on the cod piece; used a black elastic strap to connect the two and help provide a better fit for the lower half of the torso. And for those with a sharp eye, you are not seeing things. I wound up installing the strap with the snap facing the wrong way the first time around. LOL. That was quickly taken care of though and is now installed correctly... After fitting my brother's armor, we finally got the measurements we needed to trim his torso down to fit his slimmer build. Mark had pre-drilled the holes for us, but unfortunately they had to go as we removed 3/4" from each side of the ab plate. For AP armor, that's the recommendation if you need to slim things down a bit as the ab plate generally comes with 3 inches of extra room. The good thing is that we were able to use the pre-drilled holes to line up the replacement holes, and that cut down on any possibility of error when drilling the new holes. We carefully measured and drew our cut lines on both sides while marking the placement of the holes.... Then my brother took his steady hand to the ABS! We did a second quick fit check afterwards and we could see the difference (sorry, forgot to take pics in the excitement). We quickly marked and drilled the new holes and his torso was ready to finish assembly over the course of this coming week. As I said, a lot of small progress, but progress nonetheless, and we got to have some fun donning all the armor and seeing the results of all our hard work so far. Below are a few shots. Of note, none of us had the straps made yet to connect the shoulder bell to the shoulder strap, and our thigh strapping wasn't done either, so we had to keep holding those up a bit and there's a few shots where you can see there's some big gaps as the pieces moved, but we got the needed measurements for getting those parts taken care of. Here is my son (shoulder bell slipped a little, but overall, he is getting a great fit right out of the box with some room for future growth). My son from behind. All three of us are experiencing a bit of flaring out of the butt piece, so we'll be using some hot water baths to thin those out a bit and get a better look. Here's my brother. He forgot his bucket, so used mine, but it sits lower on his head, giving him that slightly crunched look. He had good fit as well; as noted above, we just needed to bring the front and back torso armor closer together. He'll also need some reshaping on the butt and kidney piece as well to fit his slimmer build. And then there's me. My shoulder bells definitely didn't want to stay in place, but we'll take care of that soon enough. It was just great to be all suited up and not completely covered in blue painter's tape! Me from the back. Getting a great fit as well, just need to shape the butt plate a little. Then of course, we had to have a little fun and practice our battle poses! Can you guess who's who? Until next update!

Well, this week was all about straps and snaps! It was nice to finally get a break from trimming ABS, cutting shims and cover strips and gluing limb pieces together. We got a little assembly line going and moved pretty quickly with cutting the nylon straps, searing the edges, burning in the holes and then hammering in the snaps. From there, it was a matter of referencing numerous build threads, pics and diagrams to locate the proper placement. And after a couple of days of curing and more snap builds, we had connected torso armor! I think we did a good job of the spacing and fit. From what I had seen in other threads, a gap is expected and allowed between the back and kidney plate just based on how the back plate sits. If anyone sees anything off or that might get us dinged, however, do let me know! We also started some of the snap placements on the front torso (not pictured are the ab pieces that had the snaps drying on the upper abs), but as you can see, we went with a double snap approach on the shoulders (mounted on ABS instead of nylon). Assuming the shoulder points carry a bit more stress from where they sit, so decided it might be a better idea. So now we're ready for some final torso fitting, belt making and strapping this weekend as we pull all of the pieces together! Once that's done, we'll go back and do some finishing work like trimming and smoothing out edges, cutting ABS for movement on the backs of the legs (if needed), making sure cover strips are neat and smooth, etc. And with that, hopefully submitting for approval and TK ids's sometime after Labor Day. Fingers crossed!

Welcome to the AP armor club and congrats on moving forward with a TK! You'll find it's an enjoyable and rewarding experience (and sometimes a little nerve-wracking), and there are plenty of great people here that can help. We went with a trimmed AP kit as well and are looking to hit the home stretch after starting about 6-7 weeks ago. Feel free to follow our build thread and don't hesitate to ask any questions! https://www.whitearmor.net/forum/topic/42075-fencingcorvettetroopers-triple-trooper-build-ap-anh-stunt/

OK, so we had some great progress on my brother's armor this past week, as well as some minor stuff across all three builds as well. First - we started to strap some of the easy stuff and got the shoulder bells fitted with the elastic to secure it to the biceps. Still need the piece to connect to the shoulder straps, but we won't do that until we get the torso constructed. Also tried out the strap to connect the bicep to the forearm, but having some questions as to whether that's a requirement for approval? Given the fit and sizing, we don't have large gaps or movement issues with our forearms and it actually seems a little more challenging having the forearm and bicep strapped together. Thoughts??? After getting the bells strapped, the big focus was on the resizing we needed to do to my brother's thighs. As you can see below (our thigh on the right, his taped in blue on the left) there's a big difference (about 4-5 inches in diameter to be precise - fencing tends to give you some nice bulky thighs ). So with much fear and anxiety, we proceeded to prepare to hack into the thigh pieces. We went ahead and first marked the line where the overlap occurred in the back, then proceeded to measure it and divide by 2 to determine how much to take off of each side. This would help to keep things proportional. We marked the points and drew our cut lines on each side (the original overlap line is on the far left, our cut lines are the other two lines in the picture); then measured we three more times to be sure.... ...and the cutting began... Did I mention how nerve-wracked we were??? But at the end, we were impressed by how it turned out and felt really comfortable about proceeding with the other thigh. Once done, we followed the same process to assemble my brother's thighs as we did with ours earlier, and they came out awesome! He was really happy with the fit and the look. With those behind us, we then got a jump start today on the torsos. The first lesson was in creating all of our snaps and starting to glue those onto the torso pieces. We ran out of time, but got a good start and at least now know how to proceed with the same pieces on the other two builds (this is my brother's kidney and butt plate). The goal for the end of next week is to have enough in place to be able to wear the torso pieces and start on the belt as well as fitting the shoulders and thighs relative to the torso (we'll be leaving the side rivets and snaps for last, especially since my brother will be needing his trimmed and reshaped for his slimmer build). One nice thing before signing off - we're starting to see the bottom of the boxes and there's a lot of finished pieces ready to go!! Until next time - long live the Empire!!

Thanks David! The plan is to have our TK's blessed by the time the armor party on the 24th rolls around. The way we see it, we'll either be making last minute adjustments at that armor party, or sharing all of our knowledge with anyone that's just getting started! Actually got a little work accomplished this week (see next post below) and hope to keep the momentum going despite the crazy first week of school that starts tomorrow!

Welcome aboard! First things first, below is my build thread that I hope can be of some value. As if building one set of armor wasn't enough, we're tackling 3! https://www.whitearmor.net/forum/topic/42075-fencingcorvettetroopers-triple-trooper-build-ap-anh-stunt/ But, they're all AP and so far, it's been great. As noted, there are a couple of quirks, but Mark has been FANTASTIC with providing insight and information to supplement what we've seen on various build threads. Given the time we had available and the fact that there were three suits to build, we opted for the slightly more expensive pre-trimmed kit in order to provide us a good head start. At this time, the only additional work or mod we have to do is some additional trimming for one of the suits, as my brother is slightly shorter and thinner than my son and I (we're 5'10", 170-180 and he's 5'6", 150). As others have stated, we are building with Centurion in mind as well, and Mark's kits are all easily approved at that level as long as you build to those CRL requirements. Looking forward to having another AP TK join the ranks! Good luck, have fun and don't be afraid to ask any questions!

Time for a mid-week update as we won't be able to do anything for the next week or so - taking one last long weekend off to Disney before school starts and all Hell breaks loose with new school and extracurricular activity schedules for both the kids and ourselves. But I think we're at a good place, where even with a slow down, we should be able to get across the finish line ahead of a big troop at the Florida Marlins game at the end of September. We just need to move on to the torsos at this point, and then wrap it up with the belt and final fitments and adjustments. My brother is a little behind given his work schedule (needs to do his thighs), but we should be able to catch him up. His will need the most work given the trimming we'll have to do to some pieces, but I think we'll be OK. So here's the rest of the thigh work that was completed this week. Not sure if it's prevalent with other armors, but found that the lines on the right thigh were a bit wonky if they are trimmed without taking final fitment into account. As you can see, lining up the top doesn't make for a pretty join all the way down (and vice versa). So we overlapped them, clamped the ends and then marked the additional cut we needed to make on the right half of the thigh. Once past that, it was time to start assembling the thighs - lots of clamps, tape and magnets! The following day, it was time to attach the ammo belt to the right thigh. After following the measuring instructions in ukswrath's build thread, we drilled the holes on the side and attached the ammo belt using the supplied rivets. After installation, we decided to add a little glue and position the ammo belt in an upward angled position (either up or down is acceptable at all levels) and then paint the rivets white. Finally, it was time to do a quick fitment check - must admit, really happy with the results so far! Still have the jury out on whether we'll need to cut the backs of the thighs and/or shins as movement was pretty good. But again, nothing final until we have everything on. So again, really happy with what we've accomplished since starting 5 weeks ago and can't wait to get the rest done! As always, feedback is always appreciated, especially if anyone sees us going down the wrong path with anything. On a final side note, a little jealous that my son managed to get a TK ID before us - he officially signed up with the Galactic Academy and is now proudly known as CTK-3235!

Thanks Gary! That's the nature of the cutaway I was looking at. We're actually going to try with the thigh first and see how that goes before cutting the shin, but decided to exercise some patience first before taking the scissors to the ABS. Once we have our torsos done, I want to do a full fit test with everything on to confirm where it all sits before making the cuts.

Oh how I hate and love E6000. Love the forgiveness aspect and ease of undoing a mistake, but HATE the long cure time!!! Sorry, that's all, just needed to vent...