TheLorelei

Kowalski, analysis. Please. Putting on a somewhat-functional clamshell of armor was almost as fun as putting on a bucket with no trim, ears, lenses, or paint. Cheap thrills, y'all. Ignore the loose strapping on right here: -------------- OK. Discussion time. Don't all rush in at once; there are plenty of issues to go around. Here are the main things I see, and could use help troubleshooting where noted. Q1. Chest stands away from ab A1. It's not flared away, the curve is good - it's just... not inclined to rest down against the ab. My current strapping mounts are sorta high in the chest, and I'm wondering if bringing them down would help snug it up. Admittedly there's, uh, more going on behind the chestplate than there was with the original TKs too. Maybe some further compression gear is in order. Q2. Chestplate wraps around pretty far A2. Perhaps trimming along dotted line is in order? Q3. Buttplate wraps around pretty far (and poorly) A3. Other shorties have trimmed the sides, as far as I've seen. Just making sure it would be ok, and necessary. Green line is the approx. location of the side seam. Now the red line here looks fine, but take a look at the other side: Q4: What about the nonexistent square kidney cutout? A4: My ATA kit didn't come with the (blue lines) notches and my understanding is that's ok leave it alone, but if they were there, wouldn't I be matching the butt line with the bottom of the kidney (which is NOT the same as the side seam line)? Seems it'd put the butt pretty far back if I did. Q4. Belt is gappy and not horizontal. Also in the last pic, scroll back up. Yellow line is what I'd consider "flat". A4. It gaps away considerably in the upper back as is. Not sure what to do about this one. Haven't mounted anything, fwiw. I'll also be trimming the back plate's shoulder tabs to remove overlap with the chest. All in all it's feeling pretty good otherwise - feel free to burst my bubble though! Thanks for all the help!

Fine - Daniel, I'll believe. One step removed from the situation and whatnot.

Mmhmm, sure Frank, sure. Tbh I wish my kit came with a thin lens - what my ATA came with is so thick I can barely bend it, and it refuses to be heat formed. Perhaps that's welding shield material? It's very nice quality, just a pain to work with. Why shanksh Rat! I'm very, very motivated to finish this build and get to serving the Empire.

Hahahahahaha!!

Thanks, Matt! Rumor has it all smell-of-doom is gone in 36 hours. It dries to the light touch within minutes, and the can says to allow at least 30 minutes between coats and 4 hours before handling but that's without the cheesecloth... so it's anyone's guess. According to my research, it's pretty flexible (pun intended) stuff. Like, it doesn't even have recommended application temperatures. It'll just cure slower in colder temps. You betta believe it!! My goodness, I *wish* that four was merely the number of times I trimmed them, D'Angelo. Why yes, I do have nine ears. But I didn't use all of them! So much win!

A quick rundown, 'cause time that I can be posting is time that I can be working on my armor! Haha. I've been chipping away at my to-do list (so impressively long now... so impressively long...) pretty much every day, as much as I can. There's a stand-alone heated room I have access to in which I can glue/let things cure without harming anybody, so that's been handy. Still not many pics. Still sorry. But hey, my camera takes pictures almost sort of ok if I shake it as I take the photo so it doesn't have time to try to focus! (And there was much rejoicing: Yay.) Last night I got all this done: finally finished my right ear (fourth time's the charm), drilled holes to attach ears to the helmet, and trimmed the neckline so I can finally fit my bucket on my head. Sliding that thing on sideways and turning it to face forwards was almost an emotional experience. Also, my glasses fit fine for the nonce. See the unevenness at the side seams caused by the back half of the helmet being tapered? I contained my terror long enough to slide the s-trim on and discovered that s-trim covers a multitude of sins. I could commit edge crimes for a solid inch, practically, and by the time they'd be visible above the trim, they'd be solidly hidden by the ear. Do not fear the seam, folks. My bucket has the ATA...attribution?... bit inside, and I wanted to preserve that through plastidip-and-cheesecloth-ing it, so I measured it as best I could, made a cardstock test piece, compared and trimmed, laid out overlapping painter's tape pieces on a plastic bin, traced the cardstock shape onto those, ran along the lines with my trusty utility knife, and ended up with a nice little custom shaped protective logo covering. Not rocket surgery by any means, but I hadn't seen someone detail their attempts to preserve any such logos before, so, here. After determining how I'll mount my lenses (AFTER - because you may not want to mount onto plastidip but rather to your actual bucket, and consequently place lens mounts before plastidipping), I taped things off and prepared for work. I'm plastidipping before assembling my bucket halves for ease of dipping and creating lens mounts later. I also taped off *some* of the reverse edges, preserving areas that wouldn't be well hidden by overlap. (The white stuff inside the face is my assortment of precut cheesecloth pieces. My cheesecloth came rolled in 6"x10"ish panels which I cut into quarters. 3"x5" panels worked great for me. I also cut smaller pieces but didn't use them much, opting to overlap or leave cheesecloth hanging off the edge most places instead. Turns out the more I taped, the more comfortable I would've been while dipping, but it wasn't that messy of a process anyway so it was no big thing. Others have detailed how to do the actual coating bit. I used one small container of brush on plastidip, one pack of Guardsman cheesecloth, and a 2" chip brush to apply things because it's what I had. The only other thing I have to add is if you've fiberglassed with woven mat, you'll be just fine doing this. Very, very similar concept. (Thanks, failed Seventh Sister test bucket!) An hour and a half later, I ended up with this. I figure on slipping a pair of nail scissors into the painter's taped areas to trim them out, but I'll apply my second coat first. Not sure if I'll add cheesecloth again, or just plastidip. Regardless, it was a good experience, and it's added to the "je ne sais quoi" of the bucket already, in my opinion.

Phew. Just making sure I didn't lose an armor buddy.

How's it going, Craig?

This is unreal. Wow. Incredible work!

Boy am I glad you posted this today - I haven't seen a side closure like that hinge you made, and I like it an awful lot. In fact, I like it so much, I'm likely to steal it shortly. Looking great on the whole! Highly professional job, as always.

Hahahaha - *perfect* response. Thank you for the grin.

Confessions, Part... something. Man, I hate typing this out. But here goes. When I got the help sizing my ab+kidney, I barely even looked at the positioning before scoring and snapping. A bad idea. I know. Well the size itself was fine, but I realized later that one side seam was further towards my back than the other. It wasn't HORRIBLE because you'll never see my right and left sides at once to compare but it was noticeable, at least to me, and it put the seam under a snap plate too. (How that didn't tip me off before I cut it, after all the measuring I did to make the snap plate locations even, I cannot say.) Well anyway I decided to rectify my mistake, and had fortunately saved all the snapped off pieces so I could tell exactly how much to add back to the kidney and remove from the ab to keep the overall size where it was. A clean cut at least. I CA glued them together and ran a bead down the back with some accelerator to solidify it. Then I slathered some ABS paste over the whole dealio. Figured I'd have a nice lesson in shimming. I haven't done enough sanding yet in this build, anyway. That was yesterday. Today I cut the shim down to size (hence the smallness in the next pic) and wrapped some 180 grit around a paint stick and wet sanded the mess. And now I have this dark line running down the middle and I can't figure out why. Was there pencil graphite on the seam that I didn't notice before gluing? Is it a shadow? An unfilled crack? Most importantly, WHAT on EARTH can I do about it now? Best I can figure is to carve it out, or sand it down past (???) the darkness and build it back up and sand it back down again. It's been a quick process so far so I'm not too worried about it, just bewildered and highly disappointed in myself. So. Any advice greatly appreciated, as always. Y'all are the best. Just think - after this I'll know how to help somebody else who gets into the same situation! *forcibly shifts paradigm* Now nice things! I hot water bathed many items yesterday. My chest tabs are bent down for a closer fit (front/left is current, back/right is original): And the side wings are bent in too. Boy, was that a pain. One insisted on curling at the end. I ended up clamping it between two paint sticks with binder clips for the rest of the work which flattened it well. My shins were a bit off as well. The cover strips weren't lying flat. But now they do! And I finished my holster, which was awesome. More on that later.

Hi Jodi! I ended up purchasing a Capezio long sleeve dance unitard. It was the first thing I found that wasn't baggy around the elbows and knees. I tried compression tops and bottoms, which would definitely make for easier pit stops, but had a difficult time finding ones with no logos and I liked the one piece concept and this fit like a charm like I said. In case you try the unitard route, beware morph suits. I tried a whole bunch on, and they all ended up being a bit see-through at knees and elbows when I bent my joints. The Capezio suit is nice and thick! It is a little long, but I just rolled and hemmed the cuffs and it's fine. Anyway, free shipping+free returns is your friend. Try on a handful of things and see how you like them. You'll find your suit.

Alright! Let's talk HOLSTER! Part 1 I found this post (https://www.whitearmor.net/forum/topic/23643-making-a-holster-for-anh-stunt/) quite valuable, and essentially followed it. However, I had just a few things to add. So here. My stuff. Clockwise from the lower left we have: -a small sledgehammer which was likely overkill (but available!) -a corner of a piece of leather -pliers (you really, really need them) -bits of leather I didn't clear off my mat -a sharp pencil (does double duty as a writing thing AND a scratch awl) -a sharp razor/utility knife -a 5/32" punch (a truly awful one) -a scarily sharp 4-tooth 3mm lacing punch (teeth are 1.5mm, space from tip to tip is 3mm) (really great quality, less than $5, go AliExpress!) -a pack of leather needles which I'm so glad I picked up on a whim despite thinking I had one already because you do need at least two -waxed thread for sewing leather (a lot thicker than expected, but looks and works great) and, in the center, two 6x6 plumbing gaskets on top of a magazine. Armed thusly, and with as much knowledge of leatherworking as one can gain by watching a vendor at the renaissance faire, I set to work. I found a reasonably sized and priced piece of 8oz (~1/8") black leather for just under $20 on Amazon. Nice and thick! It seemed too good to be true. Because, as with many things in life, it was. Turns out it was quite matte/scuffy. Turns out (more hours of research later) that's easy to fix with a 50-50 mix of water and black Resolene swabbed on with a sponge in layers. That stuff is great! You can see the pleasant shine in the pics below. I'll likely go over it once more to even it out when I'm done. I drew Troopermaster's template (from the thread mentioned) on an old poster. Then I copied only the width on the leather and wrapped it around my blaster to be sure it'd work with leather as thick as mine; I ended up widening the pattern by under 1/2". Misc. Discoveries: a) my 5/32" punch is absolute rubbish. Do yourself a favor and buy a decent one b) one must hammer on a cement surface to get anywhere c) "casing" leather is very nice, softens it enough to work with d) 6x6 rubber gaskets (available in the plumbing aisle of a good hardware store) make nice *cheap* backer pads so you don't dull your (potentially) sharp tools - either use two gaskets or stack it on a magazine as one gasket is likely not thick enough e) the link in the other tutorial appears to be broken, but saddle stitching isn't as tough as it may sound and Tandy has some great tutorials on YouTube f) if done after casing, drawing along your stitching line with a sharp pencil lends a desirable stitching groove Everything else you can read in the other thread. midway through stitching, the holster looked like this. Please note I did not punch my snap/rivet holes yet because I'm chronically impatient. I likely should have done that before stitching. Front: Back: And hey, that's good enough for me! Finished product to follow.

Hey thanks Rat! It seemed like another fun challenge, and since it's so different from the rest of the build I knew it'd be a nice change of pace. It's been super fun so far, and really not that difficult. I'll provide a rundown of my madness-- I mean, method - later. This no-camera thing is getting quite frustrating, though. Me too, Rowan, me too. Kidding, kidding. See, my tactic to avoid such nocturnal ventures is to keep my kit at my boyfriend's house - that way I have to confine my work to reasonable hours, because it's simply not around to be worked on. (Yeah, they're some real great folks! Neither have TKs but have spec ops troopers and such so can help plenty. Side note: this is such an incredible community.)

Ha, that's fun! And great to know. Thanks. Went ahead with the spacing I had on the right (trimmed since last picture) and widened the left along the seam just a smidge. Despite not getting done all I hoped over the weekend (next time I'm telling the tree it can decorate itself), I made progress. Not necessarily progress than makes for good pictures - nobody wants to see me gluing things wearing a post-apocalyptic respirator huddled by a pile of firewood in the wintry half-light with a chilly drizzle and thick fog lazily tumbling by - or wait, it might sound like it'd make a good picture but it wasn't nearly as poetic as it sounds, I was sitting on a lunch sized igloo cooler for the love of Mike. But anyway I got work done. And THEN I went to a garrison-mate's house and got help sizing my ab&kidney AND an offer to come over and use their workspace (and belt sander!!) whenever I need it which is just so awesome and generous and I'm quite excited. I also got feedback on my chest plate, which was looking like this: AKA huge. It's been recommended that I start by bending the sides in and the tops down, and see how that goes before trimming. Works for me. I'm making my own holster, and cut that out last night. It was surprisingly easy, using a template I found floating around the forums. I mocked it up in cardstock first, made my edits, and used a utility knife to cut it all out. Really not bad. I'll be casing the leather (getting it saturated with water to make it easier to work with) and punching my rivet and thread holes tonight. Should be a quick assembly after that!

Hahaha - good to know I'm in good company!! Yeah, I ended up doing that. But also in my hot water bathing I straightened out the backs of the calves too much, they were rather flat, so I ended up pushing them back into curves which a) gives my calves more room and b) gave me more to trim at the top than the middle. It was weird and I can sketch it out if future readers need clarification. Thanks! Gotcha. The shin bottoms have been trimmed to match - I followed the original curves with a protractor so they stayed ATA-accurate. In re: tape, they stayed together by themselves when left alone; they didn't stay closed when around my boots. CONGRATULATIONS on your elevated status! Go show those tall people how it's done! Haha. But yes, I look forward to submitting. Eventually. Thanks! Not gonna lie, the left one touches my calf muscle. It's definitely not so tight I can't walk, but I think it might prefer to flex open when I flex my calf. I will likely put the halves together with a few mm gap to account for this, unless the rest of y'all's armor touches your calves, too. Thanks! Yeah, I can see the perks to a heat gun... and hey, check out what happened when I boiled that crack I repaired with ABS paste: Maybe I didn't let it cure(?) for long enough? It's still hard, just foamy looking. Annoying to re-clean it up but at least I didn't polish it before. Anyway there's my word of warning about boiling ABS paste repairs. This weekend, I'm not letting the >50°F weather catch me by surprise. I plan on getting almost all the remaining glueables glued tomorrow (minus outer forearm cover strips on the undersides, hand plates on gloves, belt rivet covers, and shoulder straps), and am prepping like nuts today. Here's my list: -make 4 double snap base plates and 14 singles -cut magnetic closure mount holes in shins and glue holders in -outer front shin cover strips -evaluate outer thigh cover strips - redo if necessary -outer bicep cover strips -mount snap plates in thighs -finish sanding drop boxes, glue in elastic, glue shut -mount snap plates on chest to back connection at shoulders -evaluate chest to ab connection, move snap plate/remake elastic if necessary trim ab and kidney to proper size, mount closure slidey bits and glued snaps (visible snaps later) -figure out snap placements in bicep, forearm, and shoulder bell and place those (hopefully doable while outer cover strips are clamped) SO. Off I go!

Ha! I'm working on some Sithmas parodies - may have to add that to the list Great work overall. I found that the back piece (admittedly ATA, not AM) would snag against the kidney no end and not lie flat while I was holding pieces together by hand, but whenever I strapped it together with tape and put it on it somehow fit just fine. I like your proposed cut, but agree with others to wait until you've tried it on with the strapping to see if it's really really necessary.

Yay! Here's to sneaking the important work - armor work - into busy schedules. I'm with you on the White Christmas goal.

I'm finding these shins difficult to hot water bathe. Using a large stock pot I'm able to submerge over half a shin at a time vertically, or a decent bit of one side if I lay the shin across the top of the pot (keeping the pot very full), so that's not the issue so much as the temperamental nature of the shins. Despite being fairly thick, it's easiest to work with them after submerging them for only about 15-20 seconds. (For reference, if I submerged my biceps - or forearms - for that short a time, they would merely laugh short laughs and not budge at all.) Any longer than that and the shins start to take their preexisting curves to extremes - the open rear seams fold in on themselves, the awesome "dents" along the front shin seam become REAL dents, bad dents, squeal-a-little-and-frantically-push-them-back-out dents, and harsh bends become harder. Side note, beware correcting those bends with too much force. If someone were silly enough to do that, this might happen. Someone is sure she can fill the crack with ABS paste, reinforce it with a scrap on the back, and polish it out of existence though. Fear not. So this is where they stand! Literally. Haha. What do y'all think? The left one fits pretty perfectly, in my opinion. The right one is definitely larger, more noticeable in person. You can sorta see it in the last picture. The right one has been a huge pain in general, and is greatly improved from where it was, I swear! It was a weird almost heart shape when viewed from above before. Now it's still more circular than the pleasing oval of the left, but not TERRIBLE. I think I'll trim it tighter before fighting it again. But anyway, brutal honesty time. Left shin too tight? Boots too squished? Posts too boring? Promise I won't cry more than a few hours.

Ohh. I see. It makes sense now! Phew, thanks! This is where they currently stand. About to try them on all booted and suited up and see if I need to take more off. The left needs to be heat formed to a tighter curve, and the right needs to be made to meet better (and also trimmed, I suspect). At least you know it

What is the deal with that?? Yeah, I used the cover strip to correct an off center cut on the rear thigh so I could see it working here except for the fact that I'm doing your magnetic closures. Doesn't the seam have to be perfectly centered for those?

Thanks! I got impatient and did some snap plate installation with E6000 night before last in the garage with a space heater. After an hour or so, I moved the pieces into the basement in a Rubbermaid which I taped up to be nearly airtight. Kept them warm enough to cure. Slaved away on my right ear for a couple hours. Seem to have gotten nowhere, but am optimistic about my next attempt IF thinning out the lower front of this one doesn't fix it . By "optimistic about my next attempt", I mean that I know the curves well enough by now to carve the proper shape out of a block of wood - it just remains to transfer that skill to the odd hollow shape of the ear. With yesterday's delightful warmth, I started on the cover strip learning curve by applying two thigh cover strips rather poorly. The second two went better. Worst comes to worst I'll pop em off and try again. I also whipped up some new nylon snap plates in record speed and threw those on my ab and chest. I am very, very excited about strapping my torso together for the final trimming! Looking ahead, I have the most work to do on my bucket and shins. When trimming the back of the left shin, I somehow ended up with the line on a slight diagonal. It might not be enough to bother with, but I'm just not sure. My phone's camera died but I'll borrow a phone and get some pics tonight to get y'all's opinion on it. Current top goals: right ear, shin resizing. Still want to sit by the Christmas tree in my completed armor!

...never mind, just realized you're in jersey, Matt, and know exactly what type of weather we've been having.

Yeah - it just has to cure at over 50° and not indoors and we've been pretty short on those temps up here! Except tomorrow it looks like it should crack 50, somehow.