Lord_Potato

Thank you so much. This site has all the help one needs to build but sometimes finding specific things are tricky. At least for me.

Yes, I was able to improve the shape with hot water, but the bottom right corner, I couldn't get it to fully comply. The shape is improved, just not perfect.

If it looks like making a false base is going to be a lot of extra work I might ask the GML what he/she wants. Hopefully this water water bending works out.

I was able to improve the button plate with hot water. I could not get it perfect. But it might be good enough. I know it is not perfect, will this be good enough, or should If ill some of the space with ABS paste? My smaller ab buttons seem good to go: Another thing, can someone please direct me to a good/detailed thread about belt assembly? I have a general idea of how the belt is supposed to be assembled, but dimensions and locations of where the snaps go on the ab plate....I am uncertain. I tried looking through ukswrath build but the belt portion has all the images blocked. I searched through several pages on the tutorials,tips and how tos section but couldnt find anything. I know I am not very savvy with navigating this sight. So if I can guidance I would be grateful.

Ill try it with the second button plate I got from walt.

Cricket, Yes, I saw what you did and I you did an amazing job. I dont have ABS plastic that size. I have a plastic piece that a made but it is a very different shade of white. I just dont know if it is worth the effort for a small detail that isnt a requirement. But part of me wants to just because it is screen accurate. Not having a piece of plastic of the same color white is the main thing that is preventing me from possibly trying to do it.

It was not my intention to remove the edges. The design of the ab plate is too curved and would not sit on the ab plate. I have a second ab plate from Walt so I can show you the problem with the design of the ab button: Initially i just started to sand the bottom of the ab plate and was hoping by the time the bottom was flat enough to attach to the ab plate there would be some rectangle left. It was not possible to achieve it.

So before I start assembling my belt; I am under the impression that it is important to have the ab buttons already secured to the ab plate since the top of the ammo belt should be touching the bottom ab button. As stated before, the very curved shape of the button plate prevented me from using the surrounding flashing to make a border (just like the screen used versions). So I got the plate sanded down to a level position. My question is that should I just mount the plate as is? Or try and use a plastic square to try and recreate the base? All the cover strip material Walt sent me were pre cut and were too small to make a base. So this random plastic I bought is obviously a different shade of white. Only a couple of mm's of this plastic will be visible but it is noticeable: The CRL does not mention a base/border for the button plate so I am not sure how to proceed.

Oh wow, thank you for some of these ideas! I guess as long as I am using only E6000 I can always change and experiment!

Thank you! I really appreciate it!

My RS kit has taught me one thing to be aware of: Kidney and ab plate sides overlapping each other. I know there are several strapping methods out there and I have been browsing around. I am trying to find a strapping method that will prevent the sides from overlapping and do it well. I decided to experiment by having a velcro strip reinforced with plastic to hold the sides in place: I dont know if this method is the best way to keep my sides in place. But even if it isnt, this should be sufficient enough to have something to keep it together and to install the belt. Got my belt: So far just placing it on seems to be an appropriate size, but it looks like when its just being held on with the velcro backing my kidney plate appears to be crooked. Maybe things will look better when the belt is fully assembled and snapped on to my ab plate. Maybe I have to trim the bottom left side of my kidney. I guess ill cross that bridge when I get there. Next part: My ab plate button is curved at the bottom. No matter how much I sand the bottom it will not sit nicely on the ab plate. I tried to hot water bathe it but I couldnt get it to straighten and the sounding plastic from the base shrunk..... Ordered a second ab button plate from Walt thinking it was a defect. Nope, new ab button plate is just the same: Need some advice. I am thinking about trimming the base and then placing it on a plastic piece if styrene plastic and create a flat base. The color is a different white but its only going to be sticking out a few mm's on each side: I feel like every step comes unexpected problems. Having the mannequin with my armor on gives me motivation that I am making progress:

Don't be like me and be afraid to start. Part of the reason my build is taking so long (besides life circumstances) is because my current build is my first full build and sometimes I hesitate since these kits aren't cheap and I felt it easy to make mistakes. Sometimes ill start on a section, get scared and move to something else. I post so many photos to try and get as much advice as possible. Yes, armor parties are helpful but you don't need them. Post pictures of what you want or trying to do, maybe mark areas on the photo with Microsoft paint (intended cut areas) and wait for advice.

So I tried to make the ends of the kidney not so curvy. I succeeded in improving the shape. I honestly think I could have given more hot water treatment and make it almost perfect but I was being cautious since the kidney plate is already cut down to size and I know hot water can cause shrinkage: I am happy with how it looks and will leave it at that. Maybe during final strapping if it I notice I have to trim the kidney a bit more I can risk doing the same procedure again to try and make the ends go perfectly straight and have no curvature at all. This is how I intend to go forward with my torso: *** I will have to make new notches at the bottom of the kidney plate*** Since this build is taking me forever and I don't have much experience with a sewing machine, I measured my waste with my ab and kidney plate on and ordered a 37 inch belt from Imperial Issue. I wanted to order the belt awhile ago but was unable to since I needed to measure myself with the armor on to get the proper belt size. At least i can make sure I have all materials needed so when the canvas belt comes I can start putting it together.

Thank you for the advice. And yes, I am cutting as little as possible to be safe!!

So I thought I wouldn't have to do any reshaping but I realized even though the torso is smaller than the RS suit it looked like I needed a bit more curvature to make it fit me better. Reshaped the kidney, the ends ended up curving a bit too much but some of the ends will be trimmed away for resizing: I realized that my deep fry turkey pot is a similar circumference to my torso......so I just dipped my whole ab plate in it (wish I did this with my kidney): Strapped the torso again. It fits a lot better now. Still have to make the kidney edges neater to align with the sides of the ab plate: I am not sure if the space I have in my torso is too big or if I should aim to make the torso a little smaller (besides shaving the kidney ends to make the ab and kidney meet neater) And looks like I am going to try and flatten the sides of the kidney so they meet at a nice flat surface: So that's my plan for this weekend: Flatten the sides of the kidney, verify sizing is still good and making the ends are able to butt together nicely:

So now I am in torso phase. The kidney plate is a little wide on me but I feel like the small bend it takes to fit around my waste is minimal and exerts little stress on the kidney armor. The same for the ab plate. It looks like these pieces wont require any reshaping as far as I can tell. Just some trimming. It looks like the way the pieces meet the ends don't go straight down perfectly. It looks more like a slant. Not sure what to do. Maybe cut it so they meet and go straight down? I marked where I think the left side should be recut: As much as I want to make progress I dont want to make a mistake with trimming my torso so I will wait for a bit for some responses. Another thing I noticed is that the kidney plate doesnt match what the RS has. It looks like the bottom of the kidney should be aligned with the ab plate at the notch and the after the notch it goes lower the the bottom of the ab plate. CRL seemed a little vague to me about this. I know the notch is not necessary for centurion, but I need to do more probing.

I got the helmet fully assembled. It looks like all that is needed is internal padding and painting: I think I'm hold off from painting until everything is assembled then go and paint the ab buttons and helmet. Looks like its now time to focus on the torso..... ***important lesson learned*** I should have installed a screw near the bottom of the helmet on each side (not just the circle part of the ear) to hold the helmet together. When I tightened the bottom screw after trimming my ears, the helmet slightly changed its shape (very small, the added pressure of the bottom screw added the smallest change in shape. That along when I was using my compass when sizing my ear......I was putting a lot of pressure on my thumb on the ear; making sure it was pressed against the helmet. My fingers on the inside of the helmet (which were right under the tube section) was also slightly changing the shape of the helmet. So when I screwed everything on there was a gap on the ears. Especially on the right side. Basically the ears were sized to the helmet when I had my hand squeezing helmet pieces together. So the next helmet I do I will make sure there is a screw near the bottom and when i put the ear against the helmet for sizing I will make sure the ear is not being squeezed against the helmet.

So I redid my ears. I tried to make the ear screws align with the trapezoid thing as I have seen pointed out on lots of centurion applications but I ended up slightly off. Looks like small movements during positioning and trimming slowly moved the original position. I tried to make it a lot closer to screen accurate helmets. I just need to add the bottom screw and it will help close the small gaps. I just need to verify/research how for in the bottom does it go and does it go in the middle or aligned with the other screws.

Suited up everything that I have that has been strapped so far to get a general idea of how things are fitting: Just by placing the ab plate on I know that I will have to bring down my chest by about in inch or so. Upon inspecting why my chest sits so high it seems that the curve of my back plate tabs are affecting the way my chest sits (if that make sense) it seems that flattening the curve of the back plate tabs will make the chest naturally lower. Whatever the cause I know it will be correctable: I trimmed right up to the mold lines for my torso pieces. I have received lots of advice on removing return edges and I have removed return edges on almost all my pieces. I am trying to leave the slightest return edge - just enough so you can see the plastic "curve"- I really like how that looks. But if even that is not recommended I don't mind sanding it down: Buttons are trimmed down: Got my extra ears. I compared one of the new ears to the helmet in different light settings and looks like the color is close enough to the helmet (I am so relieved) Walt goes through different plastic suppliers so sometimes pieces come in very different shades of white. My previous image doesn't really show it, but my replacement belt drop boxes are a noticeably different white.

Cut the ammo belt out. Due to the natural imperfections of the height of each box and cutting so close to them, the edges are straight but they aren't perfect straight. It think it looks good and I closely followed my RS belt. I think most ANH ammo belt pack corners are rounded. So I might end up rounding my corners a bit with some sandpaper. I am slowly trimming away at the excess height of the buttons. I am considering just cutting along the inside right where the button base starts to form:

So before I cut the ammo pack belt piece I would like some clarification from you experienced people. Here is my RS belt next to my Walts belt My RS belt and a lot of ANH on screen TK belts had almost no gap from the "blocks" to the edge of the belt. Seems from my looking around in White Armor, I keep seeing a 3-5 mm width. So before I cut I would like some guidance. It seems like there is the smallest gap on what I have seen as references and I think anywhere from 4-5mm is too wide. Here is a image I found from browsing this site: For now I have my pencil lines almost right against the boxes, matching my RS RS width from the box closest to each edge is about 40mm. So I marked 40mm width on both sides: So long story short: each box to the top and bottom edge have a 1-2mm amount of space (boxes aren't all the same height) and the ends have marked at 40mm Buttons are pretty thick: Looks like I will sand them down to match the RS:

The images I posted was before I over trimmed the ears. It just looked so bad it didnt seem worth posting. I will double check just in case I can still make my ears work knowing that they had a lot of excess plastic. And worst case scenario I have replacement ears coming any day now. As for why they ended up so meaty.....I think part of the reason was that (on this particular kit, some of the mold lines are hard to see or non existent). I thought I had the bottom of the ear cut to the mold line but there was like an extra half inch of plastic after the mold line. And I think having that extra 1/2 resting against the helmet when I was marking where to cut added a bit to the thick shape.

Thank you! I intend to submit my kit to centurion when this is all done and yea, my ears were pretty chunky. I think I was more focused on making sure the ear piece matched nicely with the helmet and didn't bother of the overall shape/thickness. Ill definitely be paying attention with my next set of ears. The Image I posted was before the over trimming fiasco. It just looked so bad I was too embarrassed to post it.

Thank you, I just need to accept this build is not going to done when I want. Patience is a virtue I guess

shoulder bridges are attached and I added snaps to my armor: Took out my RS belt to use it as a reference to cut my Walts belt: I am very upset with myself. I actually had my ears pretty nicely aligned. They were a little meatier that I wanted but I thought they looked very good. After I screwed the ears on I realized that I thought I cut along the bottom mold line of the ear. The bottom of the ear mold line was barely visible and I had excess material. My dumb self decided to re cut along the actual mold line and I threw both ears out of alignment. I tried to correct it but I just made it worse. The ears are now unusable. I have more ears coming from Walt but I know the color is going to be off so I dont know what to do for color matching. The thing that has really gotten me in a bad mood was that the ears were aligned very well in my opinion. I should have left them. I just wasted lots of time for nothing. The only good thing that came out of this was I got some practice using a compass to help the ears align with the sides of the helmet. I am just angry with myself. Ill post some pictures with me wearing the arms and legs with my undersuit to show how it looks on me. I hope you all had a more productive weekend than me.