Sawanator

Thanks. I may apply for basic when I'm done and then fix it before I apply for Centurion. I'm sure there will be other fixes for sure. Still struggling with huge gaps between my shoulder bells and chest. Just the way I'm made. My shoulder bridges are gluing right now, then I will post some pics.

Ya, we could try that first I guess. Is it possible to remove the split rivets?

Ya, I was afraid of that. Crap. Guess we are ordering new abs and kidney plates.

So I'm trucking along doing my belt, and I read one post about how the bottom rivet is covered by the belt. We followed the standard rivet placement posted and once I placed my belt on, I can clearly see it's doesn't. I'm worried that since AM armor was bigger, we were supposed to space it out more, which would bring the other rivet lower. Is this a deal breaker? Does this mean I have to redo the ab and kidney plate? Feel like it's kinda permanent with the rivets set already and we would need to order replacements.

I'll give it a shot and see how it looks. Thanks.Nice thing is I can just add an extra snap connector, leaving both if it works.

Any tips on what to do here? Do I need to trip the should bells or adjust them at all? Because my chest is bigger than the chest piece, I'm not sure how best to bring the should bells to minimize tha gap.

This is really cool. Simple too. Thanks for sharing.

Alright, So, I had major issues with imgur (in fact I still am). Having such a hard time shrinking and cropping. As a result, I couldn't upload during the build, which was problematic. I also have been guilty of not taking enough pictures in this journey. Been hard since we only work on this like 2 or 3 times a year, but I definitely should have done this more as a journal, and I regret not doing that. Anyway, here are the updates so far. I'm about 80 to 90 percent done. Lots of little things. James is further behind, and I will post his stuff later. I'm having "larger guy" issues. My ab sides are bursting open, and I need to fix this. Been doing lots of reading, and I like the nylon fabic hinge idea I saw in AJ's AM build thread. He used his rivets to support them, but I've already got mine set, so I'll work around that somehow. I also like this idea of a shim on the open side. I will rig something up there as well, and I hope this helps. I noticed that my kidney's reallly push things out. It's almost like I need some padding on my gut (except I have enough) ;-) the push the bottom part our a bit. I'm hoping between the shim, and the new joint, plus wearing the belt, things will "shape up". I can see some other issues here, such as my large chest is making a large gap between my shoulder bells (see main pics below). I really don't know how to proceed here. Do I trim them? Do I need to shorten the strap to the shoulders? Onto the pics main pics. I have to admit, I got excited, and I just threw things on, even though I don't have many pieces done (including my thigh belt system yet (hence me holding my thighs up). Please let me know if there is anything else you think needs fixing. I'd be happy to post more pictures or better angles (I didn't realize James took so few). Other issues that came up. I think I made my thighs too tight.I gained a bit of weight. When we were cutting and measuring, we didn't realize there was a belt system, so we went a little tighter than we were supposed to. Think I need to open them up a bit as I cant seem to get them high enough now. Plus, I keep pinching my skin from my inner thigh on the cod piece. The last one is that I noticed I couldn't get my helmet down enough, but it may have been because I was holding my legs (which caused me to shrug my shoulders a bit(. I'll have to test that out next time/see if I can tip my helmet forward a bit. Anyway, I'm very happy with the progress so far. Got a long list of things to fix. Annoyingly, several snaps started coming off from the abs, so I have to re-glue. This works out ok in the end, so I have to kind of re-jig things there anyway. I will make more posts in the next few weeks as I make adjustments to things. I'll sure I will have some questions. Looking forward to hearing tips on how to proceed with some of these issues.

Not sure if there are any early risers. I was hoping to fet my shins done yesterday, but was too tired to focus. I was having a hard time getting the fit. Any recommendation on the gap between armor and leg (both near the knee and the ankle)? I assume it's ok it my cut is angled, as in I have to pinch more armor at the bottom than the top. Lastly, is there a recommended height from the ankle? Obviously low enough the boot doesn't slip out, just just want to make sure I'm not missing anything. Thanks.

Alright. Down this rabbit hole I will go. Thanks.

With this, would it pass inspection for 501st, or is this more for comfort when trooping and wear the proper boots when needed?

So, I'm having a hard time with boots. The problem for me is I'm size 13 wide or size 14. These are a little hard to come by. I tried Crowprops because they said they did customer boots, but they didn't fit me at all. I gave precise measurements and everything. I saw the Imperialboots doesn't have my size.

Wonderful. Thanks for confirming. Last question for now (we're just packing up from today's session). The split rivets on the code piece. Was that supposed to be functional? We just put the split rivets in and will put snap and strap over it. Hope we did that right. We did the same for the side rivets. They are there, but not attached to any strapping. Thanks

This is great news. I have most of the nylon plates assembled. May I also ask what type of button needs to be showing on the butt buttons? I can't really tell from CRL. Should it been to smooth side of the button on the bottom side with the hole? I know the Han button shows the back side with the hole, but wasn't sure for the butt. Thanks again. Really helpful once again.

So we are trucking along, getting some nitty gritty things done, and we come to the butt buttons (on the bottom), and the mention of the Han snap being a male snap, and James and I did a double take. We realized that the nylon snap plates that we have built (but not glued yet) are female, and therefore the strapping was going to end up being male. Here are our snaps plates: Here are the straps: Our goal is Centurion, so is it any problem if our strap snaps are opposite of most as long as our Han snap and butt snaps are male? Or are we looking at redoing all of our snaps plates?

Ok, thanks. That's good advice. It doesn't bother me that much. Now that I took anything off, should I be concerned about the gap at the front or the back? I know the front will be covered by the ammo belt on the right left, but the left leg will be more or less exposed. Do people put a little cover strip behind it to strengthen or mast it a bit? Or do people make a paste to fill the gap?

So we got to a gluing backlog (sharing resources has its drawbacks). But we've decided to take the next while just to glue things and take our time. First off, the hot water bath worked like a charm. So happy with how my forearms look now. So easy and so awesome! I start my thighs and got the idea from a post I saw about doing them from the inside out (inner strips first). I actually quite like this method and broke it down by just gluing half the under cover strip to one side of the armor before merging the 2 halves and will probably keep this method going. It take way more time, but I'm in no rush. Here is my (almost) finished thigh. I just glued the front cover strip on last night, but I'm worried it slid a bit when I clamped (forgot to re-check...doh!) I can clearly see the ridge line on the left, and it is more or less non-existent on the right (especially in the middle). I'm thinking of redoing it, but wanted to get some input. I really don't mind the extra step of redoing it to get it right, but if it's not going to notice or matter when it's all said and done, I'll take that under consideration. Thank again for all the support so far, BTW. This forum is great support.

That is quite the setup. Glad it worked. May have to consider something like this too. I saw one post of someone gluing the inner strip first on one half only. Then proceeding from there. Might try that too. This will take a few extra days, but I'm curious if I will have any luck. Cheers

Good to know, thanks. Just wondering how a hot water water bath works? Does it melt the e6000 a bit?

Thank so much for the feedback, this is all really helpful. I'll look into white e6000 for sure. When we get back to it, I'll post more posterior pics. We will for sure trim, parts properly. Didn't pick up on that at all. Also found out about trimming the extra at the end of the cod piece as well as the posterior. Cheers, Matt

Ya, that's exactly what we do too. I have no idea why these turned out this way. I assume I can peel off the e6000 and try again? Also, we saw white e6000. Is that worth using to his any gaps a bit?

Ok, looking for some honest feedback here. I'm not impressed with my forearm. Our best guess is the magnets are too large and it's causing them to kind of tip and not sit flush. Either that or we are wondering if there is something wrong with our e6000. It seems to clamp ok, but even still, it eventually seems to pull up, especially where the magnets should hold. It looks like we've used too much glue, but did the same technique on the biceps, and they seemed fine. I'm considering redoing it and I think it looks pretty crappy. Please be honest here. We are worried something like this wouldn't be approved, so looking for some thoughts. Also, I'm worried we made the cover strips too long. We thought we saw in one of the Pandatrooper videos to make it a bit longer than the armor. Thanks in advance.

Did some taping to check out the abdomen and chest/back (decided not to trim and return edges on the chest/back. Did do the top of the abdomen though). You can see James was a little overzealous on the tape job! Here are my pics: Here are James's picks: Let us know if there is anything we need to adjust.

Thanks. I've been reading up on return edges a lot. I'm ready to tackle the chest and back, but James and I are torn on how much return edges to leave (if any). I kinda want to cut it all off, save the bottom. James wants to leave all of it. Not sure if this is the same across all molds, ours has a lot of return edges, which looks nice, but I worry it's a lot extra. Here's a shot of the bottom back. Looking for suggestions. Some have said to leave it because it adds a look of thickness, but I don't know...

We actually don't have any return edge at the wrist. I thought it was ok to have return edge up near the elbow?