troopermaster

I would not recommend NBC gloves. Go for flock lined domestic rubber gloves. You can find them at any hardware store.

Superglue.

Looking fantastic! Seriously, it looks awesome on you, Wade The knee plate clashing with the thigh is a common problem with trooper armour. You can add some foam inside the shin where you knee is to push the knee plate out and also add some inside your thigh behind your knee to pull the thigh closer to you body and avoid the knee plate catching. You will notice the original ANH knee plates all damaged because of the clashing with the thigh, but you can avoid this if you try using thin foam.

I thought I would let someone else guess it but if no one's playing.....

WOW!!! Looks awesome! Well done

Looking awesome, Keith I bet the neighbours and passers by were like "WTF!" Qui-Gon looks enviously at your beautiful armour and rightly so. Great job!

That is the problem with all these builds lately. People trying too hard to do this or that a certain way when you should just trim the parts and get it assembled. I know not everyone wants to go for true screen accuracy even though they say they want to be as screen accurate as possible, but the going the way you are, Juan, is the only way to get a screen accurate look. This does not mean you have to take no care in what you are doing, quite the opposite, just look as though it has been rushed or slapped together. Going back to what I said about using different width strips on the same suit, it is quite possible that a lot of the armours in ANH were made like this. For instance, a bunch of ABS formed sheets would be brought in for trimming and I would say all the parts got piled up after being assembled by several people. Each part would be slightly different yet a finished suit could have parts assembled by many different people resulting in wider strips on one side compared to the other. Keep up the great work!

I go for 15-17mm on the arms and 20-25mm on the legs. On some screen accurate builds I put a 25mm strips on the thighs with 22mm on the shins or 22mm on the thighs and 20mm on the shins, but always 25mm on the backs of the shins (gluing 10mm onto the shin leaving 15mm to cover the gap). Sometimes I cut the corners at 45 degrees and sometimes I leave them square. Sometimes I do a mixture of angled and squared ends on the same suit and vary the widths on either side. These were just costumes that were assembled for a cheap sci-fi movie. They did not agonise over minute details like we do when building armour so you have to use a carefree approach if you want to achieve a truly screen accurate look.

Looks like you might be onto something here. Have you got the fire hose in hand and does it look suitable to be used a belt? I think it will have to be sewn on both the top and bottom edges to keep it's shape. What do you think? Can it take being sewn? Definitely looks good and I hope it works out.

These are the setting tools available on ebay but they are too big for the screen accurate snaps. I bought them as back ups to the ones I got with my Newey snaps but quickly found they ruined the snaps although they worked great on the larger ones I have. You might be able to get a local engineer to machine a set up for you?

Be aware that you need a special setting tool for these. Your regular setting tools for most snaps will not work on these. They go together unlike all other snaps of similar style so the snaps are useless without the tool.

Maybe the other two are just inside out?

Do you mean the snaps/press studs? Those will be fine once you have your belt on your armour. You want to have everything worn together before you start making any changes or worrying about something unnecessarily.

They are fine I would still trim more off the return edges though.

The white elastic tethers are supposed to be on your back plate to hold the ribbed shoulder straps in place. The shoulder straps should be glued to your chest plate. Good to see you have the brackets in the correct position. Can you post a photo of your biceps showing the outer halves? It looks like you might have them upside down and there is a lot of return edge on them and your forearms too.

I like your style We have all got this idea of having perfect armour with nice clean edges but that is far from the reality with original ANH armour. The are trimmed very roughly and slapped together, not giving any care whether they line up properly or not. They have glue spilling out from the joining strips and basically look a mess up close. But that is the only way to make a true replica and you heading down the right path, Juan. Nice one, mate

Your plate is very similar to first one but it is not the same. Post a photo and do a side by side comparison and you will see the slight differences

Your plate is different from any of these pictured. I have three versions: ANH sharp, ANH worn and ROTJ. The two above are ANH sharp and ANH worn.

Yes. Sewn in one place not in two places like in your drawing.

That is not how the original straps are sewn nor were they glued together. That is just a lazy way of making them. The original straps were made in a U shape and sewn across the top to make a loop.

Were the bands not supplied with your original strapping kit?

What type of plastic is that? I have never seen anything like that happen before