troopermaster

You can see why they put the ammo strap on the right thigh to hide the bad join. Same thing for the left shin too. The left inner and outer parts differ in size too and the sniper plate conveniently hides that mis-alignment too. The mis-match of parts must have happened during the clean up stage of the plaster moulds before the fibreglass plugs were made back at Elstree. I doubt Brian would have sculpted them that way.

I don't see why anyone would want to use magnets when snaps do a perfectly good job. Personally I wouldn't use anything other than snaps and I didn't spend two years searching for the original Newey snaps to use anything less

This suit is made of 1.5mm regular ABS and yes, it is movie strapping. Thigh straps are 3" wide.

I've been using one of these for years and never had any problems. --------- *edit* I forgot to mention your vario pliers will be no good for the snaps on your ab plate that you connect your belt to. They are only good for snaps close to the edge of your armour or making snap plates.

Yes. Just make sure that you leave at least half the width of your joining strip which is usually between 15mm and 17mm wide. Go wider if you need to. Do the same for the legs but use 20mm to 22mm for a standard build or wider if you need to.

If you are going for an ANH/ESB butt joining you want to leave 8-9mm flat edge for half of the joining strip to fix to.

Only on the outside

Not really. Just cut where the joining line is and add your shim. You could rivet the shim in place or glue it, and it will all be behind your ammo belt. That is assuming you want to make the ab plate meet up with your extended kidney plate. Doing one without the other will make the armour off balance in my opinion.

You could add the shim to the lower edge of your kidney and you could also add one the same thickness to the bottom of your abdominal plate if you split it. This would make both pieces longer and the shims would be hidden by your belt.

Those are close, but these are perfect -----------

I love it

Those look fine to me. You may not be aware that the original pieces did not line up perfectly and you just need to trim the tallest part down to match if it bothers you, or you can make your joining strip fit the tallest side and cover the smaller side. See how the tops have been trimmed inside the original thighs.

If anyone needs the correct 68mm grey PVC pipe just send me a PM. This is not the readily available light grey pipe you can get from B&Q, it's dark grey and a perfect match to the screen used original pipes

When you eventually remove the epoxy you really should use E6000. It is soooo much better than any other adhesive and a must for trooper armour!

Yeah, I've done a bit of work on the biceps and a few other parts of the armour recently.

Ignore both these suggestions. You have the biceps set perfectly and EVERYONE else has them too high which is WRONG! I think you have been looking at too many replicas to come up with this conclusion. ONLY use screen caps when building armour, NOT other peoples interpretations of what is seen on screen as 9 times out of 10 they usually get it WRONG A bit of a gap at the sides is fine and I think the 'no gap' rule is a bit stupid seeing how the gaps can be seen in the movies. But, I will agree with DA and say the back plate could be higher to stop the overalp onto your kidney plate. Do this by making the back shoulder tabs closer to the chest shoulder tabs. If they are already touching then you will have to cut the back tabs to allow the back to ride up higher.

Looks awesome!!!

Grey pipe is as accurate as you can get

Must be a trooper from the Deaf Star

Sounds like a challenge I've just finished a new ANH TD canister mould and feel like tackling an ROTJ. I agree with what you say and think I can make a very good replica. These are not hard to make, especially as I have a few of these on their way to me

Yeah, you might be putting too much on. I have never had any problems with Humbrol paints. Best to have two decent brushes - a thin brush and a thick brush. Use the thin one for the border to get a nice neat edge on the outside and use the thick brush to fill it in. Keep your brush strokes in one direction and try and keep an even coat of paint.

What kind of paint are you using?

In that case there is no way to get it wrong If your using velcro to close the back that should help with the misalignment. If not, then you will have to off-set the parts at the front so it lines up at the back, or vice versa. Just remember the joining strip on the back goes on the outer half. Just an FYI, the AP did used to have three seperate parts with only one part doubled up. Looking back it was the inner left that was missing.

Can you take a pic of all the parts and I can tell you which part goes where. I remember now that the AP does not have four seperate parts and some doubled, and I believe it is the inner left part, but better to post a pic to make sure you get them right.

The reason they are not lining up too well is because you are using both the outer halves of the shins instead of using an inner and outer half.