Plastic support under belt armor?

[pandatrooper[TK]]

I noticed some armor makers include a large strip of plastic, that's intended to be glued under the belt armor for "more support". I didn't do this on my last 2 builds as they were ABS and I didn't think it was necessary.

 

Is this flat piece of plastic supposed to be glued to the "belt armor" after it's curved, then you snap the whole thing on to your canvas belt, or is the intention to "sandwich" the canvas between the belt armor and this piece of plastic?

[Daetrin[Admin]]

Mark Gage used to put these inside the belt and folded the canvas over that. I thought this worked a treat - even for my sandtrooper for hip ammo pouches.

 

You can instead just mount the plastic directly to the inside of the fabric belt, even using velcro if you wanted or E6000. Then you could mount the holster directly to the plastic rather than the fabric, and the external facing rivets would be purely decorative (heck, you can make the top two magnetic so you can easily swap between 'hero' and 'stunt'.

 

Is this what you were looking for?

Edited June 29, 2010 by Daetrin
clarified second paragraph

[Darth Voorhees[501st]]

I made my own belt for my sandtrooper and sewed the piece of plastic into the belt with vertical stitching to hold it from sliding around. Since its for an ammo pouch you don't see the vertical stitches.

 

EDIT:

wait do you mean the ammo blocks part of the belt armor? I thought the extra plain ABS strip was just in case you needed to make shims and such and not necessarily for the belt.I know when i had FX armor it came with3 or 4 ABS belt pieces, but i only needed 2 for the actual belt. Im thinking the new AM armor may come with the same type of thing.

Edited June 29, 2010 by Darth Voorhees

[TK bondservnt[501st]]

I think that the key here is not to have more seams visible. one at the top of the canvas, and one at the bottom for seams.

if you can see it, then it should not be there?

 

I use paul's suggestion for mounting my canvas to the armor belt by using chicago screws/ screw posts to mount them together.

the drop boxes also are attached the same way, with the same exact points on each side. so the screw post is holding

the canvas belt, the drop box strap, and the armor plastic belt. I'm even considering using longer screw posts on each

side and drill through the AB plate at the proper locations to help hold the sides together while letting everything come apart

for washing, packing ect.

 

this way I have 3 canvas belts for each type- hero stunt and ESB

[TK6294]

I am all for the plastic support strip. I cracked my belt at a troop this past weekend. All my belts will have additional support from here on out.