What's the best way to square the chest?

[JimCem99[501st]]

I finished my armor at an AP yesterday and it needs some tweaking. One main concern is squaring the chest to match the back. We had used a heat blower gun to bring the chest to curve it by the shoulders to give a more form-fitting curve. Perhaps it was not done enough. But we are not close to where the AP was. Should I take a bit off the side of the chest to see if that does it? What do people recommend? We do have a heat iron we just bought but have never used it and are not sure where to curve it. Thanks! And for those that would mention the belt is too low, don't worry but that was already corrected.

 

 

Edited January 28, 2021 by Sly11
Edited to restore images Sly11 2021

[troopermaster]

The first thing I would do here is trim the back correctly and reposition it before attempting to do anything with the chest.

 

Both the chest and back are over-sized so take some material away from the bottom edge of the back plate and also the tops where the shoulder bridges are. Get your back plate up high enough so the bottom edge sits butt against your kidney plate, not on top of it like you have it now. Reducing the length of the shoulder prongs on the back plate will allow you to pull the back higher where it should be. Try to cover as much of the neck area as you can - you have a lot of black showing there.

 

For the chest, same thing really. It is sitting too low and you need to reduce the shoulder prongs and maybe the neck line so the plate is pulled up more.

 

The red lines you have drawn look like a good starting point for trimming, but I would the modifications I have mentioned before attempting to trim the lower edges of the chest plate. You would be trying to trim the chest to match the back which is not right so it would be a losing battle from the start in my opinion.

[Tray[TK]]

You might want to raise the belt as well. The belt should come to just below the ab dots. It looks like in the photo yours is about 2 inches short.

 

Your shoulder straps are a bit long as stated above. The square end on the back side of the straps should/could be removed to be more screen accurate. That would allow you to bring the back up higher to start and then work from there.

 

As stated by Paul, don't do anything until you have the placement of the chest and back correct first. With those adjustments you should be closer to where you want to be.

[JimCem99[501st]]

You might want to raise the belt as well. The belt should come to just below the ab dots. It looks like in the photo yours is about 2 inches short.

 

Your shoulder straps are a bit long as stated above. The square end on the back side of the straps should/could be removed to be more screen accurate. That would allow you to bring the back up higher to start and then work from there.

 

As stated by Paul, don't do anything until you have the placement of the chest and back correct first. With those adjustments you should be closer to where you want to be.

 

Belt was already raised and corrected; I mentioned that at the end of my post. I'll start to look at it and see about trimming the shoulders. Thanks.

[Tray[TK]]

Oooops. Sorry. and I always complain about people not reading the whole post. My bad.

[JimCem99[501st]]

Oooops. Sorry. and I always complain about people not reading the whole post. My bad.

 

No worries. I just wanted to let people know that at least I corrected that. Thanks again for your advice.

[pandatrooper[TK]]

I agree with Paul and Tray's comments. Get the back correct first, then line up the rest.

 

The back is too low, and you can trim the top prong / extensions. This posting from today also talks about a similar issue.

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I did a photoshop mock up of what you could do.

 

Raise the back and trim the back prongs (green lines). I would trim the chest ones too to raise it up. Only after you do these modifications, should you attempt to revise the sides or bottom edge (I'm not crazy about the bottom of the AM chest, so I did the FX chest mod, trimmed and reshaped it and added a return.)

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Remove your ribbed shoulder strap / bridges and move them forward. Good reference for positioning here

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I hate to say it, but the AM chest will never look as "heroic" as other armor makes. AM made the pectoral area to flat and the overall shape is similar to the old FX chest. If you're a bigger trooper, the chest will "stick out" where it sits on the AB armor. I think AM tried to accommodate this with the extra long back and chest shoulder prongs (push the top of the chest out), but the real armor doesn't do that or look like that. It's just not quite the right shape.

 

I know one that a few people have done is swap the chest plate with an RT mod one which is a lot more accurate in terms of shape. The plastic is very similar in color to AM, just polish it up to match.

Edited February 25, 2022 by gmrhodes13
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