dereferenced stunt build (TM/C)

[dereferenced]

Started my build this weekend after I setup my workspace in the basement. As stated in the title this is TM/C build from Tray on the forums. It will be a stunt build and I am also working on optional HWT addon pieces. I will be documenting my process after the fact with a webpage of some sort so I am erroring on the side of too many pictures. Feel free to peruse the pictures on my Flickr, they will get comments eventually.

 

Still working through how I want to tackle this but my general plan is as follows.

1. Rough trimming all the parts, and by rough I mean leaving (or trying to) several mm of space around the standard trim lines.
    
   
2. Initial size checks with tape / magnets
    
   
3. Trim to fit a bit tighter this time use coverstrips
    
   
4. Check sizing again with tape (repeat 2-3-4)
    
   
5. Sand / clean up trim lines properly ( add return edge if necessary
    
   
6. Glue together and then repeat 3-6
    
   
7. Cleanup piece / get ready for snap / harness system
   

This is of course more for legs, arms mostly I really dont know what to expect for modifications to the chest ab backplate. But from browsing build threads I know biceps,forearms, shins, thighs will need a lot of work.

 

Build priority thoughts

1. Arms
    
   
2. Legs
    
   
3. Chest/back
    
   
4. Kidney/ butt
    
   
5. Helmet
    
   
6. Belt, TD, dropbox
   

But maybe I will switch and leave legs until later and go top half bottom half sort of deal.

 

On to the pictures.

 

Kit Pictures:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Workbench setup:

 

[dereferenced]

Hand Plate Trimming and Sanding

I started with the handplates since I have a set of Sonnenschein gloves, I just wanted to get a feel for the plastic cutting it and trying my dremel out.

 

Left Outside

 

 

Left Inside

 

 

Right Outside

 

 

Right Inside

 

 

Started by penciling the lower line where I would like to get to eventually. Later I decided I liked penciling the top and bottom of the cut lines.

 

 

Initial cuts to get a feel for the plastic. I used those aluminum cutters which worked really well. This stuff is thick!

 

 

All the cutting tools I was using. Featured are Lexan Scissors and Aviation Snips

 

 

I will say the lexan scissors did not behave how I was expecting but in a good way. I was thinking it would make you cut to the right so you would not get a straight line. But actually it pulls to the right and lets you go straight as it sheers and forces the extra plastic the other way. Because of this I bought some right aviation snips to get the same effect with the stronger cutters. Example of what I am saying below

 

 

Second pass this time with the lexan scissors

 

 

After some sanding with sanding blocks and the dremel

 

 

Dremel

 

 

Sanding blocks: coarse, medium, fine, extra fine

 

 

Right outside after sanding

 

 

Right inside after sanding

 

 

Compare with uncut left

 

 

Both cleaned up and "done?" ... not sure they look ok to me. Again probably not using them.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Search tags: handplates hand plates trim trimming sand hands

Edited March 25, 2013 by dereferenced

[DarthChridan[TK]]

Aloha Brian...

nice start with your build

Is the kleenex on the left side for your flesh wounds after the assembling --->>

http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8391/8587147939_e6bf129587_c.jpg

...have fun continues...

Cheers....

[dereferenced]

Trimming Forearms (Rough)

The goal here is to trim them to a point where I can tape them on and see what kind of extra space I am working when its on my arm. I also want to hopefully not make a hasty cut I regret later. So I will probably make 10 cuts more than someone experienced.

 

Outside Uncut

 

Inside Uncut

 

Inside Pencil Lines there are more on my flickr if you are interested.

Notice the pencil lines on the top and bottom. I did this because I felt safer cutting with the larger scissors if I had a top and lower bounds. I usually cut the top line with the big sheers and to the second with the lexan.

 

 

Outside Pencil Lines

 

 

Dealing with the bottom edges

Since the plastic is so thick it was very hard to cut the bottoms for me in one pass. Instead I cut little strips that allow the piece being cut off to foldup / break off as you go across.

 

 

 

 

 

Rough Cuts To PenciI

I did not cut very close on the lines on purpose, just want to be able to tape to see how it looks.

 

 

 

 

Search tags: forearm trimming

Edited March 25, 2013 by dereferenced

[dereferenced]

Aloha Brian...

nice start with your build

Is the kleenex on the left side for your flesh wounds after the assembling --->>

http://farm9.staticf...6bf129587_c.jpg

...have fun continues...

Cheers....

 

Yup! Abs edges are sharp ...

 

Have to run to the gym but I will try to post the rest of my progress pictures tonight. I have the forearms, biceps and shoulder bells roughly trimmed.

Edited March 25, 2013 by dereferenced

[dereferenced]

Trimming Inner Forearms (Rough)

 

Outside Uncut

 

Inside Uncut

 

Pencil Inside

 

Cut to outside pencil with aviation sheers

 

Inside Rough Trimmed

Leaving final trimming and sanding until after measurements and rough sizing cuts.

 

Trimmed vs Untrimmed

 

Both Trimmed

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Shoulder Bell Trimming (Rough)

Waiting to try arms on as a set for close trimming and sanding. Though from what I can tell most people do not modify so it might be alright to go ahead and do it now. This was definitely the easiest pieces to trim so far.

 

Uncut Shoulder

 

Pencil lines Inside

 

 

 

Inside Trimmed (Rough)

 

Outside Trimmed (Rough)

 

 

Trimmed vs Untrimmed

 

 

Both Trimmed (Rough)

You can see at tips where the ideal line is still visible.

[dereferenced]

Inner Biceps Trimming (Rough)

This is the part I had the most difficulty with but I think its because I don't know how much of a return edge is expected. Some pictures I have seen have not had much and others a decent bit.

 

Inner Biceps Outside Uncut

 

Inner Biceps Inside Uncut

 

Pencil Lines

In hindsight in the inner bend I would draw my top pencil line way higher. It seemed like the correct place to draw the line from looking at it in the inside but not from the outside.

 

 

 

Trimmed vs Untrimmed

In the top left inset I think I cut the return edge a bit too close. I tried to compensate for this on the second.

 

 

 

Here you can see what I am talking about. From the inside it looked alright but on the outside even though Im far off the top pencil line I drew I have scraped it up a bit. I am confident I can sand it out and still unsure if the return edge should be as large as you see it here.

 

 

 

Another view from the inside still. Curious for anyones thoughts on how much of a return should be left for that inside bend.

 

 

Second Inner Bicep Pencil on outside

You can see I left a lot more room on the outside for that bend.

 

Second Inner Bicep Trimmed (Rough)

Much more plastic to work with for the return edge this time.

 

 

 

 

Both trimmed

 

 

Comparison of inner bend return edge extra plastic

 

 

 

Questions:

1. What are your thoughts on how much of a return edge I need to leave in that inner curve? Looked at many pictures, varies between armor. Added a minimal return edge for mine. See in later post.
   

Lessons Learned:

1. Be mindful of the outside look when dealing with those inner seams left from the vac forming.
    
   
2. A dremel cutting plastic with the plastic wheel will set off your smoke detector at 1am, so take the battery out ahead of time.
   

Edited March 29, 2013 by dereferenced

[dereferenced]

Outer Biceps Trimming (Rough)

I had a much easier time with these.

 

Outer Biceps Outside Uncut

 

Inside Uncut

 

Pencil Lines

 

Rough Cut

 

 

 

 

 

Comparison

 

Both Trimmed

 

[dereferenced]

One nights work

 

Tonight I will be doing initial sizing, some more rough cuts, more sizing and making my cover strips. If all goes well Id like clean up the edges, and glue one side tonight. But if I have questions I will wait.

[RampantLion[TK]]

Awesome to see so many pics. Keep it up, I can use this for some reference

[dereferenced]

Awesome to see so many pics. Keep it up, I can use this for some reference

Yeah I hope this can be help to other new people. You can also check my flickr photostream, as there are probably 5 times the pictures. I am trying to pick and choose what might be helpful to others to insert here. All the pictures might be slowing my build down but I will say it makes me stop and think about what I am trying to do.

 

And onto the update from yesterdays work. Biceps

[dereferenced]

Cover Strips and you
Started the day off with the goal of I will quickly make some cover strips for my forearms and biceps. A couple straight lines and an exacto knife how hard could it be...

 

Update: For my new way see post , all credit to LadyInWhite

Sizing
General consensus around the forums is that the sizing is 15mm arms, 20mm legs from 25mm legs back. But the consensus says do what looks good on you. So there is room to play with sizes. Read more here.

Why cover strips?
Its more accurate and looks cool. Seems easier to making armor fit you as well. Plus you can mess up your internal edges and no one will be the wiser.

Image from the arms tutorial.

Alright so the plan was make 8 inner strips, and 8 cover for the 2 forearms and biceps. I also wanted to make a guide for trimming the armor to fit. So 8mm strip I can use to align on the overlap in the armor to know how much I need to cut off. I was going to do all of this in an hour or so I thought.

Getting started with Score and Snap
Measure in from the edge and mark one each end of the material.


Line up the ruler.  CLAMPS!


Easily score a straight line all the way down  Slow and repetitive



Or not ...
I had to go over the line a lot of times and it was not straight in the end.

How I snapped it.

My amazing results!

Sandpaper to the rescue
I cleaned it up a bit more later.



Getting started with scissors!
Ok so that didnt work that well, back to scissors. Not much to comment on here is a series of pictures of it.






Pencil lines on the rough cuts


Sandpaper again!



Alright you see both of them done now. The small one is the guide and the larger one I would use for 2 inner strips on my biceps. Are they perfectly straight? Nope but they seemed to do the job. The ABS I made my guide out of was much softer and has a nice bend to it. Which makes it really good for drawing the guide lines as you can press it down on the pieces better. This shamefully took me over an hour for 2 strips, I kept trying to think of cool ways to do it better. But gave up and sanded to pencil marks in the end. If someone has a better approach I am open to it.

Well that took longer to write up than I anticipated. Will post my bicep trimming guide later ... tonight possibly.

Teaser bicep results

Edited April 1, 2013 by dereferenced

[dereferenced]

Fitting and Trimming Biceps

Yesterday I took the plunge and decided to start majorly cutting up a piece. From reading everyone else's posts I was scared off of doing the forearms which was my initial plan. In the end I think I would recommend biceps for people to start with for a couple of reasons. First of all the edges you have to match up are much shorter in length, which helps when you have no clue what you're doing. Secondly, a lot of the piece is going to be hidden so any mistakes you may make can be more easily hidden.

 

Initial Trimming

Since this is an overlap kit I need to cut each side in half basically so that when I join them together its the same width. This is where my 8mm guide strip comes into play.

 

So I line my strip up close to the bend where the raised edge starts. Tape worked pretty well here until all the plastic dust got to it. If you have larger arms I would recommend starting further out from that raised edge. As when you trim from each side it adds up quick even though it looks like you arent taking too much.

 

 

Sure now I can draw straight.

Wait nope, you can see the tape idea falling flat

 

 

Now we are talking!

Love these mini ratcheting clamps

 

You can see I am not very good at this line thing, sandpaper will fix it later.

 

 

Some of the initial lines for cutting

 

 

Cutting the lines

I used the large sheers to get about 3-4mm out and then the lexan

 

 

Not too bad

 

Comparison

Didnt look like that much when we were cutting.

 

Rough line up of two sides

 

Second side

 

Getting better

 

 

With a 15mm cover

 

 

Taping them up

Best Process: Use a big piece of tape along one edge so half the tape is sticking off and then join the second piece. Add horizontal for support and tape the inside seam.

 

Now on the other side... no way that will hold right?

 

 

I was surprised how easily it held

 

 

Both taped:

Can you tell which I did second?

 

 

Trying them on

 

Too much room for my tastes. Decided to go back at it.

 

 

Didn't I just do this?

 

 

 

Hmm but not that good before

 

 

 

Trimmed vs Retrimmed

I felt like I was barely taking anything off but you can tell it adds up fast fast fast.

 

 

Armor for my armor

 

Much better

 

 

 

Both trimmed

Check my photostream for the amount I took off the other side if you are curious.

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Bicep Edge Sanding

Remember how badly I initially trimmed those biceps ... well time to pay the price.

 

Oh yeah ready for some sanding!

 

 

 

 

First clean up the nice cuts I just made for the joining halves

I did not really get any pictures of the sanding as you need 2 hands. But my process is usually, sanding block coarse, then some hand held paper to touch up spots. More sanding blocks going down to very fine and finally 400 by hand. And I mean holding the paper without a sanding block when I say by hand. These pictures are just to show how much plastic is remaining etc.

 

 

Before sanding

 

Bottom before sanding

 

Outer Bottom After

 

Outer Bottom Comparison sanded vs not sanded

 

 

Outer Top Edge

 

 

 

 

Outer Sanded vs No sanding

 

 

 

Out Both sanded top

 

 

Outer Bottom Both sanded

 

 

 

Inner Bottom Before

 

After

 

Compare

 

Both

 

 

Remember this

 

 

Fixed it

 

 

 

Comparison

 

 

Starting the seconds

It was about 4 am so I didnt really take many in progress shots but I tried to snap what I did. I would use the block at the angle I wanted for those 2 inner sides and deal with the center by hand.

 

 

And finished

 

 

 

 

Standing up

 

 

 

 

 

Stressful but exciting night. It is really cool when stuff starts to come together.

[dereferenced]

I almost forgot. I wanted to check and see if anyone had a recommendation for joining the two halves. Some people seem to glue the inner shim to a side first and then join them after the inner shims have dried. Others doing both halves and the inner to start. And then some people do the inner both halves and both strips right away. I am assuming it is a bit safer to join the inner strip and the halves before the cover in case you do have to modify. But what is the thought behind the inner shim on one side before attaching the other? Is it that much safer?

[gmrhodes13[Staff]]

I had enough magnets and clamps so I glued both inner and outer strips on one side first, left it over night then glued the two strips on the other side. Your kit is coming along nicely keep up the good work

[dereferenced]

Gluing Biceps Together

Late last week I decided to start gluing my biceps together. Since I had not yet made my cover strips I decided to just do the inner seams and then add the cover strips on later. If I could go back I would have just made the cover strips and done the full joint all at once. 

 

Sand where gluing

Since this was the underside I skipped taping it off. I used 100 grit sandpaper. 

 

Add the glue

I put a strip down and then used a piece of wood to spread it.

 

Wait for the glue to get sticky, 2-10 minutes says the tube

 

Attach them together

I started by putting the inner strip in and then lining the bottom edges up as you want the bottom flush for the biceps.

I should have covered the piece with tape where I wanted to put the magnets. This made them very hard to get off and I ended up compromising one of the seams. 

 

Wait a day or so and start on the second seam

I connected the bottom with tape first to get it to line up. Then added more support tape around.

 

Glue the seam

I already sanded previously when I glued the first seam.

I spread it with a little wood piece.

 

Wait for the glue to get sticky, 2-10 minutes says the tube

 

Add in the shims

 

Magnet/clamps

Tape on the outside this time. I recommend this if you arent adding coverstrips right away. But I would probably just opt for cover strips from the start. 

 

Wait for them to cure

You will notice tons of clamps on one. This is because when trying to get my glued magnets on the seal on the edge got messed up and started to popup. 

 

Adding Cover Strips

Sand the area

Glue

 

Clamp

I just did both sides from the start. The glue is setting and then I will clean up the glue and tweak the cover strip edges a bit.

 

As always there are more pictures on my flickr photostream. If you want to see how much glue etc.

 

Lessons Learned:

• Cover Strips are probably easier to add in one stage
• When taking magnets off hold both the inside and out and tear away. Otherwise the loose magnets will jump to the other stack
• Tape underneath your magnets just in case
• You can't have too many clamps or magnets

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[dereferenced]

Cover Strips Redux

So for this whole process I needed many more cover strips and I got pretty decent at them finally. Figured I would post an update for how I made them. I used LadyInWhite’s Guide as a reference. It was very helpful. 

 

Patience is a virtue

The first time around I went in with the idea that it would be quick and easy. So I got a bit frustrated it took so long and came out poorly. Luckily those were just for the inner strips so no big deal. 

 

Changes this time around

 

Clamp the strip and ruler to something. 

In my case I used LadyInWhite's idea of an old cutting board. I modified this a bit my putting a weight on the other end so I could have everything sit flat on the bench with my clamps hanging off.

 

 

Cut at an angle

 

Go slow, make it one smooth motion still but take time and let the ruler guide it.

 

When you think you have made enough passes, make 3 more. 

I think I did around 15 passes, they get much easier as the cut gets deeper.

 

Some completed strips

There still may be some unevenness but I was above to sand it away pretty well. I used the 2 strips here cut in half for the biceps. So be mindful of how much material you have as it could save you some cutting.

 

Sizes

Biceps: 15mm x 170~180mm (4 strips) or 15mm x 350mm (2 strips) and cut in half

Forearms: 15mm x 250mm (4 strips) 

Shin: 20mm x 360mm 2 strips 25mm x 320mm (I think, I will check my paper when I get home)

Thighs: 20mm x 285mm (2 strips) 25mm x 390mm (2 strips)

 

I went ahead and premarked my extra material for which strips I would use on different pieces. I wanted to try and minimize the cutting for the strips. The lengths are all very rough ballpark, but more mine I had some medium length strips and some longer and it just determined which I could use for the long thigh pieces and long shin pieces

 

 

 

 

 

[dereferenced]

I trimmed my forearms and sanded the rough edges out last night. As seen below.

 

However, I am having a hard time closing them which I expected from what I read in other threads about this armor. But I am unsure how I should tackle the problem.

 

I think it is due to how flat this side is on the outer piece. 

From the top

View from the inside of both pieces in case that helps.

 

My question is should I attempt to bend it with the heat gun before gluing down any of the sides or should I glue one down so I can get the shape better. If so would you recommend gluing the flat side connection first or side that appears to already be bent correctly. Any recommended approaches for where I should apply heat / pressure would also be helpful.

[dereferenced]

I ended up gluing down the more curved side yesterday and I plan on using the heat gun to help shape the unclosed side today.

 

 

Inner strip and coverstrip from the start this time. 

Then I used thicker tape to pull the two sides towards each other. I connected half the tape and then pressed the two ends towards each other /the shims and then pulled the tape down to hold that pressure. 

 

 

[dereferenced]

Trimming Chest

This weekend I spent some time trimming all the body pieces. Figured I would post a couple before and after shots. There are some in progress shots on my flickr if interested.

 

Before

 

After

 

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Trimming the Back

 

Before

 

After

 

[dereferenced]

Trimming the Ab plate

 

Before

 

Roughly Trimmed

 

After

 

[dereferenced]

Trimming the Kidney Plate

 

Before

 

After