EJGreen's RT-MOD (Stunt) Build Thread[*RT]

[EJGreen]

The second forearm is finally cured and both forearms are finally complete.  I still need to add snaps for strapping.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Forearms
For 501st approval:

• Forearms are fully closed. 

For level two certification (if applicable):

 

For level three certification (if applicable): 

• No return edge on the inside of the front of the forearm is allowed.
• Forearms must be constructed using the butt joint and cover strip method. Overlap construction is not allowed.

 

CHECK!

Edited November 27, 2014 by EJGreen

[gazmosis[501st]]

You can just glue the strap inside the forearm and bicep. Tack it in position with a couple drops of superglue then top coat it with E6000 to make it smooth

[EJGreen]

Thanks for that tip, Steve, something definitely to keep in mind. To be honest, I still have yet to buy all of my strapping, snaps, and elastics as I'm still tossing and turning over what materials are best/accurate.

[Dark PWF[Staff]]

Thanks for that tip, Steve, something definitely to keep in mind. To be honest, I still have yet to buy all of my strapping, snaps, and elastics as I'm still tossing and turning over what materials are best/accurate.

Here's the answer to your tossing and turning. Happy Thanksgiving!

 

http://www.whitearmor.net/forum/topic/26477-what-we-know-about-strapping-snaps-rivets-etc/?view=getnewpost

[EJGreen]

Thanks, Tim, for jumping in again.  It's a great comfort knowing you've got my six!

 

So I read through the "What We Know..." thread and it's a bit confusing but I did get some valuable information out of it.  

 

If I was reading correctly, the original forearms and biceps were merely strapped together with elastic glued into the pieces?  No Snaps?  This would make them permanently tied together, right?  

 

 

This raises several questions...

 

1) How easy is it to actually put on armor this way?

 

2) How secure/durable is this method?  After a while wouldn't the glue eventually peel off?

 

3) I know this isn't notated in the CRL's but is this what all the cool kids are doing?

 

 

I'm ultimately aiming for Centurian but I'm also interested in going as screen accurate as I can possibly go.  At the same time, however, I don't want pieces of armor falling apart on me while I'm putting it on or trooping about.

Edited November 28, 2014 by EJGreen

[EJGreen]

While I ponder the great mysteries of snapping/strapping, it's time to move on to the biceps.

 

 

"Welcome to the gun show!"

 

Really, my guns aren't all that impressive.  Squeeze the trigger and a flag pops out of the barrel that says "BANG!"

 

 

Preliminary fittings suggest that I can trim the butt edges to accommodate a 15 mm cover strip like I have on the forearms and I've already trimmed those edges down.

 

I've been reviewing photo references and reading several threads about return edges on the biceps.  From what I've seen, the majority seems to say leave 'em alone.  Rob didn't leave much of a return edge on the biceps but I do know that I need to get rid of that pesky "thumbprint" from the right bicep.

 

 

 

Reading Dark CMF's (Tim's) build thread, I see how he managed to remove the thumbprint by using a heat sealing iron.  Apparently this isn't something I can find at my local Lowe's or Home Depot.  Even Radio Shack doesn't have anything like this.  I've looked at Amazon and the reviews for the Hangar 9 brand are questionable, at best.

 

I personally hate shopping online through the mail.  I'm an instant gratification guy.  I'll spend $30 for express shipping on an item that costs $10--just so I can get my hands on it ASAP. Yeah, it pisses off the wife considerably.  Nine out of ten times, when I'm expecting something to arrive, the UPS guys are too lazy to knock on the door when they're supposed to and will come back the next day.  That pisses me off considerably as I typically waste the cost of express shipping when it doesn't show up on time!

 

Anyway, the closest thing I found to a heating iron, at Lowe's, is a tool used for laying carpet and has a plate the size of a brick.  NOT something I want!

 

A heating gun seems to be something I can grab, locally, and pretty cheap.  Would this work?

[trooper12]

Have you tried searching online for hobby stores in your area? I feel the same as you do and found multiple hobby stores within a 20 minute drive that all had multiple brands of heat sealing irons; much to my surprise.

[EJGreen]

Have you tried searching online for hobby stores in your area? I feel the same as you do and found multiple hobby stores within a 20 minute drive that all had multiple brands of heat sealing irons; much to my surprise.

 

As a matter of fact, Rod, I managed to score one today!

 

In a last ditch effort, I called a local store that caters to RC hobbyists (HobbyTown USA) and they said they had one for me and would hold it with my name on it!  I drove 20 minutes to the store with my bicep in hand to see if it would work and they said it should do what I need it to do.

 

 

It's got a rounded, upswept tip to prevent surface gouging, a contoured wooden handle, and a 5.5 foot cord with heat ranges from 130-395 degrees F.  The great thing is that it was priced at 50% off which meant that I got to take this baby home for $10!!

 

Upon closer inspection, it looks like the heat sock iron cover is sold separately,  I don't think it's wise to apply a bare iron directly onto the abs as I suspect it might melt a hole into it.  There's no instructions either so I'm not sure how hot this thing needs to be in order to smooth out the thumbprint.

Edited November 28, 2014 by EJGreen

[EJGreen]

I've come to realize that I am NOT proficient with this damn heating iron.  For the past couple of days, now, I've been attempting to use the heating iron to smooth out the thumbprint from the right bicep.  For whatever reason, however, this is not working out the way I had imagined it would.  I'm finding it really difficult to heat a rounded piece of abs with a flat iron.  

 

My attempts have left the bicep piece looking extremely dimpled and uneven.  No matter what I attempt to do, it only seems to make everything worse.  I don't know if this piece is beyond working with.  I'll let you look at the picture and you can give me your opinion...

 

 

Personally, I don't know why Rob hasn't considered the idea of molding a bicep without the thumbprint in it. 

[EJGreen]

I continue to smooth the surface on this bicep.  I noticed that the iron was not only causing dimpling in the plastic, the entire piece was beginning to warp a bit out of shape.  I ended up clamping the right bicep over the left one so that it would help retain it's original curvature.

 

Using my wife's hair dryer, I began heating up the exterior surface and then using a lint-free cloth, I would "polish" the surface once it got hot...

 

 

 

This technique actually began to smooth away some of the dimples caused by the heating iron so I ended up putting an old sock over the iron and, while moving in circular motions, began ironing out the outer surface.  I have to say that it's not 100% perfect but I think it looks a lot better than it did this morning...

 

 

I'll continue to work on this some more until I feel confident that's it's as good as it's gonna get.

[Darth Aloha[Admin]]

Looks good to me. I bet rob has one mold for both biceps. If it were in the crl i would feel better about asking him to make one without the thumb print.

 

Nice work

 

-Eric

 

 

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[gazmosis[501st]]

Don't overthink that bicep!! It looked great after your initial effort!!! Now that you have the sealing iron, you have all sorts of new weapons in your arsenal to tweek and hone return edges, curves and uneven joints. Just make sure you don;t set it too high. You don;t want it to melt the surface on contact, you want it to heat the plastic through until you can bend it.

[Dark PWF[Staff]]

Okay... I may not be the one that started the "remove the thumbprint from the right bicep" craze, but I certainly did so in a build thread that turned out to be a pretty high-profile thing around here, so I'm going to go ahead and weigh in on this for you.

 

As both Eric and Steve have said, you've done a good job with damage control - even though I don't think that the damage was anything significant. It would have looked perfectly fine, but I realize that you're not trying to be perfectly fine, so I'll tell you what I did and maybe it will be of use to you.

 

For starters, the heat sealing iron that you found is indeed the tool that you want to use for this job. As I was reading through your thread updates I saw you make mention of a heat gun and the possibility that you were considering using it for the thumbprint removal and no joke, I lost my breath for a moment, my heart skipped a beat. I was thinking in my head "Oh, God... Please, no. After The Walking Dead tonight, there's no way I can handle this. Please, tell me he didn't do that!!!" I was fully thankful to see that you didn't. LoL.

 

The heat sealing iron is a tricky one. If you don't know where to look, you'd possibly never find it. As you discovered, it is typically a hobby store type of thing. Particularly, one that specializes in RC planes, as it is primarily used to shrink the skin to the frames of the aircraft.

 

The "sock" for covering it is a nice idea, but in my own experience it was a pain in the backside to secure to the iron so, since my iron is Teflon coated, I opted to not use it. That's an option only if your iron is Teflon coated. If yours isn't... USE THE SOCK!!!

 

Before actually taking the iron to the bicep, I took a piece of "spare" ABS and went through about an hour of "practice" and getting a feel for it. I applied a lot of return edges to flat pieces of ABS, and I removed them shortly after that. Once I felt at least comfortable with how the ABS reacted to the iron at different heat settings, and what level of heat it would take to soften the ABS until it was pliable, I took it to the bicep.

 

One thing to remember if you follow this same approach: Spare ABS has not been vacuum formed. It is the full thickness of the ABS sheet. The bicep has been vacuum formed and therefore, it is not quite as thick as the sheet. It will take less heat (as I'll explain momentarily) and will happen a little bit quicker as a result of the vacuum forming process. Also, in between each of these heat iron "sessions" I allowed the ABS to cool back to room temperature for 20 - 30 minutes.

 

Initially, I set the heat to what I would call "Low-Mid." It wasn't on "Low" but it was not half-way up. Maybe 3/8 of the way up. I felt like that got the iron up to an appropriate temperature pretty quickly, as I could feel the heat through the bicep and watched the thumbprint start to push up a little too quickly for my comfort level, so I took the iron out of the bicep and turned it down to just about 1/4 of the way up.

 

To actually begin pressing the thumbprint out, I used the flat surface of the iron against the entire thumbprint - again, until I felt it softening up and flattening a bit. I then moved to the tip and edges of the iron and starting at the bottom edge of the thumbprint, I pressed against the thumbprint's ridge/outline until it was softened up, and then moved on to the next section of the outline. It is important to remember that the ABS has a sort of memory. It wants to go back to the vacuum-formed shape. The thumbprint is not going to go away in one session. It is going to take several sessions to remove it completely (mine is still there a bit, via hands-on inspection, honestly). All you want to do is to essentially shift that memory in your favor each time you go through this. If you turn the heat up too high, your ABS will turn into soup. It will wilt, it will collapse, and you will cry.

 

Once I had the "hard edge" of the thumbprint softened up and relaxed some, I took the flat surface of the iron and the upswept tip and used it to push up the actual thumbprint itself, working in pie piece wedges until it was mostly flattened. After that I simply put the entire flat surface on it and pressed it to meet the shape of the surrounding bicep piece. My final bit of work was to once again switch to the front edge of the iron, and "roll" it across the entire area, slowly, several times to even it out.

 

Hopefully, this will help you (and others) out, as I'm pretty sure that I've given a far more in-depth explanation of the process here than I did in my actual build thread. LoL.

 

If you have any other questions, feel free to post them and I'll do what I can to assist further!

 

You've got this man... It's looking good. Believe me when I say that the first armor build for most of us probably had moments where we wanted to cry because we were sure that we'd just destroyed a piece somehow, but we're all here as Legion TKs now so no matter what we did, we found a way (through FISD in all likelihood) to correct it and achieve Legion approval or higher.

Edited December 1, 2014 by Dark CMF

[Dark PWF[Staff]]

Also, since it was mentioned, I'll add that I think the thumbprint removal would be a pretty solid CRL change.

 

Far more so than a notch or something like that, but I digress.

 

[EJGreen]

I appreciate everyone's support and feedback. I think I mentioned at the start of my thread that I can often get too wound up in the details that it's almost debilitating. Right now, the condition of the bicep isn't completely horrendous. I can see and feel a bit of rippling in the abs and that's pretty much driving me crazy.

 

My heat sealing iron is teflon coated but after reading Tim's awesome input, I realized that I had my temps cranked too damn high. I'm going to continue working on it but at much lower temperatures and see what more I can do.

 

Honestly, I have to admit that I'm surprised that this whole thumbprint issue isn't in the CRL; at least for Centurian. Part of me was starting to think it wasn't a consistent feature in the original suits but I'm trying to push for as much screen acuracy as I can get.

 

I'm trying to find out if the bicep hooks were for stunt suits or if that was a "Han" thing. I want to add them to mine but only if they're accurate.

[Dark PWF[Staff]]

 

I'm trying to find out if the bicep hooks were for stunt suits or if that was a "Han" thing. I want to add them to mine but only if they're accurate.

I'll just chime in here to say that even if they're only a "Han" thing, they will help keep your biceps in the right place, and that is a lot more comfortable - simply some food for thought.  

[Dark PWF[Staff]]

 

I'm trying to find out if the bicep hooks were for stunt suits or if that was a "Han" thing. I want to add them to mine but only if they're accurate.

I'll just chime in here to say that even if they're only a "Han" thing, they will help keep your biceps in the right place, and that is a lot more comfortable - simply some food for thought.  

[EJGreen]

I've been playing with this piece for over a week, now, and I'm wondering if I'm sweating too much of the small stuff or it's good enough to move on to gluing the pieces together.  I'm thinking that this is as good as it's gonna get...

 

 

From a distance, you can't really see anything but there's still a bit of mild dimpling going on the surface of the piece.  Part of me thinks that because this is the inside of the bicep, nobody's going to notice but the other part of me knows it's not perfect.

[Tusken RTT]

Yep, your sweating the small stuff.  It's a never ending project, so I would get the rest together and leave perfecting the bicep for spare time later on down the line!

[Dark PWF[Staff]]

I think Scott summed up pretty much everything that there is to say right now.

[gmrhodes13[Staff]]

As above, don't sweat it, won't even be noticed

[Dark PWF[Staff]]

Eric... What's happening these days??

[EJGreen]

I've had to deal with som personal family issues surrounding my fathers health which caused me to take a break from my armor. But I can say that I'm back with a vengence to dive in where I left off.

 

I just have to remember where I left off...

[EJGreen]

Going through my box of parts and pieces, I remembered that I left off with the biceps.  Everything is butt joined and I've already added the "Han hooks."  I still need to add some strapping to the arm pieces but until I get to the craft store for elastics and strapping, I'm moving on to the legs.

 

I never realized, until now, that my shins appear to be cut for overlap construction.  Seeing as how I butted the arm pieces together and the CRL for Centurian calls for butt joints, I'm going to have to trim some of these edges down. 

 

 

Is it 20mm for the cover strips?

 

What's the recommended construction for closing the shins in the back?  I know the velcro seems to be popular but wasn't there a hook method that I've seen in a few threads?

Edited May 29, 2015 by EJGreen

[Airborne Trooper[501st]]

20mm for the front and 25mm for the back. Those are the recommended but you can do the rear as big as you need to in order to fit. Just make sure the rears of the thigh and the calves are the same. The screen used suits used the bra hook method. Are you military? I lived in Fayetteville for 8 years when I was in the eighty-deuce. Moved a little over a year ago after I ETS'd.