A little short for a StormTrooper! FemTrooper Build in TX

[Barcode]

Awesome! Keep it up, your going to have a really nice Legacy TK here soon!   You will not regret painting the inside of your helmet, this I promise.

[Jenlarouge]

Paint's finally dry enough to put it all back together and get finished up. So started by gluing in the screen behind my frown with some E6000. Hate waiting on E6000 to dry...

 

used popcicle sticks to hold the screen on while it dried... it really works best if you do it the way the instructions say and apply the glue to both sides, wait two minutes, then put the two things together; but it just takes so long! Uggg

 

Put the black seal around the bottom, bothers me that it isn't glued or anything but then I can never take the helmet back apart. 

 

Tadahaaaa

[Jenlarouge]

Time to get the padding and helmet liner in there. I know I need to push it away from my face a bit and up off of my head a bit. So first I am adding a bit of foam to the top and right above the lenses. 

Circle for the top

pad for the forehead above the lenses

traced around where I wanted the foam at the top so I knew where to put the glue

Did the same at the forehead then added the E6000 to the helmet in the area I had marked and the foam and applied per the instructions on the tube... let it cure for about 3 hours so I knew it was at least stuck enough that I can work around it. 

 

After that I started lining up the motorcycle helmet liner I got, using the one suggested from Shannon's helmet THANKS for the info. Yay Amazon! =)

Using velcro to install it so that I can take it out and wash it as needed etc. 

Velcro on the helmet curing

 

And on the liner...

 

And now I must wait until it dries. grrrrrr. guess I'll go to bed. 

[Jenlarouge]

Good Morning! Everything is dry so I tried the thing on with the helmet liner in place. Big improvement. Now just the last couple cleanup details and it should be done. =D

 

Mom note: The Mr. Clean Magic Eraser is the best thing I have found to clean up helmet. I wet one half of it to scrub and leave the other dry to...dry. If it starts to leave dark streaks because of the pain/pencil/dirt/fingerprints/seal smudges I have cleaned up, you just run it under water/ring it out again and keep scrubbing. Seriously, people should keep one of these with their kit.

 

Anyway...

Despite my careful taping there was tiny spots of escaped spray paint at the teeth which the magic eraser wouldn't pick up without a vigorous scrubbing that would also take the enamel off the teeth.

Since it was nice and dry I went ahead and just painted over those with a touch of white enamel. Can't even tell.

 

Think that is everything. Ready for the done picks? 

[Jenlarouge]

DONE! (I think)

 

I am not 100% happy with the gap on the left ear, but any more trimming just makes it bigger, so I decided to try and be at piece with my Freshman attempt at helmet building. SO anything else I am not seeing? If so please let me know now as I am too lazy to go back and redo stuff once I have moved on.

Edited August 1, 2015 by Jenlarouge

[Jenlarouge]

Also, thinking of starting a new post for the armor. This thread was three pages just the helmet... if both it will be way long. What is proper forum etiquette regarding length of threads and pics?

[Dday[501st]]

Also, thinking of starting a new post for the armor. This thread was three pages just the helmet... if both it will be way long. What is proper forum etiquette regarding length of threads and pics?

 

There is none. post away, pic away. As long as you want and it's all a nice contribution to the community.

[Barcode]

Looks awesome Jen!

[Jenlarouge]

Decided to just keep going on this thread instead of starting a new one. It will be long, but it will all be here. SO moving on to the armor... time to cowboy up. 

When you are sewing a terribly structured garment  you have to fit the hardest part to alter first, and everything else gets fitted to that part after. So I am going to use the same approach here. The first issue to address will be the length of the ab/cod piece.  I have an EXTREMELY short torso. There is about 4" between the bottom of my ribcage and the top of my hips. Not only does this add width to my appearance, but it makes everything else top and bottom to long. 

The Ab piece will either sit at the right place at the cod and then overlap on the top...

IF the top is in the right spot the bottom of the cod is almost at my knees. 

 

After spending three days rumaging through the threads for all sorts of TK's I can't find any suggestions specifically, but I see other times where they have seperated the cod from the ab piece. I decided to try and do the same but subtract a few inches out and create a seam under the belt. No one will ever see it, and I may even use the paste/slurry method to get rid of the seam altogether. I started by cutting it here

 

I then just taped it up about 2 inches higher for the try on. Which brought to light several other problems...

[Jenlarouge]

Also took advantage of Hubby being  home and he helped me tape it all together on just to see what I was dealing with...

 

Everything needs to be shortened. So I better get started. 

[Mutter]

Jen, I wouldn't shorten the ab piece any more. My suggestion for fitting is to size the pieces in this order:

 

Ab

Kidney

Chest

Back

 

Fit the ab so the cod piece is comfortable in your crouch area ()if that's even possible ). Id also suggest trimming the cod piece a little more so it's not so pointy.  With the ab piece in the correct position, fit the kidney plate.  It's ok if the chest and back overlap a few inches over the ab and kidney. As long as you can move around, it should be fine.  The shoulders and biceps look good.  The forearms seem a little long. If you can bend them you're fine otherwise trim at the wrist.  The thighs could be raised. They should almost be in your crouch. Can't really tell on the calves/shins from this angle.

 

Remember, you can always cut more off but you can't add more on. Go slow.  How tall are you?

[Jenlarouge]

Greg, I have not trimmed anything from the cod/ab, just separated them. I'll have to do some moving things around to get the right placement. 

I am 5'0" so very short. 

[Mutter]

OK. When we built Kathi's armor, we didn't have to shorten anything (she's 5' 3"), just trimmed the sides a bit. From the looks of the one pic above, you shouldn't really have to shorten much. 

 

Good luck! 

[Jenlarouge]

Ok, I took a peak at Kathi's armor build thread. Thank you for posting the pics from 4 angles, it helps me get a better idea where the pieces sit on someone a bit on the shorter side. Tell her she looks GREAT! 

[Mutter]

Tell her she looks GREAT! 

 I tell her that all the time    and thank you!

[Jenlarouge]

I'll bet you guys thought I gave up, right? WRONG. Job hunting is seriously cutting into my armor building time. Inconsiderate much?! Anyway...

I have been spending my free time wrestling with this ab/cod combo piece. Let me remind everyone what the problem is. 

It overlaps my girls by about three inches on top if I have the cod in the right place

 or goes halfway to my knees (slight exaggeration there) if I have the top where IT belongs

so I panicked and cut it in half here

which I sorta regret. But I did it so I need to go with it.

 

After advise from you guys, I trimmed the bottom point off the cod quite a bit and that took care of 1 1/2 of the 3 inches that I needed to get rid of

 

I then trimmed the return edge off of the top down to about 1/8 of an inch and this really almost got me another 1/2 gone. Sorry I didn't get pics of that.

 

I removed the last 1" from the middle. Removing all three inches from the middle would have really made the sides not ever line up right again. 1" will work out ok.

Initially I was just going to hack off 1" from the top of the cod section I had hacked off previously here:

But I realized that if I do that I will also hack off the top of the little ridge and I didn't want to do that. I just wanted to loose some of the space between the cod and ab details. So I ended up cutting it out in a wide notch from the ab and inserting the matching "cog" shape on the cod with the ridge in tact. Which I am sure is clear as mud. lemme see if I can explain better with pictures.

 

I marked off a 1" deep, sorta wide "notch" in the bottom of the ab plate where I had separated the pieces.

 which I cut out

 

Leaving a space 1" higher for the little ridged decoration on the cod.

Then I cut down the sides of the cod 1" to make an opposite "notch" or "cog" shape.

and Presto! 1" shorter but details all still there.

The piece I cut out of the ab makes a great little joint piece to glue the two halves together. So I cut it in half, sanded it down on the edges 

and used E6000 to glue the joint pieces to the two halves of my ab/cod piece back together. 

They are curing right now, held together by magnets. 

Once cured I will fix the edges and return edges so they match up again and fill in the gaps in the front from the cuts. The whole area is covered by the belt so no seams will show either way. 

Edited September 13, 2015 by Jenlarouge

[Barcode]

Nice work.

[Jenlarouge]

After it cured overnight I saw that I needed to lose the return edge bend at the seam to stabilize it. I used my heat sealing iron set at about 350 to gently warm up and straighten out that return edge bend

 

And then glued another small scrap of ABS to the back to stabilize that part of the seam

Repeating that process on the other side as well. Set it with clamps and waited some more...

 

The end result is a bit Frankensteined looking

 

And though I will eventually have to make up some ABS paste to make it pretty it will hold well, fit right, and is completely covered by the belt. I am gonna call this a win

 

Moving on...

[Jenlarouge]

Here is a theoretical questions for those who have gone before and built this thing. Speaking specifically to the closure of the ab to kidney at the sides; the CRL says the L side should have two rivets which are covered by the belt and the chest/back pieces. The R side is snaps, again covered. My question is this; if they are covered how do they know what we used to close them? can I use snaps on both sides? what if you are Left handed and want your snaps on the Left side?! I want to put snaps on both sides. Is that a deal breaker?

[Mutter]

Awesome job on the cod piece!

 

The rivets need to be there per the CRL but they don't need to be functional. I used snaps and elastic on mine and Kathi's armor to actually close the sides. This way we can full disassemble our armor if need be.

[Jenlarouge]

HEY welcome back everyone! I have a lot of pics and catching up to do. I'll try and get it all up tomorrow. in the meantime, thanks Greg! I'll go buy some rivets. 

[Jenlarouge]

Ok, full time job is sucking the brain out of me. But I really have been working in the evenings as much as I can. But it has all slowed down to much.  *pout*

 

But there has been some small progress. 

The shoulder straps for the chest piece are a bit of a challenge to get lined up right. Ultimately I found a reply in someone else's thread from Kevin where he was talking about the placement of the straps. It is difficult to get them pointed the right way without them being on your body and without the back piece on. I solved this little conundrom by using my 13 year old son as a mannequin. Understandably, he forbade me from taking pictures while it was on him. 

Because the straps a "hollow" underneath, I made the glue a bit thicker and made sure it went up the sides. 

 

I also used the bigger stronger clamps to hold them in place while they dried so that I made sure the most surfaces where touching the glue. Hopefully this will mean a good strong hold. As they do not actually hold anything and are just for decoration I am hoping they are fine as long as the glue stays. 

[Jenlarouge]

Moving on to the forearms. 

These are a bit of a battle to get the right size as they are another area that I am MUCH shorter than designed for. 

 

I started by giving the surfaces I would be gluing a good scrub with the sandpaper. I had done that to the surfaces of the chestplate as well but forgot to note. 

 

On the outside lip that will be overlapped I marked the "inside" so I remembered which one would be inside when I attached one to the other. They are meant to lap where the lapped edge is pointing towards the back on each side. SO they will lap opposite each other. I'll show pics as I go, I promise! 

 

I used a ruler clamped to the straight edge and drew a line. Then trimmed along that line and used the sand paper to smooth the edge straight. 

 

Once trimmed I lined up the outside overlapped edge and marked the top where they overlap. 

 

Then penciled in the line where I wanted to trim the return edge. This is just to make it look prettier and line up better. 

 

Those edges where then trimmed and sanded until they looked good. 

I then applied E6000 to the edge where they would overlap, top and bottom.

Then I took a wooden popsicle stick and smoothed it out so that there was no parts without glue and it wasn't thick enough anywhere to goop out the sides when I clamped it. 

 

After it was clamped and dried for a day I started working on shortening the wrist edge. 

They are about 2 inches to long. I was advised to trim the wrist edge, and it seems much more straightforward than the elbow edge. I was a bit of a chicken about just cutting 2 inches off so I trimmed and inch, then another 1/4, then another 1/4, then an 1/8 etc. Took a while but I got it to the right length. 

 

Will finish the back seam next. taking a break from sniffing E6000. 

[Jenlarouge]

Finished putting together the biceps yesterday as well. 

Because the upper circumference of my biceps are on the larger side and I trimmed the return edge down quite a bit. The top will be covered by the shoulder bell so I am not worried about it looking funny. 

 

I cut and sanded the edges that will butt together, again using the ruler and clamp to make sure my line was nice and straight. 

 

Tada, nice straight line. All I had to do was sand it a bit

 

I measured the seam from edge to edge just under the return edge lip and used that measurement to cut a strip of ABS 3/4 inch wide for the front and the back of each bicep. Sanded the top of the strip and the backside of the bicep where they will join, applied glue and spread it out. I applied the strips and clamped them down. In doing this I learned that it probably would have been better and less of a hassle to do one side at a time instead of both halves of the bicep. That way I would not have ended up wrestling with it to make it stay while the glue was curing. Ah well. Here is the back with the strip applied. You can see the strip on the back side of the seam in front, and the seam on the outside in the back. 

 

Here is the outside front seam. You can see where they are slightly different lengths, but that will be fixed and ultimately would be hiding under the shoulder bell, so no reason to stress. 

 

And here is my problem with the biceps. Is anyones arm that shape? Anyone? they are almost squoval! So I will try to round them out, but first I want to do some digging around in the forum for advice on reshaping a part. Any advice? I thought of heating them up a bit and sliding them over a pool noodle and letting them cool a bit rounder. we'll see

[Mutter]

Do the biceps fit?  If so, leave them. My advice, only reshape them if they don't fit well. Save you some work.