themaninthesuitcase Anovos ANH Stunt Build

[ScaryGuy[TK]]

Mine came from here:

 

http://www.spaldingfasteners.co.uk/

 

I got a bag of 10 along with washers and metric (course) nuts. Wasn't very expensive, £3.06.

 

The humbrol enable thinners (not acrylic) made short work of the transfers. It works on the frown but was harder work and used a fair bit. The vocoder was Isopropyl Alcohol to get most of it off then the thinners to clean up.

 

Get the 125ml thinners as it evaporates fast and you need a fair bit. I think I've lost about 1/5 of the 28ml to evaporation but this is probably down to the small jar size.

 

Thanks for the info Chris. I went to the site to order the screws, but only UPS shipping is offered when I check out which is going to cost £51   . So I have to keep searching for them. Or I can try to contact them to see if they will ship them with Royal Mail.

[themaninthesuitcase[Admin]]

Cracked out the Humbrol a bit this evening.

 

Started by painting the rivets for the side straps white. I left the crotch rivet as bare brass.

 

 

I did all 6 but you don't need to see both sides. I will need to do another coat once this ones dry.

 

I also did the 2 button plates:

 

 

 

This time rather than a #4 standard brush I used a 3mm flat brush. This seemed to do a bit better of a job coverage wise and in getting a clean edge. I'll be using this brush for the edges of the gray on the bucket. Still worried about the black outlines on these but I'll cope somehow.

 

The fix to the shoulder bell seems to have gone well.

 

 

The external excess was sanded first with 180 to remove the bulk then 600 to smooth. I've not gone for a perfectly smooth result and some paste is still visible. The reason for this is I don't want to make the fix any weaker than I need to. I will polish the bell once I get some new polish and I don't think you'd see it even up close.

 

I think the reason for the break was this was the thinnest second of the return edge. When I flexed the bell a bit this was the weakest area so it just went.

 

The split thickness is about 6mm from face to edge. I propose to trim both bells to this dimension.

 

 

This image shows the rough line that needs trimming. I'll do a better job of marking out once I'm ready to trim.

 

I also glued in a snap for the thigh to belt elastics. No pictures as exciting as this sounds. One leg has slightly flattened at the rear when glued, I may need to warm and round this a bit but I'll give the armour some wear first to see if it's truly needed.

 

And I'll finish off with a picture of the stripped face plate. There's 4 small spots left but I'll clean those up once I get some more thinners.

 

 

I'm going to play hunt the thinners tomorrow as it's a bit hard to find in the shops, hopefully I'll be able to get some and save an online order. I'll also pop into Halfords and get some new polishing compound to get a bit of a shine on the bucket before I start back with the Humbrol.

[themaninthesuitcase[Admin]]

Thanks for the info Chris. I went to the site to order the screws, but only UPS shipping is offered when I check out which is going to cost £51   . So I have to keep searching for them. Or I can try to contact them to see if they will ship them with Royal Mail.

I won't have enough spare for a full set but if you get stuck let me know and I'm sure we can figure something out. An envelope to the NL is about £1.50 by the looks of things.

[ScaryGuy[TK]]

I won't have enough spare for a full set but if you get stuck let me know and I'm sure we can figure something out. An envelope to the NL is about £1.50 by the looks of things.

 

Thanks for the offer Chris. I will contact spalding first to see if they have other shipping options. If not, then it would be nice if I you could help out with shipping them. I haven't found any alternatives yet, or I have to order large quantities.

 

Did you paint the rivets with Humbrol gloss white? It wasn't a succes for me. The paint remains soft even after almost a week. If I press with a finger on the paint there will be a fingerprint in the paint.

[themaninthesuitcase[Admin]]

It is humbrol gloss white. That doesn't sound right. Should be try after 6 hours. The black I used on the TD screws was fine. Ill check mine in a bit, but I suspect you either had bad paint or applied it way too thick.

[themaninthesuitcase[Admin]]

It is humbrol gloss white. That doesn't sound right. Should be try after 6 hours. The black I used on the TD screws was fine. Ill check mine in a bit, but I suspect you either had bad paint or applied it way too thick.

Just checked it and it's dry after overnight.

[ScaryGuy[TK]]

It is humbrol gloss white. That doesn't sound right. Should be try after 6 hours. The black I used on the TD screws was fine. Ill check mine in a bit, but I suspect you either had bad paint or applied it way too thick.

Maybe I applied it too thick, not used to model painting. On the next attempt I'm using a metal primer first, then regular acrylic paint.

[themaninthesuitcase[Admin]]

Bit more progress.

 

I have completely removed all the paint from the bucket now, repaint will start this evening. I gave the dome and face a once over with some Meguires Ultimate compound. This brought the dome to a nice shine but the face is a bit more dull. I should have some Autoglym polish in the shed which will fill the micro scratches and add a thin layer of glaze as well as cutting but I'll do this post paint job. If that doesn't make me happy then I'll be having to apply a wax layer but that sounds a bit excessive for a plastic space man suit.

 

I also made an attempt to bend the left rear shoulder. The right is fine but the shape of the left means it digs in, I need maybe 1cm. After 4 attempts with boiling water with dunk times up to 90s the bend just didn't want to stay bent and was returning to the original shape.

 

 

At this point I gave up rather than risking the repeated bending causing a crack, you can already see micro cracks in the surface layer. I do fit it was more a comfort thing. I reduced the return edge down to about 4-5mm which has helped so once I've worn the armour a bit in anger I can return the this area if needed.

 

I've now glued the snaps into the rear plate for the shoulder straps so another job for today. More sewing :x

 

I also added the right thigh ammo pack.

 

 

I used the supplied rivets this time as they have far thinner legs which means I can just use a screwdriver rather than mess about with a hammer in a confined space. These don't take paint as well as the brass finish ones I have but a 2nd coat will sort it.

 

I based my position on this reference:

 

 

I more or less got it right, slightly off but close enough I think:

 

 

I've not glued the ammo pack in place yet but I'll added a blob or 2 of E-6000 at some point.

[kman[TK]]

Watch those micro cracks. That's how mine split.

 

I'd recommend taking the return edge entirely off of the outside edges of the shoulder straps. That will make the bending MUCH safer, especially it's already showing signs of stress. Further, perhaps you did it but the second step in the heat bend process is COLD water. You need it to lock the plastic into it's new shape, otherwise it tends to slowly contract to how it was before. Perhaps this is less of an issue when you really liquefy the plastic with a heat gun, but it definitely helped with mine, after the hot water bath.

 

I wouldn't worry about the ammo pack. There is so much variation on screen that it's not even funny. You're WELL within the "normal range".

 

[themaninthesuitcase[Admin]]

Sorry yes, I was bending holding then with it still bent quenching in cold water.

[themaninthesuitcase[Admin]]

I'll start this post by remembering those ml lost in the great thinners spillage of 2016. Many were lost but will long be remembered by the strange smell in the lounge.

 

The last 2 evenings have been spend re-painting the bucket. I've had mixed success on this but we'll cover that as we go. tl;dr Unless you really want to don't repaint the traps and tears.

 

With the paint all removed I stared by working on the frown.

 

 

After the 1st coat I had a pretty decent layout. Again basing my work on the reference from before.

 

I really struggled with the traps and the tears. I taped off the bottom of the rear traps to get a straight line.

 

 

If you look closely the finish isn't as smooth as I'd like. I probably should have thinned out the paint a bit and done several coats. On my 2nd coat (not pictured) I was 'liberal' with the paint to give it a chance to self level bit more. The lines follow the shape on the bucket, again captain shakey hands make this non-ideal.

 

I also did the tears, but found these far easier to get a decent finish. Probably due to them being a lot smaller area to cover.

 

 

Again 1st coat pictured, not 2nd which has a nicer finish.

 

I'm not 100% happy with these, and probably should have left the factory decals in place. Oh well too late now. Maybe next winter I'll break the bucket down again and re-do them. Preferably I'll use an airbrush for the backgrounds and then hand paint the outline. But this will have to do for this year as my compressor is still at my dads, and I've yet to buy an airbrush.

 

I also did the ears.

 

 

Far, far happier with the ears than the other grey areas. Again giving weight to the idea smaller areas being easier to paint.

 

Once the grey areas are dry I'll do the outlines, let them dry then do the internal lines. The idea here being wet paint will just wipe off the dry if I screw up.

 

I also have painted the vocoder.

 

 

This was trickier than I expected. The first paint was wiped off and then pencil line drawn to match the reference. This was then painted in. I had a few slips on the 2nd coat that were cleaned up with a cotton bud dipped in thinners. One was a bit wet and ran, so that was cleaned up again with a cotton bud and LESS thinners.

 

You can also see the 2nd coat on the frown here which gave a nice result.

 

I'll be leaving the tube striped until I reassemble the bucket. The reason behind this is to help me get them lined up with the ear join. Not sure if I'll hand paint these (masking off the top and bottom) hand cut a mask from masking tape or buy a pre made mask. The 1st two I can do with no further expense, the latter will be easier but mean ordering something probably from the US.

[kman[TK]]

Brave man to tackle that much repainting!

 

TrooperBay's rank strip stencil seems pretty good. I got one on a whim, in case I want to repaint at some point, but I'm going to leave the decals for now, unless someone tells me they need to be moved to approval.

[themaninthesuitcase[Admin]]

Brave man to tackle that much repainting!

 

TrooperBay's rank strip stencil seems pretty good. I got one on a whim, in case I want to repaint at some point, but I'm going to leave the decals for now, unless someone tells me they need to be moved to approval.

One of the UKG has hooked me up with some templates which is awesome. 

 

But yes, turns out I did bite off a lot more than I expected.  Humbrol isn't nice to paint with.  Shame there's not a #5 in their acrylic or I'd try that on some scrap.

Edited March 22, 2016 by themaninthesuitcase

[themaninthesuitcase[Admin]]

Painted the outlines. Again mixed results, but generally a bit happier overall today.

 

 

The traps where tricky mainly due to trying to find a good way to hold the dome at the right angle to paint a line. Also due to the thin line required to match the reference I used a #1 brush. This means you don't get a long run before the paint in the brush runs out which isn't great.

 

You can also see that being a bit heavy handed on the 2nd coat of grey seems to have reduced the amount of texture in the grey. However I still would use an airbrush if I re-do them.

 

 

The tears generally went better than the traps for some reason. On both tears and traps I did make mistakes which were cleaned up with a cotton bud dipped in thinners. Upsettingly if you look at the right tear you can see a small patch where the grey lifted. The paint wasn't very well done here so cleaning the mistake also cleaned away the grey. I'll touch this up when I do the stripes in the rear traps and in the tears.

 

I also painted up some M3.5 screws for the ears.

 

 

I only plan on using these on the 2 visible screws one each side, for the ones hidden under the S-trim I'll use the Anovos supplied screws. So again painting 5 gives me a spare for any slips or mistakes. The screws haven't yet been cut to length either, this will be done after fitting the ears. I'll leave the bottom screw long enough for an elastic chin strap too.

[themaninthesuitcase[Admin]]

Just realised I forgot to outline the ears....

[hupspring[TK]]

The tears and traps look pretty good! I don't think I will be able to do as well as you did with my shaky hands.

[kman[TK]]

It's looking a lot better!  I think you're going to pleased in the end.

[themaninthesuitcase[Admin]]

Wife has informed me that the tube templates have arrived I'll check them out once I'm home.

 

Long weekend ahead so hoping to blitz the armour and get to a point where all thats preventing clearance is the blaster.

 

I've almost finished painting the bucket, all that's left are the tube stripes.  The compound I got was a bit gentle so going to pick up a different one today and see if I can get a better shine on the tubes before I paint them.  Will post a proper update this evening.

[themaninthesuitcase[Admin]]

I'll start this update with an elaboration on todays earlier post. At lunch I was sat looking at the calendar thinking if I pulled my finger out over the weekend and rethought my plan for my blaster I probably could be cleared and ready in time to troop the Star Wars days at Legoland.

Then I got home and saw the announcement that the UKG have had to pull out. Somewhat disappointing but I trust the garrison knows what it's doing and as a former Merlin group employee I can but speculate at the reasons. I hope the differences can be worked out in time for next year as whilst it wasn't my first meeting with the UKG it is one I remember well. Ironically my first 501st encounter was at a Merlin Group party.

BUT the silver lining is I no longer have to bust my bum all weekend when I should be being a good dad  

Right back to the regular drivel:

Last night I spent a fair bit of time to mark out for the stripes on the tears and the rear traps.

For the tears I counted 7 stripes on the reference. Using a fine point permanent pen I put dots where I wanted each stripe t start and end. As always based on my reference and rough eye balling.



Excuse the white corner, I touched this up after I did the black as I needed to do a 3rd coat on a couple of the frown teeth as well.

I then used a #1 Humbrol brush to join the dots with some #85 satin coal black.



Next I did the ears. I applied the outline with the same #1 brush and then did the 2nd from rear rank bump with a 3mm flat tip brush.



The ear plastic is a bit dull finish wise and will need a buff. To do this I'll have to carefully tape over the grey areas with masking tape now but such is life. I've picked up a new compound so will hopefully get better results with that.

For the rear traps I'll do a post of their own as I feel it's worth a tutorial style post. Though for the purposes of the WIP boom:



This means all thats left paint wise is the tube strips. And thanks to my UKG Armourer I now have these to play with:



Plan for the rest of today is to do the 2nd post then try buff out the tubes on the face. Depending on this I may or may not start applying the templates but I think that might be a tomorrow problem.

Edited March 24, 2016 by themaninthesuitcase

[themaninthesuitcase[Admin]]

How to paint your traps:

 

1: Using some masking tape I taped the bottom of the trap off to get a half decent straight line. Depending on how well you do this you may need to clean up after with a spot of thinners on a cotton bud.

 

2: Paint the area with #5 Dark Admiralty Grey. I should have penciled out the line I wanted. I didn't so had to clean up later with thinners.

 

3: Let the paint dry over night.

 

Your bucket will now look something like this:

 

 

4: Carefully remove the tape.

 

If the lines aren't 100% perfect it's not the end of the world, the next steps will cover over an amount of this.

 

If you have gone too far, I did, use some masking tape to protect the bit you want to keep use the thinners on a cotton bud. The idea here is to use the tape for a straight line as well as protection from the thinners.

 

5: Using a thin brush, I used a #1 Humbrol, carefully outline with the black (#85 satin coal black). Ensure the brush has a good load of paint, but isn't dripping. This should give a good flow off the bristles as you do your line.

 

If you screw up use the thinners on a cotton bud to wipe up and try again. You will probably do this a few times when you first try. Because the grey is nice and dry so long as your gentle the wet black paint will wipe off easily and not damage the grey layer.

 

 

6: Another overnight wait to let the paint dry.

 

7: With some masking tape mask off the top and bottom of where the stripes will stop. I used Tamiya brand masking tape, it's decent stuff. Make sure you rub the tape down well to burnish into place and reduce risk of bleeds.

 

 

8: Using a pen mark out the where the first and last strip will go. This will be roughly 4mm in as above.

 

9: For all 4 bits of tape do the following:

• Measure between the 2 ends
• Divide this by 11. 12 stripes need 11 gaps!
• Measure out this gap and mark out on the tape. Be careful here, compound error can add up.

I used a cheap digital vernier calliper for this. It really made it far easier than if I'd had to use a rule.

 

 

10: Join the dots! I used the end of a loyalty card key tag as it's small, flexible and wasn't going to damage the paint.

 

 

11: (Optional) "steady hand medicine".

 

 

12: Carefully, 1 at a time paint over the lines. Reload the brush before each line to ensure you get a good clean plaint job. I found if you did 2 in one go then you'd get a small gap next to the tape.

 

13: Remove the tape. You don't need to wait for it to be bone dry this time.

 

14: Great success!

 

 

15: Finish steady hand medicine.

[kman[TK]]

You left out step 16:

 

16: Repeat steps 11 and 15.

 

[themaninthesuitcase[Admin]]

I did. That's why I didn't do much this evening. That and tired.

[themaninthesuitcase[Admin]]

Its a build day bonanza. Yes I am running out of ways to keep these updates interesting, why do you ask?

I started off the day buffing the tubes on the bucket face. The new compound is a bit better but not massively so.

That done I applied the templates I was sent. One side went on no issues at all. The second was far harder due to the more pronounced compound curve. After a bit of fiddling I got a reasonable fit, a couple of wrinkles but nothing drastic.



I'd have preferred the bottom template in the image had decided to curve the other way but I think any further attempts to adjust it's position would have killed it.

I used the #35 clear gloss varnish to paint over the template. The idea of doing this is to seal the template and prevent bleeds. Any bleeds will be clear and so not visible. For the 2 small creases I will push the template down again to help seal it every time I paint. Any bleed here can be fixed after the fact.

The gloss takes 6 hours to cure so I set it aside for now.

I dug out the belt I made earlier in the project, mainly as I forgot to photograph it but I'll also need it later.



Next up was to crack out the sewing machine and remake the shin elastics. The 1st batch of elastic I'd gotten was far too hard to hand sew so I bought some more at the market in St Albans.

I then proceeded to sew the hooks on to all 6 of them.



This was as exciting as it sounds so I also got on with the shoulder straps. I started by getting my wife to help work out how long they needed to be. I held the armour in place whilst she marked the elastic where it got to the rear plate. I then just had to measure to the snap and finish off the straps.



You can also see I sewed on the other part of the 15mm popper for the shoulder bells. That was also thrilling. The popper is centered in the gap, the offset is due to the fact that the snaps on the front are lower down that on the rear.

I also cracked on with remaining elastics. I have a couple more to do but this is the bulk done now.





At this point I glued in the snaps to join the fore arms and biceps and whilst the glue was out glued on the small button plate. I'll do the bigger one later.

This gave the first chance to try on the armour with out holding it all together.



Fit is pretty good and more comfortable than expected. I'm able to move reasonably well, nothing is overly tight. I did get my first armour bite as well, the thigh to cod  . Obligatory walking up and down for 10 minutes followed.

This fitting revealed a few issues.

• I only had 1 elastic on the "open" side. I was hoping that the belt would close the bottom but testing with the rubbish Anovos belt seemed to show this wasn't going to work.
• I need to file the top of the rear of the right thigh. It pokes into my bum
• The butt plate was splaying out and not hugging me as well as I'd like. The reason for this was the snaps where to far in to pull the armour inline with the kidney which is fine.

I was also concerned before the fitting the chest plate was going to dig into my neck but this turned out to not be the case. Very glad I waiting to try it on first before addressing this.

At this point it was time to break for dinner. After dinner was done I cracked out the #14 and did the first coat of blue on the tube stripes.



The paint is pretty thin and rather then lump it on I've elected to do 3-4 coats as needed. I've since done a 2nd and the colour is looking far better but at least 1 more will be needed.

Next I made some elastics for the forearm to biceps. I had added snaps earlier today so I was able to measure against these to make the elastics. The snaps will be helpful and allow me to break down the arms when needed for packing.

I finished off the day by addressing some of the above issues and adding some missing snap plates.

I pulled off the snap plates from each end of the lower kidney and re-glued them at the extreme ends. I re-used the snaps despite not being able to remove all the glue. The old glue seemed to melt into the new so hopefully the bond will be good. If not it's no great loss and I'll make new ones.

I also added a new snap at the bottom of the opening side to the kidney and ab as per the Billgram. This should close up the body nicely.

I added the snaps I need to join the shoulder bell to the bicep. Once the shoulder bell to shoulder strap elastics are glued in I'll measure for how long these will need to be.

Last job of the evening was gluing on the shoulder plates. This makes the armour look really close to done and is a nice moment.



Got a few chores to do tomorrow so no all day builds. Hopeful I'll be able to finish off the blue paint with 2 more coats and also get shoulder bell top elastics glued in. I could use snaps here but the hassle of sewing means it's a pain to adjust them however I do it.

Ideally I'd like to get the holes for the shin elastics drilled tomorrow too and make a start gluing in the elastics.

[kman[TK]]

Interesting technique, varnishing the template to seal it. I'll have to keep that in mind for when I eventually do mine, too!

[Airborne Trooper[501st]]

Looking good! Best not to rush the paint job and you're showing real patience in between coats!