JenEyre's WTF ANH TK Build

[shashachu[TK]]

Did you end up trimming both pieces? Or just the one with the pencil line in your picture? I had a lot of trouble with the forearms because of their size and hacked a ton off them. It's fine now but I'm curious what other folks are doing.

[jeneyre[TK]]

On 8/3/2017 at 10:14 PM, shashachu said:

Did you end up trimming both pieces? Or just the one with the pencil line in your picture? I had a lot of trouble with the forearms because of their size and hacked a ton off them. It's fine now but I'm curious what other folks are doing.

I trimmed both pieces. The pencil line is the part that didn't have an edge. I trimmed 7mm from the ones with the edge.

[jeneyre[TK]]

Between prep for DragonCon, the start of the school year (I'm a teacher), and the start of the fall LARP season, I finally had a chance to do some more work on my TK.

The butt and kidney pieces were connected, so I knew I'd have to add a return edge one I cut them apart to use the brackets from Mr.Nostripes.

I boiled water in our biggest stock pots and poured it in the sink. . . And it instantly cooled too much to be useful.

So I heated water in our widest pots, and dipped the edges. I used pliers to bend the edge. The edges are no where near as smooth as I want them to be, so I think I'll need to use another method to make things prettier. Iron? Turbo laser?







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[jeneyre[TK]]

A little more progress.

Cover strips for my scrawny forearms.


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[gmrhodes13[Staff]]

With making return edges you can use a small piece of wood on either side of the edge to clamp together while cooling to give you a nice flat finish.

 

Coming along nicely.

[jeneyre[TK]]

With making return edges you can use a small piece of wood on either side of the edge to clamp together while cooling to give you a nice flat finish.
 
Coming along nicely.

Thank you! That's exactly what I needed to know!


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[gmrhodes13[Staff]]

A member in my former garrison actually made plugs to fit inside to get a nice straight edge, a lot of work but came out a treat

 

 

[jeneyre[TK]]

Cover strips inside thighs now curing.


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[jeneyre[TK]]

14 minutes ago, gmrhodes13 said:

A member in my former garrison actually made plugs to fit inside to get a nice straight edge, a lot of work but came out a treat

 

 

That is fantastic!!!!!!!!! 

[magni[TK]]

Keep up the good work Jen!

[jeneyre[TK]]

Forearms! Need to clear off the smeared glue. Will also likely need to add foam inside

I definitely pushed the sinal small size to the limit!


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[gmrhodes13[Staff]]

I have thin arms and had to add foam to the inside of mine to hold them in position and stop rotation. I decided to add Velcro to the foam and the inside of the armor just so I could remove and wash, it is amazing how sweaty you can get after a long day of trooping.

 

Excess E6000 glue with normally come off with a rub of a thumb or a rag.

[jeneyre[TK]]

So, I wasn't having luck with the stuff I had on hand getting those return edges smooth enough to my liking. So, I did what I usually do with this build, and Amazon Prime a solution!!!  The heat sealing iron http://amzn.to/2yte8rn  was here when I got home, but I'm too exhausted from teaching today to start. . . 

 

Either that or I'm facing the usual stormtrooper armor thing of being worried about messing something up beyond repair and am delaying by reading the forums. . .

 

Or both.

 

 

[gmrhodes13[Staff]]

Here is Pandatroopers how too thread on using heat irons, could be of use https://www.whitearmor.net/forum/topic/12972-howto-make-a-return-edge-on-armor-using-a-heat-sealing-iron/

 

Good luck

[jeneyre[TK]]

Thank you! I need to make the cotton cover, as I refuse to pay $5 for something I can make myself in five minutes. . . . And then I need to practice on scrap!


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[jeneyre[TK]]

Well. . . Migraines and life have kept me from making much progress. HOWEVER, today I realized I could paint with my head wrapped in ice while sitting on the couch.

Painting is taking much longer than I thought it would. Here's what I've done so far freehand. I ordered the hand painted effect stencils from trooperbay and will continue with all the stripes when they arrive.

How much do I need to clean up what I've done so far?













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[shashachu[TK]]

Painting looks great! If you want you could clean up tiny bits of the outside edges of the black outlines, but I think it's probably fine as is. Screen accurate! I also used the Trooperbay stencils and they worked out great. I did have to trim the tube stripe stencils because they were too long to fit the WTF bucket, but there's no required number of stripes. Here's mine for comparison:

 

 

 

Also your ab buttons look 10000x better than mine and I've been approved for EIB.

Edited November 13, 2017 by shashachu

[Harbinger[IPM]]

Looking good so far. Don't forget the extra 'teeth' on the ends, they're an unwritten requirement for Centurion.

[jeneyre[TK]]

Looking good so far. Don't forget the extra 'teeth' on the ends, they're an unwritten requirement for Centurion.

Thanks!


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[jeneyre[TK]]

Looking good so far. Don't forget the extra 'teeth' on the ends, they're an unwritten requirement for Centurion.

Thanks!


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[jeneyre[TK]]

(ohhhh here's an old post that I never got around to actually posting!)


I'm starting to wonder if these chronic migraines are actually sent by bunch of Jedi or trying to keep me from finishing this...

Looking at screens is definitely a trigger for my migraines so I'm having to balance posting and doing research and asking questions with staying away from screens and sitting on the couch or laying in bed with my head covered in ice packs.

So if I ask any questions that could totally easily be found by searching the forums it's probably because I've tried searching forums or just can't deal with that much screen time at the moment. I'm also using speech to text so if I have any weird typos that I don't catch that is why.

I think I'm going to try to install the lenses today and the neck seal because I'm thinking that having the dark lenses and the sound deadening inherent in the helmet will make it an ideal place to ride out my next migraine! And way more badass than my usual tinted glasses and Ice hat!

Anyways, here is the current state of my helmet. I think I'm done with the paint and I'm going to wait a little bit to clean up around the tube Stripes, if you all think it's necessary, because at this moment I'm more afraid of messing them up then I am actually fixing them effectively. Actually who am I kidding I'm totally going to spend more time on that because it's something I know I can do to help looking at screens are reading more directions!

I was really glad I had the templates from trooperbay to do the stripes. I know I could have made my own and managed it but I'm still in that phase of throw money at the problem when it comes to my armor so there we are.








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[jeneyre[TK]]

I found a diet protocol that's been very successfully preventing my migraines, so now they only thing slowing my progress are the messed up back, neck, and shoulder muscles that cause cervicogenic headaches. My crappy posture plays into this in a big way. I finally started up again using a little sensor that vibrates when it notices me slouching. I've been wearing it regularly in the fall, but it gotten out of the habit. And apparently my body had gotten out of the habit of having decent posture, tell my pain levels had made it that I could barely get anything, let alone armor building, done! Between the physical therapy exercises and that, I'm finally starting to do better. Until I overdo things... Or forget to use the posture sensor... Or both in the same day... (Hey at least it's not a migraine.....)


Well here's my current headache.



Besides my health, I had definitely gotten distracted by a number of soft costumes I was working on. My Admiral Holdo is finished and Rebel Legion approved, and I'm waiting on one part before I submit my husband's TLJ Poe Dameron. Oh and it was way too freezing cold and are unheated basement to work on my armor down there, not to mention I wasn't going to add poisoning by inhaling E6000 inside to my list of health issues...

But my brain was also super focused on those darn kidney return edges and how how much I hated how they looked.

I started playing with the the ceiling iron a bit yesterday and today. And then this morning I mistakenly started thinking that the cranky return edges would be covered by my belt and therefore wouldn't really matter. So I got a bunch more work done. I added the bracket and elastic to the rest of the back. And drill the holes for the brackets for the rest of the front. Then, when I was laying down and resting my back after slouching over my exacto knife while trimming pieces for too long, I started looking at pictures and realize that oh no those return edges are plenty visible just below the belt. And then of course I see another build thread where it looks like you can just Mount those brackets differently in a way that I could have gotten away without messing with return edges. But I figure my torso is probably short enough that I should have done the return Edge thing anyway. At least that's what I keep telling myself.

So how bad are these return edges? I got them maybe a little bit smoother than they were before with the help of the sealing iron. I'm sure I wasn't as patient enough with the ceiling iron as I should have been.

But on a happier note I coated the inside of my bucket with Plasti Dip yesterday.

And in defense of my procrastination on this project in favor of finishing my Vice Admiral Holdo, the base of her dress's neck piece is going to be totally perfect as the base for my neck seal!



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[Artshot]

Nice build so far.

The only thing i can suggest for the return edges if you want to get them really even and smooth is use some ABS paste and gradually build up the areas where it dips down from level, then once those areas are filled, use a very light sandpaper or a long flat file to slowly even them up, luckily the area is not an area than needs to be super shiny, however there are ways to return the shine to the paste....i think.

 

If your using a file and it fills with dried paste dust, just wipe it down with acetone and it will soon clean up.

 

I have done a similar thing with the bottom of my thighs, which when formed were more at an angle than at 90 degrees to the outer edge, i used a heat iron to bend them to the right shape, then filled the dents and folding with ABS paste and slowly filed until the edges began to flatten out to the same level, i could explain better with pictures, but typically i dont have any handy.

 

Hope that makes sense

[lucnak[TK]]

Think you could paint the teeth a little bit higher/lower on your bucket. Clean up between the tube stripes too to get rid of some of the smudging.

 

Regarding the return edge, yes it's visible, but it's not a focus of attention. @Cricket seems to have mastered the reshaping of return edge here! Check out her current build here:

 

[jeneyre[TK]]

Thank you for the suggestions!


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