Cricket's RS Props Hero Build (more Vertically Challenged assembly!)- FINISHED

[ukswrath[Staff]]

[Cricket[TK]]

Taking a short break from my husband's RS build to work on my own build today.  Had just a few minutes to get my black leggings on and try on my torso with arms.  This is the first time I've tried this much of the kit on since reshaping things last week.  Photos have been adjusted so they don't look backwards (they were taken in a mirror).

 

Here's my before additional shaping pic of the back (on the left), and the after additional shaping on the back (on the right):

 

 

A few things I'm seeing.  

• There's a strange area at the returns where the butt plate and kidney meet in the middle left.  You can see it's a bit more gappy in that location.  I've compared this to the same unaltered parts of my husband's RS TK, and it's there as well.  Quirk in the armor I suppose.  It bugs me, but I'm going to have to live with it.
• The right side of the butt plate is still wanting to flare out a bit at the top return.  I'll have to hot water bathe that area so it curves a bit better.  Left side is good.
• The right side lower corner of the back plate is overlapping the kidney.  That can also be fixed with a hot water bath so it curves in and up.  See pic below.

 

In the photo below, you can see how my right side shoulder bell is smushing itself in my back plate as I bring my right arm back.  That area where the shoulder bell is flattening out it where it's all happening.  I'll need to trim some of the bell for clearance.

And this just looked 'off' to me:

 

So I removed the belt, and here's what's going on:

 

Dammit.  I need to shorten the lower rivet elastic and possibly make a slightly longer elastic for the top rivet.  Ugh.  Really glad I bought a bag of 100 split rivets way back when I built my first TK.

 

At least the other side seems to be okay.

 

I'm also considering doing some additional trimming to the bottom of the chest plate.  After looking more at the Luke Hero, I see that I could flatten out the curve of the chest by trimming up on the sides.  This alteration will also make the lines of the ab plate look better along the waist, too.

 

I am still missing my shoulder straps and still need to refine my forearms.  Well, that and a bunch of little adjustments still need to be made here and there...  I forgot how time consuming the final fit can be to dial in!

Oh, and if anyone sees something that I've missed, please let me know.  I can handle the critique! 

Edited January 29, 2019 by Cricket

[ukswrath[Staff]]

You're spot on with your self critique Christine. May I suggest ditching the elastic kidney/ab connection and going with nylon for more control. It looks like you have plenty of room to spare around the waist anyways (so jealous). THT 

[Cricket[TK]]

13 hours ago, ukswrath said:

You're spot on with your self critique Christine. May I suggest ditching the elastic kidney/ab connection and going with nylon for more control. It looks like you have plenty of room to spare around the waist anyways (so jealous). THT 

Thank you for that feedback, Tony.    I may end up doing just that- going with some nylon straps in there.  I've got plenty of the stuff laying around here, so it should be an easy switch.

This morning I began hacking away at my 'to do' list for my kit.  First up:  fixing the back corner/kidney overlap.  I used a hair dryer to gently heat up the back plate and bend it a bit first.  The overlap was still there, but I improved the curve (so, yay!).  I trimmed the corner of the back plate off and sanded it down until it just met the top of the kidney.  Much better methinks.  Before and after pics below.



Next, I did some conservative trimming of the bottom of the chest plate to flatten out that arch.  This mod scared me a little more than I'd like to admit.  After cutting, I sanded things down a little to flatten the arch even more.  It'll look slightly different when I'm wearing it, but I think I'm headed in the right direction.  I can always trim more later if I need to.  Before and after pics below.

 

And the reference photo next to what my armor looks like now, just for comparison's sake.



Okay, now here's my next huge hurdle.  The grappling hook box.  I can't seem to find any good photos of how it fits on Luke, and it doesn't seem like it fits properly on my armor.  I chatted briefly with Tony about this, but I never shared pics with him (hoping this helps, Tony!).  I need feedback in a major way on this, troopers!

First, here are some reference pics for y'all:

To me, it looks like the entire attachment has a slight curve on the ends so that it follows the line of the kidney.  I don't see any sort of gaps between the belt and the kidney, which would be indicative of the box being flat.  There is too much of a curve on Luke's kidney for me to believe that the box attachment is totally flat.  My box attachment is completely flat.  Surely someone can help me figure this out.  Here's what it looks like when hooked on my belt.

 

 

 

A view from directly overhead:

 

 

And a view from directly underneath:
 

I have curved the kidney in a bit for my size, but not as much as I did with my RS Stunt TK.  I have not made any size trims at all to make the kidney smaller (I wanted this TK to look larger around the torso than my stunt).  So I don't think this is an issue of me overshaping the kidney.  And held up next to the unaltered (unshaped) kidney of my husband's RS TK, the box fits in the same way there as well.  

So, troopers...  opinions on this would be super appreciated.  I can't move the box any further back on the kidney because it would set the box out of correct placement (I still have the flat box/curved kidney issue there, too).  And I certainly don't want to wear it like a thermal detonator; that would be weird for sure. My inclination is to gently bend the front facing 'wing' of the box (near the kidney/ab seam) inwards at maybe a 30 degree angle to better fit the curve of the armor.  This would allow the box and hook behind it to sit closer to the kidney and still maintain their flat shape. 

Thanks so much for any input!!!   

[TheSwede[TK]]

Hmm, don’t remember I had that much of an issue with my set up, looked for a pic but apparently I didn’t take one showing the back so I’ll have a look and get back to you

[Cricket[TK]]

10 minutes ago, TheSwede said:

Hmm, don’t remember I had that much of an issue with my set up, looked for a pic but apparently I didn’t take one showing the back so I’ll have a look and get back to you

Thanks, Daniel!  I'm sure this must have something to do with my small size.  I looked at Christina's EIB/Centurion applications where she was wearing her grappling hook/box, and hers looks fine on her belt.  But she's also bigger than me.  :/  

Looking at the CRL for the Hero TK, the optional box shown doesn't look exactly flat to me.  There is nothing mentioned that the wings of the box can't be slightly angled, nor is there anything mentioned that the wings must be flat.  

 

I'll also add that the box in the CRL overall looks smaller than mine.  The distance on the box between the switch and the grappling hook hole is definitely shorter.

Edited January 30, 2019 by Cricket

[TheSwede[TK]]

Might be you have a bigger box then as you said you checked on the unaltered RS suit but I’m sure it’s fine to slightly curve the box

[TheSwede[TK]]

Measured mine and box is 9cm and total 15cm wide.

[Cricket[TK]]

24 minutes ago, TheSwede said:

Measured mine and box is 9cm and total 15cm wide.

 

Yours is smaller than mine.  My box is 10cm wide, and total of the back plate is 18cm.   

 

I might try to find someone locally who can vacuum form a smaller box for me if I am not allowed to bend in the wings of the box.  It would require some dissection of my current setup, but it could be salvageable.  @ukswrath, when you get a moment, could you weigh in here?  I want to make sure whatever I do will clear EIB/Centurion.  Thanks!

Edited January 30, 2019 by Cricket

[TheSwede[TK]]

3 minutes ago, Cricket said:

 

Yours is smaller than mine.  My box is 10cm wide, and total of the back plate is 18cm.   

That should be it then- bummer...but might work out in the end if you curve it as you said #fingers#crossed

[Cricket[TK]]

While waiting to figure out what to do about that Grappling Hook Box, I decided to try to improve the returns where the kidney and butt plates meet.   That gap was making me a little nuts.  I removed the brackets from the butt plate (again, sigh) and examined what was going on.

It took a long while of looking at how the returns were meeting together to figure out what the issue was.   Turns out that there was a slight- and I mean VERY slight- area on the left end of the butt plate return that was a teeny tiny bit warped, and it was throwing the entire alignment off back there- causing that weird gappy thing to happen.  I busted out my handy wood jig and heat gun, secured the butt plate directly to the jig (a new trick I just figured out, BTW), and not just flattened out, but angled the return in and down.  Pics are before and afters...

 

I know it's not the same because I'm not wearing it, but even just hanging there, it is a huge improvement over how the two pieces were meeting before.  That small gap was making me crazy!!!  Now I can get back to fine-tuning more fixes without this on my mind.

[gmrhodes13[Staff]]

Just appears one corner of the back plate sits inside the kidney plate and the other outside, it gives the impression that the back plate is on an angle, not sure if you can tweak that at all with the strapping.

 

I applied some angle to the flap sections of my grappling box, just sat a lot better, was fine for L3.

 

 

[Cricket[TK]]

Thanks for the feedback! I can assure you that when I have the kit on, the back plate sits right at the edge of the kidney (no overlapping).  It doesn't look the same on a hanger.  I'll get proper pics soon. 

 

The RS kidney is super wonky!  It is not even from one side to the other at all.  I have not shortened the kidney returns on this kit.  It is taller more on one side than the other.  The bottom of the back plate is not even, either.  In order to keep the OII box straight and fitting well to the kidney, I had to cut the bottom of the back at a slight angle.  With my previous RS TK, I shortened the kidney by almost 2 inches.  I made sure that the kidney was straight and even on top and bottom once I was done.  I also made sure the back returns were straight as well.  Since I'm not going there with this build, I'm having to deal with things looking different. 

 

Annnnnnnyhow, OII box on the back plate is now straight (but cut at an angle),  wonky kidney (untrimmed) floats in the middle, butt plate (untrimmed) is straight. Overall the kit is straight in the back, but if you really look at the middle, it looks "off".  It's kind of like one of those Topsy-turvy cakes.  If I had trimmed the back plate to match the top of the kidney, the back would have ended up really crooked.  Does that make sense? 

 

And thanks for letting me know about your grappling hook box.  Sounds like bending those flaps may be in my future! 

[Cricket[TK]]

A little side track about the RS TK kit...

I thought it might be good to share some pics of how irregular the RS TK suit is out-of-the-box.  This is not the sanitized version of a TK at all.  The biggest part of the irregular nature of this kit is apparent in the back.

Here are the three back pieces.  They are positioned in the same manner as if you strapped them together without making any changes to the returns of the kit.   It's not bad, but notice that the OII box is not straight.  There is almost a 15mm difference between the bottoms of the OII box corners to the bottom of the back plate.


Now, if I make it so that the OII box is straight, there is a gap of - you guessed it! - 15mm on the right side between the kidney and back plates.  There is no way to properly strap the pieces together when they are assembled like this unless you're either trimming the top of the kidney or bottom of the back plate. (Or if you made your strapping particularly long on the right side, which is something I suppose could be done, but then you'd have a large black gap on the right. )

 

And next to each other so you can better see the differences (and if you've been following this thread, you can see the weird gappy part of the kidney/butt plate return on the left side that I was talking about earlier):


In the photo below, you can see what happens if you trim the back plate straight and even along the bottom.  (I was just getting started on fitting my kit, apologies for the scary shot.)  The odd shape of the kidney throws it off. 



Another pic that shows the wonkiness of the back plate.  The back plate is lined up straight in the pic (I was using my floor lines as a guide), but you can see how odd the box looks.

 

And in my case, I'm doing a lot of back plate trimming to emulate the Luke Hero.  I doubt that most will have this issue, but the more you trim from the bottom of the RS back plate, the more apparent the rotated nature of the OII box becomes.

 

And here's the unaltered kidney.  You can easily see here that there is about 15mm difference between the right side and the left side along the top.  

 

So for anyone considering going with an RS TK: You will not be getting something that is sanitized, perfect, or idealized.  You will bang your head against a wall sometimes trying to get things to fit properly or look just right.  Not much lines up perfectly, but that's exactly how the movie kits were!  RS TK kits are weird, and wonky, and wonderful.    

 

[Harbinger[IPM]]

It’s almost as if these are costumes from a low-budget 70’s movie! 

[Cricket[TK]]

I've recently been diving headlong into a T-21 build, and it occurred to me that I've been neglecting to finish this kit.  I am super close to finishing, and I suddenly realized that I have been actively avoiding working on it.  Which got me thinking, "WHY???".  It's been a dream of mine to have a Hero Luke suit, so what was going on??

I am sure that at least one of you out there knows the feeling when you feel that you just can't do something without screwing it up.  And looking back at my progress, I see what caused me to stop dead in my tracks and make all sorts of excuses for why I didn't have time wasn't making this a priority.  It was the grappling hook box.  I had no idea as to how I was going to make it work on my kit.  I was terrified that I was going to screw up a $300 prop (yes, I paid a little over that much for the box...).  So with that, I just decided not to work.  Period.

 

I'm crediting my husband for reminding me about my kit-in-progress.  Actually, it was a comment he made last night as he looked at the floor of my nerd-room, which was covered with a 1:1 scale printout of a T-21, a large log of EVA foam, and various cutouts of styrene and PVC piping.  Photo taken while the floor was still in its "clean" state...

 

"So how are you able to get to work on your stormtrooper with the floor covered in all this?"  A nice reality check for sure.  As I sat on the floor and looked around, I realized that there was nowhere to walk on the floor.   I had (intentionally?) built an actual barrier to my TK with another project.  And that's how projects never get finished!

 

Sooooo, today I decided to put away all the T-21 stuff and get back to work on my Hero build.  And I'm committed to stay focused until I'm done! 

I pulled out the grappling hook box and decided that the safest way to bend the side tabs would be with boiling water.  I pulled out a heavy duty roasting pan and filled it with water.  The extra large surface area allowed me to submerge the tabs and still give me lots of room left to work.    Here you can see how straight things were before the hot water treatment:

 

 

I had to remove the round hook holster and left side belt clip, but this was an easy task- they were fixed on with e6000 (yay!).  I used large paint stir sticks to help keep the tabs flat because I only wanted the bends to occur near the box, not on the tabs themselves.  It took me about 30 minutes, but it worked! 

 

 

 

My grappling hook box now fits nicely along the kidney.  Some before and after pics:

 

 

 

I still have to glue the left side belt hook and grappling hook circle back on.  I'm going to give the whole thing a few days to dry out before I tackle that part.  But at least this hurdle has been cleared, and I can now confidently wear the grappling hook box without it looking 'off'.  I'm excited to finish this build now.  Whew!

Oh, and my new Praetorian Blaster E-11 arrived in the mail a few days ago, and it is gorgeous!  (I will probably do a little weathering to it to make it look a bit more battle-worn, but it's still beautiful.)   The detail in that spring element alone is stunning!

 

 

I gave my Hyperfirm E-11 to my husband for his RS TK...  which caused him to revert instantly back to a 10 year-old boy, running around the house with it, yelling, "Pew! Pew! Pew!".  He can't wait to be a TK.

Edited February 21, 2019 by Cricket

[justjoseph63[Staff]]

I wear my grappling hook box in lieu of a TD (in the center of the back), but always wondered why a TK stationed on the Death Star actually needed one, lol.

[A.J. Hamler[TK]]

59 minutes ago, justjoseph63 said:

I wear my grappling hook box in lieu of a TD (in the center of the back), but always wondered why a TK stationed on the Death Star actually needed one, lol.

 

For when this happens.

 

[Cricket[TK]]

3 minutes ago, A.J. Hamler said:

 

For when this happens.

 

 

 

[Jeklynhyde]

You're making excellent progress Cricket! Awesome job on the grappling box! Keep it up!

I'm excited to see more updates

[Cricket[TK]]

Finally got around to cleaning up my nerd room today and managed to make some more progress on my Hero TK!  I've been spending a lot of time working on Mr. Cricket's stunt TK lately, so it's nice to finally work on something of mine.  

It's kind of nice to have so much white armor in the room to block out that rebel scum back there...


I'm suddenly realizing that I'm pretty dang close to the finish line with my Hero suit!  I've got to do some additional trimming off the back of the shoulder bells.  They're tucked under the back plate too much back there, and all that extra material feels odd.  Should be a matter of try-on-mark-take-off-trim-try-on etc. to get it right.  

I've filled in the teeth to the Hero lid and assembled the ears.  I still have to do some additional clean up around the eyes and teeth before I get to doing the face paint details.  I also want to polish the areas where I filled in the teeth just to make sure that the paint applies the same as on the smooth area around it.

 

The ears gave me a lot of trouble , but I don't think they look too bad.  And next to Mr. Cricket's stunt lid in progress...

 

Oh, one more thing!  I bought this gadget last year, and whoa, it is a total game-changer!

 

It's a snap press.  OMG, it's simply the best for setting snaps without any effort at all!  No more bang! bang! bang! bang! bang! to get the snap attached.  You simply put one half of the snap on the bottom, the other on the top, press down on the lever, and voila!  Perfectly set snap.  This is my favorite tool next to my Dremel.    I'm considering bringing it to the next armor party I go to, just so I can set snaps for people.  It's that much fun to use!   True story: I had this snap press out at my last armor party, and one of the people there loved it so much that she actually bought one online before she left the event!

BTW, this is where I bought mine.   Currently it's listed at $69.99 and only $0.99 shipping within the US!  Select the die option "Die Set for Ring Snaps (Double Cap) 24 Ligne/15m" if you're planning on setting Tandy Line 24 snaps.  I did not select a hole cutting die.

[Dielotski]

2 hours ago, Cricket said:

 

BTW, this is where I bought mine.   Currently it's listed at $69.99 and only $0.99 shipping within the US!  Select the die option "Die Set for Ring Snaps (Double Cap) 24 Ligne/15m" if you're planning on setting Tandy Line 24 snaps.  I did not select a hole cutting die.

I think its permanently "on sale" for $70. I've checked on it several months apart and its always been the same price.

[Cricket[TK]]

Polished up the filled teeth areas and did some additional teeth cleanup.  Then decided to tackle putting a frown on this lid! 

Before and after:

The end "triangles" of the frown were my biggest hurdle at this stage.  I freehand paint the frown, then clean up around the edges with thinner and a brush to get a nice, crisp, clean edge.  But here's the problem: the ABS patch over the tooth divots isn't perfectly flat, even though it's been polished.  There are still some tiny holes there.  From experience, this means no cleanup can be performed in these areas without making a massive mess.  Any sort of thinner mixed with the paint goes into all the tiny crevices and highlights them to a huge degree- and it's nearly impossible to get out unless you totally sand everything down.  So I had to paint those triangles perfectly on the first go.

 

I drew a very light pencil line to outline the ends of the frown.  Then with a teeny-tiny-itty-bitty brush (I think it has about 5 fine bristles in it total and is just 2mm long), I carefully applied the paint until I had the outline of the triangle I wanted.  From there, it was an easy bit of painting inside the lines to fill the triangles in.  I can't tell you how relieved I was when I finished!  

[Cricket[TK]]

Ugh.  All this fine tuning is taking for-evah!  I have lost weight since I began this build (10 lbs to be exact!), and am at my goal weight of 108lbs.  My weight loss has resulted in my TK thighs being too big for comfort.  Something I've learned about fine-tuning a TK is that if your kit fits well, it doesn't make a huge amount of noise.  If it's too big somewhere, you will hear your kit loudly!    When I first tried on my kit to see how it all fit together, I was shocked about how much noise it made!  (FWIW, my fully completed stunt TK makes a little clacking as I move, but it's relatively quiet.)  And the biggest noise maker were the thighs.  They were huge.  I realized that I needed to tear them apart to size them down further.  It was an easy fix to take off some excess plastic, but it's the time to get things glued back in place that slows me down.  Ah well.

So here's the back before fine-tuning, and after (sorry about the crooked belt!):

 

  

 

And the front:

I am still dialing in the shoulder bells for mobility, which is why I don't have them on in the current pic.  But I'm happy with the progress and am glad that the finish line is in sight!

[ukswrath[Staff]]

Looking good Christine , awesome job on those shoulder bells, nice and tight.