RS Vlog Build-A-Long ANH Stunt

[hazamel[TK]]

First time all parts of the torso meet.

I used the kidney edges and the chest as reference where to put the parts. Shoulderstraps are just eyeballing. Compared to elastics that came with the RS strapping kit, I'm not that far away.

 

 

 

Hope I'm not to big for a stromtrooper and it's just a matter of spacing and reducing return edges that aren't important for the brackets later.

At least it seems like I'm in no danger to violate 

Quote

• Back plate shall have no, or minimal overlap of the kidney plate.

from the CRL L3

[ukswrath[Staff]]

How tall are you Florian?

[hazamel[TK]]

1,84m So not that tall

Chatted to a fellow trooper just around the corner yesterday and he's close to 2 m. He mentioned that my kidney and butt-plate seem to be very low and after I moved everthing a little bit upwards and used the real shoulderstraps for reference it looks like this:

 

 

And now I know where to remove or reduce the return edges

[troopermaster]

The back torso parts only go together one way with each part butting up against each other. I always leave a small gap between the parts to allow them to move as you walk but essentially they are butted up.

 

The shoulder area and chest overlap are where the adjustments can be made. At your height you are pretty much maxing out the size, so when you strap the chest using the original strapping brackets, you don't really have any adjustment there. Your main adjustment will be the white elastic shoulder strap length.  You will find the armour feels much better when you have strapped it with elastic. Taping it together is fine to get a basic feel for the armour but it doesn't allow any movement like elastic does.

 

I don't quite understand your concern about the return edges. Just leave enough to attach the brackets (7-8mm) and a few mm's everywhere else.

[hazamel[TK]]

On 5/19/2019 at 1:30 PM, troopermaster said:

The back torso parts only go together one way with each part butting up against each other. I always leave a small gap between the parts to allow them to move as you walk but essentially they are butted up.

 

The shoulder area and chest overlap are where the adjustments can be made. At your height you are pretty much maxing out the size, so when you strap the chest using the original strapping brackets, you don't really have any adjustment there. Your main adjustment will be the white elastic shoulder strap length.  You will find the armour feels much better when you have strapped it with elastic. Taping it together is fine to get a basic feel for the armour but it doesn't allow any movement like elastic does.

Good to know. I was aiming for the small gap you're talking about. The second try was much better. I was using the plastic shoulder strap for reference instead of the elastic one.
Did I understand you right, that bigger persons have to cut out the neck of the chestpiece to lower the back?

On 5/19/2019 at 1:30 PM, troopermaster said:

 

I don't quite understand your concern about the return edges. Just leave enough to attach the brackets (7-8mm) and a few mm's everywhere else.

No concern so far. I did a rough cut with about 10mm all around to remove the excess material. Didn't want to cut away too much where I attach the brackets. Do you round of the edges somehow or just sanding? Especially at the kidney piece.

[troopermaster]

1 hour ago, hazamel said:

Did I understand you right, that bigger persons have to cut out the neck of the chest piece to lower the back?

No, that's not how it works. You would only cut out the neckline of the chest plate if you was short. This allows the chest to sit lower and not dig into your neck.

 

If you're tall, you will have no real adjustment between the armour parts, just over your shoulders so the gap would be bigger between your chest and back plate to allow your tall body to fit inside.

 

1 hour ago, hazamel said:

Do you round of the edges somehow or just sanding? Especially at the kidney piece.

I do all the fine trimming with a Dremel grinding stone then scrape off the swarf with a blade and finish with fine sand paper.

[hazamel[TK]]

One week of from from work and goal is to put together the torso.

I already drilled the holes for the back parts. And I'm ready to take on sewing the loops for the brackets.

Looked around the forum and youtube but couldn't find any recommendations about the length of the loops. Mine came not pre-sewn as one long piece of elastic and I don't want to make it look crappy.

So any guidelines for the length of the short and long ones?

[ukswrath[Staff]]

10 hours ago, hazamel said:

One week of from from work and goal is to put together the torso.

I already drilled the holes for the back parts. And I'm ready to take on sewing the loops for the brackets.

Looked around the forum and youtube but couldn't find any recommendations about the length of the loops. Mine came not pre-sewn as one long piece of elastic and I don't want to make it look crappy.

So any guidelines for the length of the short and long ones?

I suggest you make them small enough to keep the armor sections together yet not too tight, you don't want to put unneeded stress the bracket mounts either.  

[hazamel[TK]]

Strappingtime!

I drilled all the holes, added the bracket like @ukswrath described in his Anovos build and... voila..

 

 

 

 

 

I haven't glued the shoulderstraps yet and just used magnets to fix them on the amor to get a reference. Looks good for me so far.

One thing that looks weird to me is the posterior sticking out on the sides. Any ideas how to fix that? Use less elastics on the side to make it sit tighter to the body or do I have to go down the rabbithole of heat treatment?

I will also keep every extra inch I can get from the sides of the abplate  Hope I'll loose some weight over the summer and gain some space in my armor but I won't cut down the side. 

Right now I'm pretty happy that everything comes in place nicely (especially the kidney-abplate-line).

 

For the size of the elastics (if anyone cares): I cut them at about 6,5 cm, sewed them and turned them inside out. For the chest and abplate I used about 8cm and sewed them along the 6.5cm line. So I got a loop of a little over 3.2 cm

[ukswrath[Staff]]

19 minutes ago, hazamel said:

Strappingtime!

I drilled all the holes, added the bracket like @ukswrath described in his Anovos build and... voila..

I haven't glued the shoulderstraps yet and just used magnets to fix them on the amor to get a reference. Looks good for me so far.

One thing that looks weird to me is the posterior sticking out on the sides. Any ideas how to fix that? Use less elastics on the side to make it sit tighter to the body or do I have to go down the rabbithole of heat treatment?

I will also keep every extra inch I can get from the sides of the abplate  Hope I'll loose some weight over the summer and gain some space in my armor but I won't cut down the side. 

Right now I'm pretty happy that everything comes in place nicely (especially the kidney-abplate-line).

 

For the size of the elastics (if anyone cares): I cut them at about 6,5 cm, sewed them and turned them inside out. For the chest and abplate I used about 8cm and sewed them along the 6.5cm line. So I got a loop of a little over 3.2 cm

Shoulder strap elastic should be white. Keep up the good work

[hazamel[TK]]

22 minutes ago, ukswrath said:

Shoulder strap elastic should be white. Keep up the good work

It is. These are just the ones for connecting the torso pieces

[ukswrath[Staff]]

Just now, hazamel said:

It is. These are just the ones for connecting the torso pieces

Sorry, my bad  

[hazamel[TK]]

I'm in a little rush today...

Next up: Hinges!

The additional material on the ab get's me in a little trouble here. What has to be in line?

Like this:

or like this where the edge of the ab an the kindey is in line (blue line) and I'll have to trim down the return edge of the ab (red line... in a more elegant way of course).

 

Like I said before the extra material is needed to keep the gap at a minimum. I'm still trying to stay as close to Centurion level as possible.

[ukswrath[Staff]]

Align the top corners of the outer return edge, though in your case I might would raise the kidney a couple mm. It doesn't have to be perfect, even at Centurion.  

[hazamel[TK]]

Update-Time!

I finished the strapping of the torso and pretrimmed the button panels.

 

 

And because I'm really clever, I ordered 14ml of Humbrol 86 instead of Humbrol 14 so painting has to wait a few days. For my untrained eye it really looks good so far and I'm happy to get something visibly done.

Next up is the belt.

I had a "happy litte accident" while trying to prevent my canvas belt from pulling strings. Let's say: The blaster misfired and hit the belt.

Because I didn't find any meassurements for the covers on the belt: Mine are about 25mm length. I tried to make them rectangular but stayed true to the origins of the armor and so they are a bit off

 

Next on my list:

• Beltboxes
• Painting Buttons (as soon as my paint arrives)
• Painting screws and rivets
• Shoulderbells

[hazamel[TK]]

Is there a recommended depth for the dropboxes?

In the Billgrams they're about 15mm and on other builds I saw 10 to 13mm.

(Bonus-Question: I read that some people use velrco to close their boxes. Any examples?)

Cutting Shoulderbells:
I knew I saw someone meassuring the Shoulderbells here, but can't find it anymore. Search doesn't give me the right hits...
Is it 30,5cm/12 inches from bottom to top and 13cm/5 inches on the underside from ridge to edge? 

 

Edited June 17, 2019 by hazamel

[hazamel[TK]]

Shoulderbell-Tuesday!

 

This was a pretty quick one. Trimmed both down to size

 

Only thing that is left is a little return edge at the bottom that needs some Dremel-action. My Lexan-Scissors didn't work there.

Is it normal that the one with the straight ridge is narrower than the other one (It's the left one on the upper image)? It's 11cm wide at the bottom vs. almost 13 cm with the other one.

 

Finally I used my magents to fix the elastic for a first fitting

 

Considering that I'm on the upper limit for wearing the RS Suit this looks okay for me. Any suggetions for improvements at that stage?

[hazamel[TK]]

While trimming and sanding my shoulder bells and doing a little research about the curved shoulderbells, I came across @Crickets build thread again. I highly recommend it for any trooper.

Browsing through her Centurion fixes I noticed an issue I've also on my belt... Reading requirements is an art. Didn't I blame a guy at work to read the manual?

Well, my belt is slightly wrong

I guess cutting along the line will fix this issue. There's only a demand for 45 degrees in CRL and not in how long the plastic part has to be. (Reads again... doesn't find anything about that). Well, I also feel a little stupid right now

Also thanks to crickets build thread I know that my buttplate is all screen-accurate with sticking out and not following the lines of the kidney. Did I mention that the buildthread is a great ressource?

 

 

[ukswrath[Staff]]

Looking good Florian, if it's not too late I suggest removing some of the ammo belt return edge just outside the ammo boxes. It should be roughly 1/8" or 3mm.

 

Here's a reference photo

[hazamel[TK]]

4 hours ago, ukswrath said:

Looking good Florian, if it's not too late I suggest removing some of the ammo belt return edge just outside the ammo boxes. It should be roughly 1/8" or 3mm.

 

Here's a reference photo

Can do that. Measuring these 3mm is always tricky because of the round foot of the ammoboxes. Had the same issue with the pack on the thigh

[hazamel[TK]]

So... while I'm waiting for the E6000 to dry on serveral items, I browsed through different build threads, Centurion applications and reference pictures to find out how the biceps is connected to the shoulderbell.

I saw a lot of biceps hooks and stumbled across the billgrams for the snaps.

Asking for the "right" solution feels wrong, but how did they do it in the movies? Read something about a very sophisticated single elastic for the shouldersnap glued to the shulderbell and down to the biceps.

Or is it one of the things nobody cares as long as the biceps stays in place and for the sake of transport use snaps.

Also heating up ABS and bending it is not on the top of my list of things I want to learn

 

So any input is welcome 

[ukswrath[Staff]]

Movie armor didn't have a connecting strap hence the reason they're seen positioned all over the place in the movie however, there are connections between the bicep and forearm and lower shoulder bells. Though not necessary or required a connecting strap between the bicep and bell does help maintain alignment.

 

Reference photos

[hazamel[TK]]

So I went with the snaps and the first feedback I got on Instagram was "These didn't hold the biceps on my armor". Let's see...

 

Meanwhile I started assembling my left arm with lot's of magents. And lots of fun magnets getting attracted to the wrong ones...

 

First try...

Too much glove I guess.

 

Second try...

More gap between biceps and and forearm, less glove.

Downside: Biceps is not anywhere near biceps but sitting "on top" of my elbow.

 

Third try...

Biceps up a little, somehow: less glove!

 

Fourth one!

Biceps up, forearm down. More ellbowgap, less glove!

 

I looked up @HSM76s EIB application because same height and same armor.

 

Judging from the feedback he got for his gloves, I would go with my first try and lower my biceps down to just above ellbow? Or did I already hit the sweetspot with one of the other trys?

 

Also: Didn't notice that my torso was totally sideways.

[troopermaster]

Your first attempt looks the best and probably feels the best too. You want to have your  forearms up tight against your biceps to reduce the amount of gap between them and minimise the chance of pinching. Ignore how much gap you have on your wrists, it's totally irrelevant. Any wrist gap goes as soon as you start carrying your blaster.

 

Try to focus more on the elbow. The biceps are usually about half way into your shoulder bells as a guide, but you may need to have them slightly lower or higher - whichever feels the most comfortable.

[hazamel[TK]]

2 hours ago, troopermaster said:

Your first attempt looks the best and probably feels the best too. You want to have your  forearms up tight against your biceps to reduce the amount of gap between them and minimise the chance of pinching. Ignore how much gap you have on your wrists, it's totally irrelevant. Any wrist gap goes as soon as you start carrying your blaster.

 

Try to focus more on the elbow. The biceps are usually about half way into your shoulder bells as a guide, but you may need to have them slightly lower or higher - whichever feels the most comfortable.

Thank you for the Feedback, Paul.
 Wouldn't have thought about the spacing of the gloves if I hadn't seen it on Sven's application. Will give it a new go tomorrow.