Blast 'Em!'s ANH Stunt Anovos Build

[Blast 'Em!]

I've fallen behind on my updates, so this will be a longer recap of Tuesday and Wednesday's progress.

 

Shins! I started with trimming the fronts of my shins down to create a 20mm ridge for the cover strips to lay upon. At the ankle, I marked how far I'd need to trim inward to create my intended taper, drew a straight line with my ruler, and made my cut. Then, I clamped the two ends together, mimicking the final overlap, and I used the edge of the armor to trace my second cut-line.

 

I found this resulted in a more seamless butt joint than tracing a line with the ruler twice. Here's the result pre-gluing my cover strip

 

Plastic peeled back, cover strip ridges all sanded (110 grit) and ready to go.

 

Clamped, magnets applied, and taped down. I then completed the same steps on the other shin.

 

Back to the biceps. I knew I would have to create some more space in this piece, so some shimming was in order. I didn't want to go too wide, otherwise my cover strip would look too big. I settled on expanding the cover strip from 15mm to 25mm, and I would use a 15mm wide shim (I used the original cover strip). I started by creating an inner cover strip to help bridge this new 15mm gap.

 

I sanded all pieces and glued the "used to be the 15mm cover strip but now is my shim" to the inner cover strip, allowing this to sit for 10 min so that it wouldn't move too much. You can see my new outer cover strip on the right.

 

Gluing everything together. Magnet setup and final taping.

 

The next day I applied the outer cover strip.

 

Back to the shins!

I cut up some scrap pieces to use as the inner cover strips, reinforcing this joint that will be repeatedly stressed each time I don and doff my calves. I chose thinner, more flexible scrap pieces for these strips. All faces were sanded, E6000 was applied, then clamps and magnets. Both shins were left to dry.

 

And lastly, I jumped over to the forearms. After cutting the back joint edges to capture my intended taper, I found that this piece still had a gap in the middle that made me uneasy. So I started with an inner cover strip, which will make application of the outer strip a lot easier. 

 

At this point, it was 11:30pm and I had used 40 N52 and 12 N40 magnets, so I called it a day. I'm going to finish off my biceps and forearms (I need to shim both remaining pieces), and I'll come back to the back of my calves later (going to try Cricket's magnetic shin approach). I also will be leaving my thighs until I have my shins and torso ready- I want to make sure everything measures correctly before I cut there.

 

 

[justjoseph63[Staff]]

Looking STELLAR, Shane, and excellent idea with the bicep cover strip shims... you are NAILING it!    One small thing you may have noticed is that you have a point at the top of the forearms.  I would suggest using your Dremel tool (with the sanding drum attachment) to even that out a bit so that it won't snag your undersuit.  I can't tell you how VERY glad I am to see that you removed all the return edge from the tops and bottoms of the biceps.  EXCELLENT!  

 

 

I must

[Blast 'Em!]

Unfortunately, I've made no progress over the past 11 days but it's for a good reason. Our family grew by one and we've been busy taking care of this little guy.

 

I'm aiming to get back to finishing gluing the limbs today/ tomorrow, but we'll see how thing shake out with the puppy.

[gmrhodes13[Staff]]

How cute, can be a handful and they love "helping" good luck

[Chemi[Staff]]

I hope the puppy doesn't like ABS ...

 

On the other hand, you are doing a very, very, very good job...

 

 

[Blast 'Em!]

Progress! Not much, but it still counts . I found an hour on Tuesday night and glued a 25mm wide cover strip over my bicep shim (both biceps are now done) and I glue an inner strip and teeny shim to the back of a forearm. After gluing the cover strip to this forearm, both forearms will be done.

 

Forearm inner strip + shim setup: I determined the shim size by taping the forearm into the desired size, based on the measurements I took back on Page 1. I sanded the inner strip with 120 grit, cross hatching my sanding, and rinsed and dried the piece. I did the same for the top and bottom of the thin shim. I coated the inner strip with E6000 and placed the shim where intended, then left those to get tacky over the next 15-20min. Then I clamped everything together, slapped on magnets, and taped it up to keep things from migrating. Last step, cleaning the glue from all over my fingers and work station haha.

 

I have learned that using a popsicle stick or tongue depressor to spread the E6000 really is the way to go. I was a doubter at first. Forgive me, Joseph. But spreading around the glue makes things slide around less when clamping and applying magnets. 

 

Next up are the backs of my shins. I'll cut them to size and then water bathe em. I'd still like to entertain magnetic closures, but we'll see how much time I have this weekend. Cricket's guides are awesome and I have all required materials, but the quickness of velcro is calling to me...

[Blast 'Em!]

I'm now 28 hrs into my build as I'm starting on the ROTS soundtrack for the third time (listening in order of release: 4,5,6,1,2,3,7,8,9). I'm enjoying this marathon, and I'm hoping to keep a sustained pace until I submit for basic approval sometime in June. 

 

Questions:

• Can I use Anovos shin velcro, or is it crap? If I should replace it, any recommended products? I saw Justin recommend some ultra thin velcro, but you have to buy 25 yds at a time 
• For water bathing calves, if they don't fit in my sink and I don't have a large pot, is a bathtub my best bet?

 

Recent Progress:

I completed my last forearm cover strip, so all forearms and biceps are fully assembled. In the near future I'll be further trimming some of the cutouts that allow arm bending because motion is a little restricted right now. I only added inner cover strips to the joints with shims because I didn't want to lose any more internal space within the armor piece, but I'm realizing I might as well add inner strips behind the raised portions of the forearms. I want to water bath the biceps so I might still add inner strips to them after. 

 

I started trimming the backs of my shins. I found that when I measured the amount of material I wanted to cut and used a ruler to draw that line down the back of the shin, my joint seam became angled (not straight up and down like intended). I quickly realized that you want a cut a slightly rounded line to accommodate the curve of the piece, so I used a ruler to measure to the apex of the "calf bulge" to clean up my previous cut line.

 

For the second calf, I ended up measuring my cut distance of 1/2" from the current edge all along the piece (you can see faint pencil dashed on the right side), since the initial trim edges lined up well. I followed this path with my straight lexan scissors and this turned out well when I taped the back of the calf together. 

 

A quick eval of the calves on my boots showed a mistake I made that was accentuated by the curvature of a piece. For my right calf, the front cover strip appears to angle out because the inner piece is much more convex than the outer piece. I don't remember trimming any of the outer piece, but this is a good reminder to assess whether you should take more off of one side than another and not just distribute your cut 50-50 between two pieces. 

I'm going to slightly trim around the ankle then water bath both calves, so I'm hoping that makes this issue less glaring.

 

I remeasured my shin circumferences at the calf and ankle and found they're a little smaller than what I targeting, so I'm short on space for magnetic closures. I'll start with velcro this time.

 

Next Up:

1. Thighs: I need to slightly trim the circumference on one, then I'll glue inner cover strips for all pieces, then outer strips. I'm waiting to do any 
2. Torso pieces: gluing reinforcement strips around high stress pieces
3. Painting buttons. Planning on tracing a dime on my painters tape and cutting out templates. I'll try two coats, unless only one is necessary
4. TD: hacksawing to correct the length. Painting screws black. Applying velcro to both sides of metal clips
5. Snaps snaps snaps
6. Helmet modifications: trimming eyes, cutting out lenses and adhering with Sugru. Replacing incorrect ear screws. Saving repainting tube stripes and ear trimming for a later time haha.

[MaskedVengeance[Staff]]

7 hours ago, Blast 'Em! said:

I'm now 28 hrs into my build as I'm starting on the ROTS soundtrack for the third time (listening in order of release: 4,5,6,1,2,3,7,8,9). I'm enjoying this marathon, and I'm hoping to keep a sustained pace until I submit for basic approval sometime in June. 

• Can I use Anovos shin velcro, or is it crap? If I should replace it, any recommended products? I saw Justin recommend some ultra thin velcro, but you have to buy 25 yds at a time 
• For water bathing calves, if they don't fit in my sink and I don't have a large pot, is a bathtub my best bet?

Great progress, Shane! At some point you'll need to tell me what your favorite tracks of the saga are. I'm pretty sure mine are all from the OT, though there were also standouts in Phantom.

 

As for shin velcro, my understanding is that most of the Anovos strapping should be replaced, but I think you'll find @TheRascalKing to be the expert on that front. Maybe he'd even sell you some of that ultra-thin he got, assuming he has excess. I might even be interested myself.

 

A bathtub could work for a heat bath, but you'd lose a lot of volume due to the large surface area of a tub. Perhaps a 5-gallon bucket would work better? Might not be tall enough for the calves, though, depending on how much reforming you need to do.

[TheRascalKing[TK]]

4 hours ago, MaskedVengeance said:

As for shin velcro, my understanding is that most of the Anovos strapping should be replaced, but I think you'll find @TheRascalKing to be the expert on that front. Maybe he'd even sell you some of that ultra-thin he got, assuming he has excess. I might even be interested myself.

No expert but I have some thoughts haha

The stock strapping is fine to use, especially when you first get the suit and are figuring out how to get it to hang so it's comfortable and looks right. But if you're going to be putting a lot of miles and troops on it, eventually snaps will be a better solution. The main issue with the Anovos stuff is that the Velcro and really the adhesive aren't great. Even replacing the loop side that sticks to the armor with 2" industrial does wonders.

For the back of the shins, I just use regular 1" Velcro that I can buy by the foot at my local Ace hardware - you want it to be able to open and close, so industrial is too much. Haven't tried the ultra thin yet, but it might not be enough hold...

[Blast 'Em!]

Caleb- I'm right there with ya. I grew up on the OT soundtracks so I'm heavily biased in that direction. But I am also a big fan of some prequel tracks from TPM and ROTS (Duel of the Fates, The Droid Invasion, Anakin's Betrayal, and Anakin's Dark Deeds come to mind). For the water bath, I'll try that 5 gallon bucket suggestion. I was hesitant to put near-boiling water in a thin Home Depot plastic bucket, but it looks like the HDPE material can withstand 110 C for short periods of time. 

 

Justin- I appreciate the feedback. I'll go grab some standard 1" velcro instead of using my Anovos velcro. For the rest of the armor, I'll be using Tandy snaps, employing double snaps, nylon, and elastic similar to your setup.

 

Recent Progress:

I was able to spend a decent amount of time working between yesterday and today. I finished trimming my thighs (only one required some adjustment), and I glued an inner cover strip to each piece, choosing the slow route so assembly is easier.

 

After 24 hrs, I glued one of the thigh pieces together in the front. I'll wait for this to dry before gluing the back, and finally the outer cover strips.

 

I also glued inner cover strips to the outer joints on my forearms. With all of my clamps and magnets in-use, I decided to start on my HWT ammo pouches . Here are all four, as delivered, with foam inserts.

 

I started by removing all foam inserts, cleaning up the mess they left in the pouches, then I wrapped the foam in electrical tape to water proof and contain the foam from further degradation. 

 

Next was cleaning and conditioning the leather pouches, as they came with some marks on them. I used some leather products from my car detailing bucket and I touched up my Imperial Boots while I was at it. Lastly, I sat down with a pen and starting coloring the white stitching black (it took me around 45 min to do the one on the left). One down, two to go.

 

Next up:

• Finish the thighs over the next 3 days. Then I'll clean all the excess glue off all the limbs to tidy things up.
• Glue reinforcement strips around the torso pieces and then do another test fit. I still need to order my TKitell belt but I want to assemble and measure the torso pieces first to get the sizing dead-on.

Edited May 26, 2020 by Blast 'Em!

[Blast 'Em!]

Yesterday I continued the process of gluing my thigh inner cover strips. One more day is needed to finish the back strip on the left thigh, then I'll do a fit check to see if I need to trim the thigh tops before applying the outer cover strips. I only have 12 of the larger N50 magnets, so I'm double stacking my smaller N52 magnets to create sufficient clamping force.

 

I also started cleaning up the excess glue on my forearms. I'm using a combination of light scoring with my hobby knife and scraping with scrap ABS. It all takes so much time haha! 

 

Today I'll continue with the thighs and I'm going to try my first water bath in my 5 gallon Home Depot bucket- gotta get those shins aligned before I apply the rear cover strips! I'm still struggling to find a rubber blaster (Praetorian or HellHounds). Communication with both parties has been, well, let's say difficult. But I'm sure they're both slowed down by COVID-19, so I'm waiting to see who has inventory first.

[TKSpartan[Staff]]

10 minutes ago, Blast 'Em! said:

I also started cleaning up the excess glue on my forearms. I'm using a combination of light scoring with my hobby knife and scraping with scrap ABS. It all takes so much time haha! 

Another practical tip to remove the E6000 glue in excess is just rub it with a soft cloth. the heat makes it peel off easily. try it.  

[Blast 'Em!]

Great call on the cloth technique @TKSpartan! That's made cleanup a lot simpler, and there's no risk of gouging/ scratching the armor with a blade or ABS.

 

I was getting all set to water bath my thighs today but I realized I need some input from you guys first.

 

I'm trying to make my thighs as large in circumference as possible to fit my legs without requiring shims. I currently have left the size as-cut per the Anovos cut-lines, so the return edge in the front is around 40mm. Below you can see how I've glued the fronts, with an unglued 20mm cover strip for reference.

 

I've already glued inner cover strips for the front, planning on leaving the 40mm return edge while still using the standard 20mm front cover strip on the thigh. I know this will look abnormal instead of trimming the return edge to 20mm, but it seemed better than shimming the backs of the thighs (I've run out of long, scrap ABS). What are people's thoughts? Does anyone have any experience/ reference images of leaving a large front thigh return edge? My inner cover strips are only about 15mm wide, so I can't really use them to create a shim in the back- I'd have to order a sheet of ABS and tear apart my current setup.

 

[PhilBobTheFish]

If you did a 40 mm cover strip on the front, it would match the armor, and then you could use a 40mm cover strip in the back, and leave some space in the armor of you need it.

Edited May 31, 2020 by PhilBobTheFish

[TKSpartan[Staff]]

Hi Shane, I have been searching in the forum about the front cover strips and the wide ridge. If I can make a suggestion, what if you use 25 or 30 mm front cover and 25 mm back cove strip? This would give you a better look and I have seen this in a Level 2 approved Armor .

 

 

like this one

 

This one has a 20mm I think and the ridge is less covered.

 

 

 

Cheers  

[Blast 'Em!]

Work kept me from making any progress during the week, but I'm happy to be back at it now. I ordered a 12x20" sheet of ABS from Terrell at ATA so I can make shims and new inner cover strips for my thighs. From a search on here, it seemed that ATA is a good color match for Anovos armor. Terrell was fantastic in quickly responding to me, and I should have the extra material on Monday. Then I rip apart all my current thigh gluing and start fresh.

 

Yesterday I tried my first hot water bath and I learned a lot. I need to try again today. What have you guys used to hold your pieces in position? I found that all my painters tape almost immediately came off, and shaping the shins by hand was prohibitively difficult.

 

I set out to reshape my backplate shoulder sections, my biceps' shape, and the gap in the back of my shins.

 

I started boiling water in every pot we have, with a 5 gallon bucket with cold water and another to be filled with the boiling water. I also used a bucket lid on the hot water bucket, because I needed to fill each pot twice and I didn't want too much heat to escape in between.

 

I started with a test piece of ABS (same thickness as my actual armor pieces) and found that when dunked in boiling water, it was moldable after 70s. I reshaped my back plate first. See the starting curve:

The other side after shaping:

 

Shins all taped up:

 

Shins after multiple baths. One is done but the other needs more work. 

 

Biceps before the bath. They're ovoid in the wrong direction- I'm trying to make the more oval front-back so they fit normally. Also pictured, Joseph's centurion gloves! They were quite handy during this process.

 

I was struggling to get one shin closed, and neither of my biceps were holding their new shape. So I tried to push my shin down through my bicep to hold both in place. 

 

Next I tried to jam a glass bowl in the middle of the biceps to create a circular shape (I had given up on the oval at this point). 

 

After 1.5 hrs of minimal progress, I stopped for the night. I think my shaping failures stemmed from water not being hot enough (I took too much time to fill the boiling water bucket), so I'm trying again today. Any suggestions are welcome! I found this article helpful when searching for more info this morning: https://thefrugalprofessor.wordpress.com/2016/08/21/reshaping-abs-plastic-parts/

 

More to come!

[MaskedVengeance[Staff]]

Funny seeing all those pots of water on the stove. That’s gonna be me here before too long. Did you let the water get to a full rumbling boiling roll? If you keep having to do two batches of boiling to fill a bucket, you may consider purchasing another bucket to nest with the half-full one. That way it may act a bit as an insulator—having two buckets together. I haven’t tried it, but it may be worth a shot. I know Walmart has buckets cheaper than Home Depot.

As for keeping the armor pieces together, I’ve definitely seen lots of people put containers or jars inside the pieces. You may also try wrapping rubber bands on the outside, if they’re needed to keep two parts from separating. I’ve found that thick rubber bands from grocery produce are the strongest, and I also plan to use them to form my TD plate onto the tube (and shoulder bridge piece onto the tube for my HWT).


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[Blast 'Em!]

Alright, round 2 of hot water bathing went much better. I started with my one shin. After realizing that this piece could fit diagonally in my sink, I quickly did the dishes then got to work. I filled one side with glasses so my minimal volume of boiling water would cover more of the shin. To try and control the shape of the shin, I used the best I had- zip ties and a clamp.

 

I poured all my boiling water into this sink, waited 75s, then did a plunge in the cold sink. Success!

 

Next up was the biceps. I couldn't fit them in the sink, so it was back to the Home Depot buckets. I took Caleb's advice and as a precaution insulated my boiling bucket with two other buckets. I was able to reshape both into more of a circle for now. 

 

I ended up shaping my back shoulder straps a little more too. I removed a little more of the return edge to allow the shoulder to flex more easily.

 

Last up was gluing the rear covers strips on the shins. Like Kman, I glued the cover strips with only 10mm overlap so that the velcro can cover the remaining 15mm.

 

Lessons learned from my hot water adventures: don't fear boiling water. The water needs to be as hot as possible to soften the plastic in a repeatable manner. 

 

[TKSpartan[Staff]]

Great work !!  one valuable thing from building your armor is the learning process. This allow you to be a future help for others.

 

keep it up!     

[Blast 'Em!]

Yesterday I removed clamps and magnets from my rear shin cover strips to check em out. The bottom of one shin changed its form following gluing, resulting in this gap at the bottom. 

 

I'm hoping that can still be closed by my standard velcro. The top of that shin looked normal.

 

I also learned that the cover strip protrudes completely tangent to the angle of your shin (see image above). So unless the backs of your shins are flat where the two sides meet up, you're going to have your cover strip angle above the other side. This all makes sense to me now, but I didn't think about this before. I considered another hot water bath to round my cover strip, but I opted to just glue the soft side of the velcro to the underside of the strip. Today I'll glue the scratchy side and see how well the velcro holds the cover strip down. Worst case I water bath the shins again and the velcro comes off, but then I'll just reglue it.

 

I had a yellow mark on one of my forearm cover strips from god knows what. No elbow grease or water did anything, so I busted out the controversial Mr Clean magic eraser. This melamine foam is like super fine sandpaper so it quickly removed the stained area, but the result didn't look dull to me at all. I'll leave it as-is, and I can always hit it with some Novus if I want to polish it up. 

 

Lastly I spent another 30 minutes cleaning up excess E6000 from my cover strips. This is an ongoing process, but I'm close to having both biceps and forearms clean, then I can join them with elastic!

 

[gmrhodes13[Staff]]

You may very well need some heat to get them to close properly

[Blast 'Em!]

The loop side of my velcro finished drying last night. I rough trimmed that velcro before gluing, and I still need to go back and trim any little bits that protrude past the cover strip's edge. I'm going to proceed with gluing the hook side of the velcro tonight, and then I'll evaluate how flush the backs of my shins can close. If there's still a significant gap, I'll pull the velcro off and do a hot water bath.

 

A few posts back I got a little too excited with my thighs, thinking I could keep a 40mm return edge behind the front 20mm cover strip. Luckily some of you steered me straight on that. I started by pulling apart one thigh (I had all inner strips glued, shown below). Good thing E6000 is more forgiving than the Emperor.

 

I pulled off all the glue from the thighs and inner strips, re-sanded everything, then glued and clamped the inner strip to one piece of the thigh.

 

That was it for tonight. I misinterpreted the arrival of my ABS sheet, so I'm getting my thighs all ready for that day. To keep the thighs as large as possible, I will be using a 20mm wide shim in the rear of both and I'll make 25mm wide cover strips that match the backs of the calves. Behind those 20mm shins I'll have 50mm wide inner cover strips, creating sufficient strength in the joint.

[Blast 'Em!]

Last night I continued addressing some issues I'm finding with my build. As noted by Glen above, getting my rear shin cover strips to close with velcro was going to be a tall task. The cover strips were just flaring up too much as-is.

 

I did a quick test with the hook velcro to see if the tensile strength was sufficient to pull the cover strip closed. The answer was a resounding no, so I tore the loop velcro off my cover strips and will water bath these shins, looking to bend the cover strip to create a slight curve. On that note, I'm using sew-on velcro. When pulling it off the E6000, it came off more easily than I expected. Have others used this velcro with success, or do most people use velcro with adhesive and supplement with E6000?

 

To continue my theme of going backwards, I pulled apart my second thigh and trimmed down the front return edges. Another 30 min of removing glue, re-sanding, gluing and clamping resulted in one more internal cover strip completed.

 

Finally, I joined the pieces of my other thigh with my previously glued internal cover strip (as I'm typing this, I'm realizing "internal cover" makes no sense). Let's try again. I joined my thigh with the previously glued internal strip, getting me all set for shimming the back when my materials arrive.

 

All-in-all, I'm still having fun and have been enjoying checking this forum way too much, so things are going well. I'm now far enough into my build to slow my pace to something more measured, but I still can't wait until my armor is complete and I can troop with you all. 

[TKSpartan[Staff]]

Almost there mate, keep it up 

[Blast 'Em!]

Joined the two pieces of my left thigh yesterday. Both thighs have now been trimmed and joined at the front via an inner strip. USPS still hasn't provided an ETA for my incoming extra ABS material, so I'll probably apply the outer cover strips to my thighs today and move onto other pieces.

 

Next up: water bath shins and biceps again, then I'll do some final trimming on the tops of my biceps and inner forearm elbows (so I can fully bend my arm).