Shinyarmour1 AP ANH Stunt First Build

[Shinyarmour1[TK]]

On ‎7‎/‎23‎/‎2020 at 12:38 PM, TKSpartan said:

Hi mate, those forearms looks great. 

If I can make a suggestion, you can trim or sand a bit the lower section of your wrist ,

 

 

 

 

 

 

Reference Images 

 

                               

 

 

Keep on doing a great work !! 

 

 

 

 

Thanks for the feedback Mario.  I had another look at my wrists and I am unsure about removing anymore from them.

Not that I am doubting your expert eye, but I have retake images of the wrists from this angle and still unsure if I still need to take more off. 

 

If from this image you still believe I need to take some more off, then I most defiantly will.  However, I'm only hesitate because I don't want to trim too much into the indents.   

 

Do I still need to take some off the wrists?  If so, is there a way to do this without reaching the indents?

[TKSpartan[Staff]]

Hi, sometimes the angle of the photo is a little tricky. Your wrist are OK. 

 

Great work. 

[Shinyarmour1[TK]]

Excellent, thanks. 

[Shinyarmour1[TK]]

I have given my kidney plate a hot water bath. I read through some tutorials and taken some tip advice from fellow troopers before hand. I made a trace outline of the kidney shape, so after the bath and bending, I'll be able to see the difference. Also I made out of scape pieces of wood taped together, some reinforcments to clamp during the process. I was a bit nervous about doing this, but it's something that had to be done.

 

 

Okay...I have some good news and some bad news.

Good news

I bent one side of the kidney and as you can see it worked. Once the other side is bent, I'll use this as a reference for aligning the butt plate and ab plate when the time comes to bend thoughts.

 

 

Bad news

The reinforce clamping did not work. The return edge has suffered stress cracks, splits (inside and out)...

 

 

...And the entire return edge is warped.

 

 

Instead of stressing out (usually my first reaction), I stopped working and thought about my options. I think I might have an idea to fix all this. First I'm probable going to have to bend the other side and accept the outcome. Once the kidney is reshaped and fits me better, then I can begin the repair. I was thinking of making some deliberate splits in those big (almost triangle shape)bent areas of the return edge, leveling them straight and trimming the overlapping excess.  

 

 

This way there wouldn't be any stress and the areas would align ready for the next stage. Make a small batch of ABS paste and fill the cracks and splits, followed by the trusted 'wet sand and polish' technique. As for straigtening the whole return edge from the warped areas and the fixed split areas, I could make some reinforcement coverstrips to glue on the inside of the return edge. Use blocks of wood to clamp on the outside of the return and hopefully that would level and straighten the majority of the return. Any unevenness at the top of the return edge, I'd sand over, ABS paste over the top, then sand over the paste with wet sand and polish to level out.

 

 

At this stage I am open to any and all sudgestions about fixing the cracks and straightening the warped return edge.

 

[Shinyarmour1[TK]]

I'm a bit hesitate about giving more pieces a hot water bath at the moment.  So what I'm going to do is read more build threads (especially ones with hot water bath techniques) and shape the other side of the kidney on the weekend.  In the mean time, I'll take a break from the plastic and work on something else like the strapping system.  I have several packets of snaps and nylon webbing ready to go.  And I will use the double snap setting for my build for that extra bit of support.

[Sly11[Admin]]

Reducing the return edge as it appears you are doing will make it easier to reshape using the hot water bath method. Also that crack or snip is another way to bend the part in a particular spot. You can cut a v section from the return edge to emphasize the bend in that are, then simply reinforce and ABS past that area of return edge  when satisfied. you can make a few v cuts in a line to make the curve gradual rather than so much in one specific spot in the same fashion they make a curve when bending timber or even metal work if that makes sense.

[Shinyarmour1[TK]]

17 hours ago, Sly11 said:

Reducing the return edge as it appears you are doing will make it easier to reshape using the hot water bath method. Also that crack or snip is another way to bend the part in a particular spot. You can cut a v section from the return edge to emphasize the bend in that are, then simply reinforce and ABS past that area of return edge  when satisfied. you can make a few v cuts in a line to make the curve gradual rather than so much in one specific spot in the same fashion they make a curve when bending timber or even metal work if that makes sense.

That sounds like a great idea.  I will implement that method for the other side of the Kidney just to see how that will work.  Then I'll do the same for the Ab and Butt plate if needed.

 

I have finished making some single snaps for the arms and double snaps for the torso.

 

I didn't have a hole punch device, so I just used small scissors to cut the holes and a lighter to burn the holes/ends to stop them from fraying.

 

Overall, I am pleased with the result.  I'll be needing to make some more, but I can do that later on as my build progresses.

[Shinyarmour1[TK]]

I've been reading through various AP builds and have found something confusing about the TD screws.  AP have supplied (already painted) screws for the TD and the CRL states that they are accurate.  However, all the builds I have read through mention that they need to be replaced with flat pan slotted screws for L3.  Does that mean that the AP screws provided are not accurate for L3?  If not, I found one of these screws in the bottom of my tool chest.  I've done the measurements comparing it to the already supplied screws, luckily it is the same height and width as them.

 

 

If these screws are acceptable for L3, then I'll have another look to see if I can find more.

[husky68[TK]]

The AP screws might get past basic but you will need different ones to make higher levels. Same for trim as you need s-trim for helmet if going for centurion.

I also trimmed the TD clips at both ends and added a new hole to rotate for panel to face outward.


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[justjoseph63[Staff]]

4 hours ago, Shinyarmour1 said:

I've been reading through various AP builds and have found something confusing about the TD screws.  AP have supplied (already painted) screws for the TD and the CRL states that they are accurate.  However, all the builds I have read through mention that they need to be replaced with flat pan slotted screws for L3.  Does that mean that the AP screws provided are not accurate for L3?  If not, I found one of these screws in the bottom of my tool chest.  I've done the measurements comparing it to the already supplied screws, luckily it is the same height and width as them.

Not to worry.  The pan-head screw requirement was dropped last year, and the ones you have will be good all the way to Centurion as long as the head diameter is not too large.

[Shinyarmour1[TK]]

Test fit (take 2)

 

I cut 2 notches on both sides on the upper and lower return edges of the Kidney and the Butt plate (to help with the bend), gave them both a hot water bath and reshaped the sides to fix close to my body. I will ge round to fixing the warped/cut retun edges, but not until the reshaping has been modifided for my size.  I need some help on this because the torso is really becoming a pain to get right.  I could not reshape the Ab plate becasue the sides that needed heating could not fit in the pot, so I'll have to use a hair dry for that one. 

 

 

As for the Kidney/Butt plate, I ran a test fit shortly after and there are 2 questions I have about the situation.

 

1.  Does it still look too wide on me?

 

 

Eventhough it's closer to my sides, there's now more room front and back.  No amount of foam will compensate that gap.  So I'll probably have to do some trimming down.

 

2.  How much (and where) should I trim off?

 

I am open to any advice and info.

[wook1138[TK]]

You don’t need the notches on the kidney pieces. You can trim here:



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[TKSpartan[Staff]]

1 hour ago, Shinyarmour1 said:

Test fit (take 2)

 

I cut 2 notches on both sides on the upper and lower return edges of the Kidney and the Butt plate (to help with the bend), gave them both a hot water bath and reshaped the sides to fix close to my body. I will ge round to fixing the warped/cut retun edges, but not until the reshaping has been modifided for my size.  I need some help on this because the torso is really becoming a pain to get right.  I could not reshape the Ab plate becasue the sides that needed heating could not fit in the pot, so I'll have to use a hair dry for that one. 

 

 

As for the Kidney/Butt plate, I ran a test fit shortly after and there are 2 questions I have about the situation.

 

1.  Does it still look too wide on me?

 

 

Eventhough it's closer to my sides, there's now more room front and back.  No amount of foam will compensate that gap.  So I'll probably have to do some trimming down.

 

2.  How much (and where) should I trim off?

 

I am open to any advice and info.

 

 

Hi, You can trim your Ab and Kidney plates a bit  ,

 

 

If It was my case, what I should do first is:

 

1- to mark the cut lines in both sides of each plate.

2- make a new test fit, but this time overlapping the plates to the marked lines and see how things fit together.

3- If necessary, trim the Butt Plate too to match .

 

The following chart from Christine "Cricket " could be useful for you to have an idea. Also you can post some photos before any cut to receive some opinions

 

 

 

I have made this a couple of times and have no issues.

 

 Cheers.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[CableGuy[Admin]]

Firstly, great job on documenting your build so far. Very well presented.

Just out of interest, there’s been many, many recommendations in your thread to give the armour a hot bath. I don’t think I’ve seen so many recommendations for this on a thread before.
Is this common to AP? Is the shape troublesome?

Just curious as, personally, I’ve never had to reshape any armour parts before. The parts have been similar enough to the original shapes not to need it.

Not a criticism at all, just curios. :-)

Best wishes
Dan

[wook1138[TK]]

9 hours ago, CableGuy said:

Firstly, great job on documenting your build so far. Very well presented.

Just out of interest, there’s been many, many recommendations in your thread to give the armour a hot bath. I don’t think I’ve seen so many recommendations for this on a thread before.
Is this common to AP? Is the shape troublesome?

Just curious as, personally, I’ve never had to reshape any armour parts before. The parts have been similar enough to the original shapes not to need it.

Not a criticism at all, just curios. :-)

Best wishes
Dan

I think AP is a bit large around the mid section and the right forearm can be funny to fit. I had to do the same on my TD build to make it fit better and look more screen accurate on me. The sizing is probably great for an average body Shape. 

[Shinyarmour1[TK]]

Sorry for the late reply.  I haven't had a chance to get on here for a while. 

On ‎8‎/‎2‎/‎2020 at 8:42 PM, CableGuy said:

Firstly, great job on documenting your build so far. Very well presented.

Just out of interest, there’s been many, many recommendations in your thread to give the armour a hot bath. I don’t think I’ve seen so many recommendations for this on a thread before.
Is this common to AP? Is the shape troublesome?

Just curious as, personally, I’ve never had to reshape any armour parts before. The parts have been similar enough to the original shapes not to need it.

Not a criticism at all, just curios. :-)

Best wishes
Dan

Thanks for the comments, that's what I was aiming for with my build thread...detailed and presentable.  As for the hot water bath, the forearms did not align together and had too much tension.  I was afraid of them popping out or splitting later on down the road.  Many troopers had to go through the same process and reshape them in hot water to align them and ease the tension (and it worked).  The torso (which I am still working on) is another story.  Because I'm so skinny, I've trimmed to the required movie accurate guide lines and found that it looked too big on me.  That I why I needed to reshape the kidney, butt and ab plate to fit my stick figure.

Edited August 6, 2020 by Shinyarmour1

[Shinyarmour1[TK]]

Thanks for the replies, as recommended, I measured the notch (25mm + 2mm for the slight return edge) and trimmed the side of the kidney plate removing the notch completley and 27mm worth of plastic.

　

After the trim, I did another test fit and found that it fits much better. As you can see, the front and back are closer in and looks better now.

　

As for the width, I'm still not sure if they appear too wide. When I wear the ab and kidney plate, it looks big on me. But when I have the chest and back plate as well, it looks just fine on me.

　

When I was wearing the ab/kidney plate , there was still plenty of room. How much room measurment should there be between myself and the armour? And should I bring the sides in some more or leave it as is?

　

Sorry if I appear to be nagging alot about the width, I just want to make sure I'm doing it right. And when I have confirmation that the torso has been reshaped and no longer requires editing, I can then start fixing the return edges and move on with something else.

 

[wook1138[TK]]

I think it looks good.    It might be a tad large on you, but a bit of padding will fix that.  Bending the ab or kidney anymore will likely cause further issues with the return edge around the top.  That can be a pain in the a$$ to flatten out.  Also, once you put on the arms, the mid section will not seem as large.

 

The only issue you might have is the right seam on the ab to kidney - it will want to overlap when you tighten the belt.  You can make a tab and slot connection on the inside to keep everything in place.  I can send some pictures if you need.

 

Keep up the great work!

[TKSpartan[Staff]]

3 hours ago, Shinyarmour1 said:

Sorry if I appear to be nagging alot about the width, I just want to make sure I'm doing it right. And when I have confirmation that the torso has been reshaped and no longer requires editing, I can then start fixing the return edges and move on with something else.

Don't worry mate, we are here to help and give ideas. I would like to suggest to make the following, (No trimming ) Try overlapping the Ab plate over the Kidney at least 1 or 2 inch each side, tape it  and put it on and let see how things fit. This will let you figure out what should happen if you trim the Ab plate.   hope my explanation is clear. 

 

 

 

Cheers  

 

 

[Sly11[Admin]]

I think you should dock some material from both sides of the Ab plate first then resize before removing any from the back plate.

AP armour used to be quite small around the middle, if you take a look at mine, I didn't need to remove any material and i am thin.

Mark re-worked his moulds a couple of years back to make some parts bigger to suit a wider array of body sizes as well as making a few accuracy corrections.

He certainly extended the sides of the Ab plate so you can remove an inch either side of that.

It is good to have some room to move in your armour from a comfort aspect and the gap can be taken up with the strategic positioning of a few pieces of foam so it doesn't move around too much.

[Shinyarmour1[TK]]

Thanks for the feedback everyone, I really appreciate it.  I just want to make sure that I am explaining myself correctly about my width spacing. After removing some of the kidney and bringing the ab close in, I found the new size fits me perfectly.   When you look at my front and back with the ab and kidney alone, it looks big on me.  However, when you add the chest and back plate, it looks to fit me just fine.

         

　

 

It was at that moment where I did not know what to do.  I was also thinking of cutting some more triangle notches in the upper and lower return edges of the kidney and bending closer in.

　

But after take all of your advice into consideration, I"ll probably play it safe and not do any more bending.

 

Thats what I am going to do. It might look big on me with the torso alone, but once I attach the arms, legs and helmet, then everything will probably look in proportion and not so large.  Something I thought about after your comments, that is "What if I shape the torso to fit my thin size, but find out afterwards that the legs, arms and helmet look out of proportion"?  I don't want to end up making the torso thin to fit me, then discover that everything else looks bigger.  So I'll play it safe and leave the reshaping for now.  Later on in my build, after everything else is constructed, I'll do another test fit with everthing on and see if the kidney and ab plates really do need to be reshaped some more or not.

　

On ‎8‎/‎6‎/‎2020 at 1:22 PM, wook1138 said:

I think it looks good.    It might be a tad large on you, but a bit of padding will fix that.  Bending the ab or kidney anymore will likely cause further issues with the return edge around the top.  That can be a pain in the a$$ to flatten out.  Also, once you put on the arms, the mid section will not seem as large.

 

The only issue you might have is the right seam on the ab to kidney - it will want to overlap when you tighten the belt.  You can make a tab and slot connection on the inside to keep everything in place.  I can send some pictures if you need.

 

Keep up the great work!

Yes please Wook that would be great.  I was thinking about doing that for my kidney/ab connection for that extra bit of reasurance that they would stay aligned together throught many troops.

Edited August 7, 2020 by Shinyarmour1

[Shinyarmour1[TK]]

I am having a thought about the pieces I removed from the kidney sides. It has been mentioned that the notch on the kidney side is not needed (I guess because the canvas belt covers that area anyway), so it was fine to remove.  As you can see from the previous images, trimming those sides brought the ab plate closer in and it fits me better now.  However, the original movie TK's had the notches on their kidney plates.  Even though it will be covered by the belt, I would still like to have the notch on my armour to be as close to the orgianal TK's accuracy as possible (including detail that is concealed).

 

I did some more research and found that the notch measurment should be approximately 22mm in height and length.  If I was to recreate the notch by cutting the new trimmed kidney, it would result in removing 22mm on the butt plate side.  That would remove a lot more than I would like and I"m not going to do that.

 

But I do have an idea on how to bring back the notch without removing too much from the butt plate:- 

1. I would take the 25mm piece that I removed from the kidney plate, trim that to measure 13mm.

2. Get a large spare piece of ABS that covers the entire area (and a little extra) and glue on like a reinforced inner coverstrip.

3. Seal the outside with ABS paste and blend it with wet sand and polish.

4. Trim 9mm at the bottom edge to recreate the 22mm notch.

5. Then to align the butt plate with the kidney notch, take the butt plate and trim 9mm down.

6. Lastly, take the ab plate and remove 13mm from the side.

 

 

I really want this to work, but I'll wait for your feedback first.

[wook1138[TK]]

here is the beginning of the tab and slot assembly on my build.  Hopefully the link works.  My build is a rambling mess .  Lol

https://www.whitearmor.net/forum/topic/43437-wooks-first-build-anh-stunt-tk-ap/?do=findComment&comment=594738

 

Edited August 8, 2020 by wook1138

[Shinyarmour1[TK]]

Thanks Greg, very useful

[Shinyarmour1[TK]]

I have recently been testing and experimentting with making ABS paste on some scrape pieces of plastic. So far the results have been good and i'll be able to fill those gaps and deep scratch that have occured during the build process. As for the torso, I'm going to give that a break for now and focus on something else. It's best not to do too much of the sma ething and work on some other parts. When the shins and thights are roughtly cut, I'll tape everything up and do another test fit just to see if any more hot water bath adjusting is needed. Until then, I'm moving onto the silicon hand guards.

 

I've looked into all the reference pictures provided by Justjoseph63 on the silicon hand guard positions and done several measurment checks.

https://www.whitearmor.net/forum/topic/49105-attaching-flexible-hand-guards/?tab=comments#comment-686234

 

 

I found that the position would be 2.5cm (25mm) between the hand guard tip and the finger valley.

 

But then I discovered, after several fist clenches, the hand guard moved too far forward.

So this is whats happening:-

I place my hand into the gloves with the guard positioned ontop, I would then clench my fist and the hand guard would be in perfect position. Then I would do this 4 more times but because of the size of the glove, it would move forward. So after that when I make a new fist the hand guards would overlap my knuckles by alot. Because the gloves are a large size and I am a medium, I found that the glove would move forward because of it. I have tried wearing cotton gloves underneath, but it still moves. I even purchased medium size black gloves but they look too small for the hand guards. Here is where my finger tips are in the glove.

 

This is when I put the gloves on making the first fist clench.

 

And this is after 5 fist clenches.

 

I really don't want to go a buy another set of silicon hand guards. But would like to know:-

Is there is a way round with what I have already or am I just worrying too much about nothing?

Does the positioning look correct 2.5cm?

When making a fist (in general), should the hand guard overlap be glued down, or does the guard need to be flush and straight?

Going to use loctite glue (not E6000), do I glue right to the guard edges or leave a 1mm gap?

　

Would appreciate all the help and feedback. Thanks