Cali_Nole's ATA ANH Stunt First Build

**gmrhodes13[Staff]** · April 12, 2021

5 hours ago, Cali_Nole said:

Unfortunately, it's been stalled for a bit now. Just general life stuff, but hoping to dive back into it soon.

Real life has to come first, you know the build and all of us will still be there when you are ready to continue.

**MaskedVengeance[Staff]** · April 12, 2021

2 hours ago, CT 1977 said:

Hey Paul, that's perfect, and yes, I get it that it's way more than needed but not bad for just $12. I'm ordering today.

In case you're interested, I used t-nuts found at my local Ace Hardware, but those linked standoffs also look good. Having the base on the nuts I used enabled me to (I think) mount them well to my bucket.

CT 1977 · May 10, 2021

On 12/8/2020 at 8:34 PM, Cali_Nole said:

It's been a bit since my last post, so time for a progress report. Been working on completing the exterior of my bucket and I think it's finished for the most part. All in all, I'm quite pleased with how it has turned out (was nervous about hand painting). But as always, PLEASE call out anything that doesn't look right.

Eye lenses and frown mesh:

I originally intended to go with Joseph's sugru lens mounting method, so I purchased some sugru from Joseph and then picked up some more from amazon. Had plenty on hand in case I screwed anything up. I really liked the way A.J. mounted his lenses using JB weld epoxy putty for his screw mounts. Since I liked the idea of being able to remove the lenses easily, I ended up making mounts similar to his, but with sugru. I picked up some black nylon M3 standoffs & screws to use as well. After determining where I wanted the mounts to go around the eyes, I scuffed up the sides of the standoffs, placed them in position and placed a dollop of sugru around them and molded the sugru into place. Then let cure for a couple of days. I then traced out a rough template for cutting my lenses to fit.

I also used sugru to mount the frown mesh, basically rolling strips to fit between each tooth gap and then pressing the mesh into it and again letting it cure for a couple days.



Now, back to painting:

For rear trap, tear, and tube stripes I used TB templates. And just for clarity, when I use left and right here, I will be referring to the wearer's left and right.

Let's start with tube stripes. I was able to get the template to lay pretty flat on the left side, but the right side wouldn't no matter how much I wrestled with it. Gaps aplenty. But I went ahead and painted, using white first to try to fill in gaps (as suggested by both Joseph and Glen). As you can see in the pictures below, the right side which was super gappy, bled pretty bad even with the white painted on first, but I expected that. Just too much gap to fill. But it was easily cleaned up with mineral spirit dipped toothpicks and craft sticks (credit to Joseph for the craft stick idea; I found the flatter surface worked well for larger areas, but both worked well overall).

Right side (before cleanup on left, after cleanup on right):



As stated above, the left tube stripe template went down flat with very minimal gaps, so with the white painted on first, there was very little paint bleed. Great, right? Yes, except some of the stripes decided to peel up with the template!    I'm sure it was user error on my part somehow, waited too long/not long enough, or pulled template up to quickly, but either way, I had 5 stripes either completely missing or partially missing. At this point I also noticed that the stripes on this side started further back than on the right side, and I wasn't happy with that either. Dank Ferrik!

Initially, I was going to just strip off this side completely and start over, since I had another set of templates. No way was I going to be able to free hand tube stripes! But after some back and forth in my head, I figured I would try free handing the missing and partially missing stripes (and add one more stripe toward the front to even up both sides. This would actually put me at 15 stripes per side). And since mineral spirit dipped toothpicks and crafts sticks had become my friends, I could clean them up that way. After all, I could still strip them off and start over if not satisfied with the results. I also decided to fill in some small blemishes on the right side as well. I was NOT confident in this AT ALL and fully expected to strip the left side and start over BUT..............after cleanup and shaping with the toothpicks, in my humble opinion, I think they turned out pretty well! Waaaaay better than I expected them to!   But before more pics, I wanted to quickly address....

Rear trap and tear stripes:  Rear trap templates both went down pretty flat for me, no issues, very minimal, minor paint bleed, which I just carefully painted over with gray. Right tear template had no issues, with zero paint bleed. I did experience issues with the left tear templates. It would lay flat, with minimal gaps, but would slowly lift up a little while painting. The stripes were really sloppy after the first try, so painted gray over them and used the second template, with the same results. This time I carefully added gray just to clean up the stripes and, while they weren't as clean as the tear stripes on the right, the results were satisfactory to me.

Whew!! Thanks for bearing with my long windedness, pics below are how the exterior of the bucket looks now. To reiterate, I'm very happy with how it all turned out, but am ALWAYS open for critique and ways to improve upon what I have so far! Thanks in advance Troopers!



Oh...posting the pics reminded me of a question I had. My Humbrol 22 gloss white looks more creamy eggshell than white (ear screws). It also smelled horribly and needed to be mixed much more than the other colors. Does this sound normal, or perhaps I have a bad batch? I'm thinking I may have to pick up another tin to repaint the ear screws and for the other hardware on the armor.