Moredhel's ROTK by 850 Armorworks build

Moredhel · June 25, 2021

After asking lots of questions and making quiet progress, it's finally time to start my own build thread. My BBB day actually was May 13, 2021. The box looked a little roughed up, but thankfully everything was packed well. I ordered my armor and helmet kit from 850 Armorworks April 10^th, so the turnaround time was really nice.

This is my first kit of any kind, so I started with the hand plates thinking they would be an easy way to learn how “workable” the ABS is. In general I'm using aviation snips for rough cutting and a Dremel sanding disk. I'm not brave enough to cut out the slot yet, but things are going well so far. I'll probably trim off more of the return edge when I do. The gloves from Endor Finders are great!

I started drilling out some holes in the helmet to enable further cutting by holding a jigsaw bit between my hands. I'll come back with the sanding drum where possible and files or sandpaper in the smaller openings. In the meantime I present Odinhelm!

Their design is rotocast resin, which feels pretty thick and solid in most places, but there are some thin spots too that I mentioned in another thread. Based on the advice there I'm going to try to reinforce it somehow. Maybe that would be a good time to learn how to make ABS paste and slather it on.

I've seen a lot of people working from the abdomen out, so that's where I went next. It's a 3-piece construction with a front half, back, and sides formed together. The back gets split in half, and you leave as much as you need on either side of the reinforcement for the trauma plate. After careful measurements I determined I could cut the sides to size such that those edges would be covered by the trauma plate. I have everything temporarily taped together, and it still fits without splitting the back yet. I intentionally wore a jacket to give some extra margin.

I managed to cause a bit of a controversy in James's build thread (jamesmillerio sorry man! :blush: ) when I asked him about the black stripe that will go on the sides. It ended up on a tangent about the angle of the ribs and stripe, which on the 850 kit is not as steep as Jimmi kits. It's still “approximately 70 degrees” per the CRL though, and many people have been approved with it. I don't have the skills (yet?) to do major surgery, so I'm leaving it as is and thinking it looks alright. We aren't the first to make this kit.

I rough cut the right bracer and bicep then trimmed them further to fit. It'll take me a bit to glue them together, as the resin cover strips require a lot of sanding and filing. So far I think that's the weak spot of this kit. It looks like the molds were 3D-printed, and they leave a lot of ridges just as if the parts were printed themselves. Also some gaps that may need patched (bubbles during pouring maybe?) and some angles that just didn't turn out right. I used painter's tape (can you tell I like that stuff?) to make sure I didn't sand too much away.

Next I turned my attention to the chest and back because I didn't think I'd know how much to trim the pauldrons (shoulder bells) without seeing where the shoulder straps would be. The chest seems way to big for me. I'm not a big-and-tall trooper!

The sides don't line up very well, and the pectoral lines are falling too low. What I'm planning to do is cut off shoulder strap mounts and reattach them further down to lift the whole thing up a few inches.