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Oven is an idea! I'm quite wary of using a heat gun. Fortunately they're lying peacefully now, at least: but if they rebel at some point (or I swap lenses) I'll give the oven a shot Thanks for the options! So yep, I assembled my eyes tonight. And I CA-glued some fiberglass screening (and a bit of glove) into my frown outline: and trimmed that down. Sliding the completed eyes onto the face was a happy squeal moment, to be sure. It looks like a real bucket!! I had to polish up some bucket scratches before moving further, though, so I spent a while sanding to 2,000 grit and then Novus-ing it up. The results are satisfactory. Smudge's smudge remains on his nose despite it all. (Insert nose/spite/face pun that I'm too tired to riddle out.) Tomorrow I'll use my heated workspace to E6000 in the eyes, frown, ab button plate, and new kidney-butt attachment points. Moving along!

Some pics. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Here I am to show progress thus far ... I figured out a way to upgrade my 'wings' - I originally made them out of thin aluminum and thickened them with plasticard but it didn't hold when I attempted to make the three 1/16" holes using a drill bit. I now have one made of plasticard entirely and then thickened the 'wings' I also did away with my initial attempt at rear resisters. I now have them at the correct OD and length. I went out and bought a black plastic tube. The inner wire is 1/16". I will use some armorture wire to get the insulated wire additions in due time as well. Just moving along like a snail; slowly but surely [emoji1] Sent from my SM-G390W using Tapatalk

I asked the same thing over in @Ruthar's thread, pinned in the build section. https://www.whitearmor.net/forum/topic/42295-ruthars-first-order-stormtrooper-build/?page=5

Greetings, Troopers! After almost 2 years of nagging, I finally convinced my hubby to join the dark side in white armor. I surprised him with his very own set of BBBs from RS Props (a big one and a little one) on Christmas morning. Here's the moment of unwrapping. You all know the feeling. Now it's up to me to build it. And I'm super excited about this build because I won't really need to do much alteration to the plastic at all. At 5'10" and about 165 lbs, my husband is in the 'out-of-the-box trooper' size range. This thread will be pretty limited with regards to detail stuff (this is my fourth TK build, OMG!), but I wanted to share the bits and pieces of progress on this full-sized build anyways so I can get feedback when I need it. During the past few days, I've done some initial assembly with inner cover strips. Ooh. Ahhh. His compression garments arrived yesterday, so we're hoping to get time this weekend to do initial fitting of the limb parts. I would love to get moving on building his magnetic shins, but I can't until we get his boots for proper sizing. I'm on the lookout for a pair of TK Boots (not IB Boots) in size 12, so if anyone has a pair they'd like to part with (or has a lead), I'm your gal! TK Boots has told me they're currently out of stock, and unknown if they'll ever get more in.

Oh my goodness Rowan who let you in the house?? You're exactly right And thanks! I'm feeling the full effects of the 80/20 principle - stuck in that last 20% of work that's taking 80% of the time. Got everything glued as planned today though so that's something.

There's probably three rooms, a garage, and an entire floor for this build. Glad to see it's coming to fruition though.

Congratulations and welcome!

Geez, you guys, get a room.

Congratulations and welcome to the FISD. I’ve seen many of your posts on the Facebook site. Quite impressive.

Try eBay - I just ordered from here: https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Roamers-Unisex-Leather-Gusset-Jodhpur-Horse-Riding-Boots-/321885207533 because they have EU sizing and UK men & women sizes are different.

They look great, going to buy a pair for myself - nice find

Perfect! Thank you! Wanna try and get as much of this right...from the ground up!

Hey Great work with the capacitors. Shape and size are perfect. The only thing that you should think about is the diameter of the wires of your caps and resistors. They are much to big. It will be hard to make the front connection. A smaller wire makes the job much easier. 0.7mm (1/36“) is the diameter of the Original ones. Here some pictures to show the difference. Cheers Christian

Congratulations Trooper looking very sharp

Hello trooper, congratulations and welcome to the ranks

Way to go Eric! Congratulations!

Well, a little late to the party but still CONGRATULATIONS!!!

I used the lighter elastic at first and found it stretched quite considerably over a short time so replaced with heavy duty elastic, it is definitely a good way to go

Can be normal on pieces that don't lay completely flat, many surfaces have a curve to them, I have a couple of pieces which look the same, I do try however to tape down as much as possible to reduce the gap while assembling but even that doesn't always work. It would be very hard to see while wearing and in photos so personally I'd leave it.

Exactly! I’m going on a year so I’ve got no clue what could happen that’s why I put might in there. So to update I’d say if you use elastic use heavy duty stuff. Thanks Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Lens mounts! Those silly, dust-involving pieces that kept my whole bucket waiting for them! I chose this design because a) it looks awesome and b) I needed something with many points of attachment for the lens (more than the 2-3 Chicago screw concept) because my lenses were so thick and not thermoplastic. Y'all saw bits and pieces of making the mounts - I finished sanding them down to size, filled the edges, sanded again, and prepared to drill screw holes (an important step as you don't want the epoxy to crack as the screw forces it apart). I had cut out lenses earlier, otherwise I would have cut them based on the mounts. I held the lens on the mount and picked eight points at which to secure it, placing more Sharpie dots on the higher tension/curve area at the lower left. (I imagine these tension points vary from helmet to helmet depending on how you trimmed your eyes.) Since I had #2 screws, I used a 1/16" drill bit to make holes in the lens. I wanted these done before I drilled pilot holes in the actual mount for alignment's sake. Then I held the lens in place super tight and made my first pilot hole right in the middle of the high tension zone. This way, everything else takes its alignment from this spot. PSA: keep your drill bit at a 90° angle to your lens! Especially important when you want the screw heads to lie flat for aesthetics. You know, for all the people that will see the inside of your helmet. A look at how high the lens wants to float after the first screw is in: This is a stubborn, stubborn material. I'm glad I'll have as many screws in it as I will. (Also, this is clearly before I filled the edges and re-sanded.) Repeat the push-down-hard-and-drill thing just across from the first screw, get that screw in, and everything should cooperate much better from there on out. No need to put screws in every hole as you go any more. Next I took all the screws out, sanded the mount edges to match the lens edges where practical, washed the mounts thoroughly to get rid of that pesky epoxy dust, and let them dry while I tested my 3-part Novus polish on the lenses. It's pretty neat stuff. Still some hairline scratches, but I can't see snuff through the lenses anyway so potatoe, tomahto. Once the mounts dried I painted them black (no pics) and that's where they stand. Woo!

You can also refer to Tony's build thread, lots of great detail and even thought not the same make should still be helpful

Boots look fine, just double check they don't have an extra seam on the inside, there are a lot of boots out there that have a stepped seam join, although fine for basic approval it won't allow you to go higher if you aim for EIB or Centurion, can be quite rewarding achieving those levels of build accuracy.

Extremely!!! I had told him that I couldn't get the kit ordered until after the new year at the earliest, and not to expect anything until February/March. He had no idea that I was able to get it ordered and delivered before Christmas. (A huge thanks to Andrea over at RS Props for making it happen, too. The customer service over at RS has been consistently outstanding!)

Thanks Brian for the well wishes; I can always count on you for that [emoji1] Sent from my SM-G390W using Tapatalk

Beautiful straps!

Wow!! Paul continues to improve on his BlastFX offering. I had asked for a rotary switch over a year ago...now it being available, thats very cool!! Sent from my SM-G390W using Tapatalk

Yes, the BlastFX kit is really awesome! My son couldn’t stop testing it. And the scope display looks fantastic, especially in your beautiful hollow scope kit Brian. As soon as I saw movies of that combination I was sold! And on top of that Paul is a great guy to deal with, very helpful. He even sent me the latest BlastFX version with functional rotary switch, which wasn’t available yet when I placed my order. Really cool! Thanks for the heads up! Fortunately I already noticed and screwed the rear sight in the correct position, leaving just enough room for the end cap to move. Thanks guys! Looking forward to completing this project. If only I had more spare time...

Thank you Dan! And thank you to everyone else for the support and helping talk me down from my frustration ledge! And I'll make the change on the E-11 pronto, mine (chain link from Home Depot) was inspired by other people's build threads but it is definitely different and a detail that I had overlooked. Haha! No kidding!

This thread needs to replace the stickied thread that’s currently referenced for KB builds. This is is what I wish I had seen before I glued my armor together.......

Hi again, this update is more of a revision of sorts. On looking more closely at reference pictures, my central capacitors didn't look similar to the real deal. After filing away the edges more and adding smaller round end pieces to it via green stuff, IMO is now much closer to reality, cheers!!

Hi Christian, Just to add to what Q said, from an aesthetic point of view, the EFX helmet is symmetrical- the originals were asymmetrical. If you’re looking for a more accurate helmet, the vetted sellers that Q linked would be a great place to start. :-) Dan

The EFX helmet is quite large and not as accurate as other helmets available so I would suggest having a look through the vetted sellers section. Some modification needed to the EFX for 501st approval: hiding the seam, making the extra tooth, get proper lens and add some screws on the ear caps. I've not heard that if approved you can't troop in it, I think it's more like others may not want photos taken with it I would check with your local GML (garrison membership liaison) it is he/she who will ultimately allow or deny approval. List of garrisons can be found here with contact information.

Thank you! Haha, I'm still catching up to my current progress on this post... and because of a little paint stripping accident I had to replace the tubestripes and I did make that adjustment actually. And I agreed with you on the vocoder and decided to repaint that as well. In fact I'm working on that right now! I'm just having a little trouble with seeing brush strokes and slightly uneven paint. I don't want to start over because I like the lines, but I'm such a perfectionist. I may post these again as I continue the catching up the chronological order of my build. here's my new tube stripes and my mods to the frown And here's what's going on with my new vocoder paint job. In different light you can really see the unevenness of the paint though...