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We had some sensational entries in this years Anniversary coin design competition, so thank you so very much for all those who submitted entries. Staff voted on their favorite designs through a Poll which included all designs. The winner with a total of 7 votes is Etrooper70 (Eric) Congratulations for a fantastic design Trooper, well done and thank you for your submissions Here is your winning design. We now have some more work to do to get this design approved and turned into reality so keep an eye out for future updates on how this is progressing. Thanks again to all those who took part in creating some of the best coin designs we have seen to date.

Ok here we go! On behalf of the staff, I would like to thank all the entrants for their truly inspiring design submissions, these take time to put together and think creatively to come up with art work that is different from what we have had in the past, and we are grateful to have your talents in this fine detachment. All entries were placed into a Poll on which staff individually cast a vote. From this we determined the winner. Without further ado, the winner is Etrooper70 (Eric) Congratulations for a fantastic design!!

Well, it's all over now. Took me a long time but I got approved all the way to centurion. To all of you who have commented and guided me......you are all amazing. Besides entering a pandemic and having my first kid, a lot of my progress was stopped by my own fears of messing up. Sometimes I would start on a piece and realized I need to do a lot of reshaping/adjusting and I'll freak myself out and then just randomly move to another piece. Hence why my build is so random. I think The WTF kit is wonderful kit for those of a smaller size.

Printed 3 pieces and they turned out well. Endcap, Mag housing, mag plate, and the little circle that will fit into end cap drain hole. When you add holes to pieces in Chitubox program, it asks if you want to keep the "removed" piece. These are useful to refill the hole once printed. Endcap with hole plug. As you may be able to tell, this endcap has what looks like golf dimples on the surface. I printed this straight up and down instead of angled. I'm thinking there may not have been enough supports. I may not use this as the old end plug has not cracked or warped any further. I left the barrel assembly outside in the sun all day, so hopefully its cured LOL The old cracked end plug can be repaired by me simply pushed in on the slightly raised /cracked portion and flowing in some superglue. New magazine housing and plate. The mag well is much beefier with 5mm walls and much larger rinse / drain holes. Bottom hole of mag well. It will be covered by bottom plate. You can see the beefed up thickness inside. So, still some sanding and washing to do before attaching to the barrel assembly. I haven't reprinted the very front portion of the frame assembly. I MAY be able to clamp everything together and glue along the split seams. If this doesn't work I will saw the frame in front of the trigger guard and reprint. Oh fun....

MV (OP) Post #45: Tears and traps with traps and tears Lesson learned, folks. It pays to follow the general wisdom of painting multiple thin layers, rather than a single thick layer. I fell into the trap of following anecdotal luck and almost shed a tear or two while painting my helmet traps and tears. Don't be like me. Helmet traps Helmet tears Tips Questions Upcoming May the 4th Helmet Traps At long last I have another update, though I'm afraid I haven't really made any progress on my build, other than to finally make time to format and upload my photos, and write out this post. Continuing with my helmet, I set out to paint the black and gray on the rear traps and tears, and gray on the side traps which I had already painted black while fitting the brow trim. The perfectionist that I am, I wanted to use some form of template for the traps, but the Trooperbay masking templates didn't quite fit the bill, since I think the rear trap piece was designed for outlining with black paint after first painting the gray down. So instead I dug into my bin of supplies and found the Trooperbay decals shown in the first photo below. I had purchased these back in 2019 when I had planned to avoid hand-painting, but authenticity eventually won out in my mind. I figured that I could cut out the excel vinyl (or whatever the material is) and use it to mask my paint area. To check their size I traced their outline onto a clear plastic sheet (what I used for my eye lens template), cut them out, and test-fitted them onto the areas on my helmet. Satisfied with the fit, I traced around them in pencil to give me some guidelines for setting the makeshift templates. Below is the progression of the next steps in my process. In this previous post (scroll down) I described the paints I've been using, for late arrivals to this thread, they are Testors 1145 Gloss White, Testors 1139 Semi-Gloss Black, and Humbrol #5 Admiralty Grey. After setting the template and extra masking tape, I sealed in the edges with white, then followed up with the black. After 5-10 minutes of waiting, I peeled back the tape and cleaned up the edges with mineral spirits (end result not shown below). I repeated this process on the other trap, but unfortunately failed to realize that my trapezoid was a little lopsided, so I used some more decal cutout as a straight-edge, then added more black. After cleanup, it blends right in. If you compare the right end photo below with the one above you can see that the one above has a slightly more curved bottom edge; I will likely be remedying that in my next post. I then finished off one of the traps with the Humbrol #5 grey, hand-painted onto the black. Later on out decided that my black "outline" is a bit wider than I want, and doesn't appear quite proper with the outlines I have on my side traps and tears, so I'm hoping to paint another wider layer onto it, which I will ask questions about a bit later in this post. Next came the side traps. As already mentioned in my introduction of this post, I had previously painted the black while trimming and fitting the brow trim, so I only had the gray to do this time. I keeping with my recent success of a heavy-handed paintbrush, I laid down quite a bit of grey so as to maintain as smooth a surface finish as possible. At first everything appears perfect. But my "success" was only momentary. Actually, a couple days to be exact. I left the trap face-up to cure and it seems the paint pooled at the lowest point in the surface, at the trop right and at the leftmost edge, which I believe I discovered on the third day. The first photo of the compilation below shows the resulting wrinkles, which I was able to temporarily smooth away by rubbing it, but it always came back. The second photo shows it somewhat rubbed away. Then I had the brilliant idea of pressing that area down for the remainder of the curing time, so I found my decade-old oil-based modeling clay from college and pressed and clamped it to the surface. To protect my helmet and paint finish from the oily clay, and added a layer of cling wrap. Big mistake. In addition to clamping down the clay too hard, apparently the paint continued to shrink as it cured, so the cling wrap left a series of wrinkles in the paint. These can be seen in the last photo below, so in other light and angles, it sorta disappears, as shown in the second to last photo. To me, this paint job is unacceptable, so this is where I need input from all you experienced troopers. The way I see it, I have two options: Remove all the black and grey paint from this trap and start over. Sand down the wrinkles in the grey and paint another layer on top. To me, option #2 is attractive since I'm already very pleased with the overall shape of the black outline. If possible, I'd very much like to keep it. If I were to sand down all the wrinkles as well as the top and side edges of the grey, would another layer of grey on top appear smooth and seamless? Does anybody have any experience sanding this type of enamel paint? The photo below shows the width different between my two side traps, and ideally the second layer of gray on the right trap would have a little wider footprint than the first layer, in order to better match the left trap. Am I crazy for not simply removing all the paint (lots of mineral spirits!) and starting over? Helmet Tears Now that I've gotten that trap failure out of the way, on to an actually success story with my tears! After hand-painting both the black and grey layers, I was actually able to use the Trooperbay masking template for the lines. I followed the similar strategy of sealing the edges with the base coat color, in this case grey, then finishing with black on top. However, instead of painting the lines with the brush, I decided to try a technique that I saw @Cricket employ for her tube stripes. A makeup sponge! Essentially I brushed paint onto the end of the sponge, then patted it down in several light coats onto the helmet. This was my first time going light with paint, but it was important in order to 1) avoid excess paint being forced to break the edge seal with the template, and 2) to get a quick drying time in order to add multiple layers. After I believe three layers the black was sufficiently dark. And here were my results! A very clean hand-painted look if you ask me. I'm slightly bothered by the height difference between the left and right tears, but I've seen similar results before, so I can live with it. Besides, aren't these TK suits all about the tiny imperfections! A close-up shot to point out two things. Using the sponge left a slight texture in the lines which I'm unexpectedly happy with, since it is in contrast with the rest of the smooth surface. The raised surface of the template sticker also attracted a slightly greater amount of paint around the edges of all the stripes, which actually gives the perception that the stripes are recessed. Another accidental bonus! Yet to be determined if I was use this same method on my tube stripes, as I think I'm going to want them to be as smooth as possible. I have two pieces of advice to give, and they're very much related. Paint MULTIPLE LIGHT coats of paint, rather than a single heavy coat. I learned my lesson the hard way. LISTEN to those with more experience and wisdom. In fact, take this for life in general. Here are questions already mentioned in this post, but compiled and numbered here for ease of recollection and discussion. Should I remove all the paint on my right trap and start over, or sand down the grey and add another layer? Below are some close-up photos. If I were to down all the wrinkles as well as the top and side edges of the grey, would another layer of grey on top appear smooth and seamless? I would also like to narrow the black outline on one of my rear traps, and would like to sand down the edges of the grey to create a more smooth and level transition to the black paint before painting a second layer of grey. Does anybody have any experience sanding this type of enamel paint? Will mineral spirts be sufficient? Any overall thoughts on the thickness of my black outlines, particularly of my left-side trap and the tears, which is what I'm seeing to emulate on the other three traps? Trap paint completion Helmet face and cap assembly Finally, I thought some of you might appreciate this metal piece I saw at a local shop. It was actually reasonably-priced, but I didn't purchase it at the time, as it's not quite in the budget. But I may need to go back sometime... And I would be remiss for not making mention of today's date, so... May the force be ever in your favor. Ha. jk. May the 4th be with you. Always.

That’s a STUNNING design! Well done, Eric. And, hats off to the other excellent entries. There are some seriously talented folks in this detachment. [emoji16][emoji1303]

I concur. Do the outside cover strip and let that set up before you do the inside. I wouldn't do the inside until the next day if that soon. I had a couple pieces that I thought were done and had to break back apart later to make adjustments. So unless you really need that interior strip in there I'd wait until you were almost complete with the whole build. Sent from my sorrosuub C1 comm link device using Tapatalk

Greetings from the tampa bay squad TK 33773 reporting in

That’s so cool. I just shared it with everyone I know!! Thank you!!!

Very nice! Looking forward to them becoming a reality.

Thanks Oh yah you know it all the way to Centurion of course.

hot damn that is one sexy coin! Congratulations!

Congratulations Eric, actually a very good design but all designs presented were really awesome... Waiting to purchase for this new coin...

Amazing design, and congrats Eric! Now I just need to get back to my build and get approved in time to snag a couple of these. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

LOL! This is great. I'll probably be doing this all day.

Will do! I currently have elastic on the right side and nylon on the left and this week I'll pick up some more nylon webbing to replace the right side elastics and the left syde nylon connectors with shorter versions! Thanks!

This Contest is now closed. Thank you so very much to those who have submitted truly incredible designs, this is going to be a tough decision indeed. The staff will shortly have an opportunity to cast a vote in a poll to decide the winning design, and we will bring you that outcome in the next 24 hours. Thanks again.

My design has 2 variations - a regular solid coin and a coin with a cutout - of course the cutout would require a different back. Both feature enamel with glitter in it - something with a celebratory feel. I loved the fact that this is the one time where the number 15 can be found in FISD (with the right font of course) so that was really the basis of the idea, as well as including both OT and FO TK's. One that note I focused on the 3 colors found in the respective FISD logos - Clasic FISD Blue and Yellow, First order Red and Yellow - with Yellow being the unifying elements between the red and blue. Ive updated to include the word ANNIVERSARY. Here is the first version of the coin Here is the alternate design featuring cutouts around the troopers.