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Hello Rod, good luck with your 2 approvals and looking forward to see some photos and your application for higher levels soon. We are here to help you.

I think raising the abdominal and butt/kidney plate grouping might help too. The cod piece should cup the family jewels. If you shorten the connecting straps between the chest and backplate, these will be raised up, as well as the ab/kidney/butt. Noting that for basic approval the backplate can have minimal overlap over the kidney plate. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Hello and welcome back, good luck with your costume approvals

Thanks a ton for the suggestions there! It's very appreciated. I'll try giving those front elastics a good tightening up and hope that it'll help close up that really unsightly gap between the abs and the chest. Can't say I thought about readjusting the shoulder straps but it's definitely something I'll look into! I'm not 100% certain on what glue RS uses on its commissions, but from the sounds of it on their tutorials they don't use E6000, so hopefully that'll make removing the straps easy-ish. Cheers again for the tips!

Hello Rob and welcome to the FISD. I enjoyed reading your great backstory.

These are brilliant, thank you! I have been looking around for months trying to find cheap mannaquins, but I've yet to come across any that were worth a darn. I have power and hand tools, so this will work much better... and cheaper!

The orginal brackets/elastic from RS can be a little loose, adding some more tighter strapping behind the ab/chest should help. Notice the strapping in this image I like to use adjusters between the chest and ab so it can be adjusted if needed. Looks like the chest to backplate are held as far as they can go, you could remove the shoulder straps (depending on what glue was used) and bring them further backwards. The ridges/tabs on the front can vary depending on armor so only having 2 or 3 smaller tab with the larger tab should be enough. Rough image but you should get the idea, you may need to bend the front straps slightly, some use a hot water bath, I use a heat gun but I've had a lot of practice You are pretty stuck with the positions of the rest of the armor on you, very hard to make it extend unless you add loose strapping but then you will have gaps between the armor pieces. I would adjust the chest/ab first and see how everything is looking then

A few options, purchase one from a store, sometimes the sell off older mannequins, local sales groups sometimes offer them for sale, they can be a little expensive if you are looking at new. Make a duck tape mannequin Make a pipe mannequin or or You can also purchase adjustable joints for pipe mannequins https://www.amazon.com.au/Adjustable-Joint-Fitting-2-5cm-Elbow/dp/B00C7WST34