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Another thing you might consider is to ask that members here send him one of their personal trading cards. Most of us have them and I'll bet many (myself included) would be happy to mail him one. Might lift his spirits to be able to open the envelopes and collect them. We have over 200 Garrisons/Squads/outposts worldwide, so you never know how many he would receive (or from where)! As Stormtroopers we have a tough plastic shell, but when it comes to kids that are ill we are all soft on the inside. I think I can speak for us all when I say that we wish your grandson (and your family) all the best on this difficult journey.

BBB Day is here! This if finally happening!! Building starts tomorrow!

To pass the time, I decided to make my own TD clips with the help of @ukswrath guide. These things are a lot smaller than I imagined them to be. Best part about this is, I showed my wife and of course I got the "What are those?" answer.

You are going to be pleasantly surprised by how much thicker the ABS he uses is as compared to some other makers (especially the bucket). I'm building one of his helmets now for a display piece, and though I normally use ABS scissors, for this one I found that a quality pair of tin snips makes life much easier. Trust me. I noticed a while back that although Dave makes his Hovi-tips out of cast aluminum rather than resin that there was no "nipple" inside like the originals. I made a few that look very close, made some molds, cast a ton of them in white resin and sent them to him so you should have received a set with your kit. You may want to paint them, but once the screen is in you really can't tell a difference in the color. I believe I drilled out the bottoms slightly to accommodate the screw heads/tiny washer so they can lay flat on the base, but you may have to take a little more out. To attach them, I used super glue gel with an accelerator instead of regular CA glue. More control and a lower viscosity so it wouldn't seep out through the screw opening.

I'm sure we've all seen articles and posts about "The Stormtrooper Effect" about how it seems stormtroopers have poor aim. I'd like to put that tired meme to bed, as it's simply not true. Consider: - The rebels lost all but 3 pilots (Wedge, Luke, and a Y-Wing) attacking the Death Star in A New Hope. All others were lost in ship-to-ship combat. - Han barely escaped by the skin of his teeth at the start of Empire Strikes Back and is caught easily enough in the end. - The rebels weren't doing too hot in Return of the Jedi until the Death Star got blown up. They were otherwise losing. A lot. As you all know, my alter ego is a stormtrooper. Below are my thoughts from the perspective of TK-8020. This was originally posted in 2008. -- OK, I just have to defend our guys in black and white. First off, I was there in docking bay 94. Our orders were to stop the ship. The only reason that scruffy Correlian lived was because we weren't aiming for him. If we killed him and the ship got away we'd be toast, so everyone aimed for things like the insystem flight controls to keep them from taking off, or to cripple them so they couldn't run in case they did get off. That was the priority. Yeah, a few of us bought it, but not everyone had the opportunity to run for cover & there was a pretty powerful laser cannon swinging our way...I like to think we were able to soften up at least the lateral controls. My buds in orbit said it wasn't maneuvering all that well and they barely escaped. Now I wasn't on the Death Star when all that hullaballoo went on (though I was earlier), but I talked to another of my buds who was, and he said that Vader had issued orders that those prisoners were not to be killed and to let them get away. So all that running around escaping bit you hear about? Well let me tell you they were only supposed to keep up enough fire to keep them running, not to kill them. At any cost. And the ship escaping? Same thing, he was in the docking bay (what a coincidence - both of us doing the same thing) and he told me that they were told just to aim to miss, e.g. let them get away. Why? Vader's idea. Dumb move if you ask me. So us guys in white did an outstanding job when you understand what was going on. And the TIE pilots? Again, they kicked some major butt. Only three rebel ships plus that freighter got away - the rest destroyed in ship-to-ship combat. Yeah, our TIE guys don't get nearly enough credit as they deserve. Endor? Jeesh, I never hear the end of it. Listen, those guys were all ROADs (retired on active duty) and guys out of basic. Apparently, the higher ups thought Endor duty was pretty low risk what with all the other hardware around, and it was just after holiday. Most of them were pretty toasted if you know what I mean. And my cousin who's in intelligence and watched some of the classified security tapes told me that they were very much outnumbered, more so than the general public was led to believe. As if a small band or so locals could defeat troopers. As if. There were a lot more of those little fur coats around and a lot of them bought it before our troops were overwhelmed. Dirty little secret the rebels didn't want to reveal - made them look much tougher than they really were. Remember that we were one base, and they were a whole planet of those little buggers. Eventually numbers win out. OK long story short. We've gotten a lot of flack about our ability to aim, and some writers and what-not have tried to lump us in with the sorry suckers of other military forces, but the reality of the situation is that we are the elite, and don't go down as easily as we're made out to be. TK/TD-8020

Hello and welcome aboard, looking forward to seeing the progress

Nice work.

"Best part about this is, I showed my wife and of course I got the "What are those?" answer." I should of told her they were yoga mat holders.

Worked on the chest armor for a resizing today. The neck and trapezoids were too high for me. Made a template for the neckline and then traced it below. Cut the new neckline and cut off the traps. I then cut a hole for the shoulder straps before adding the traps in their new location. I bent the top of the chest armor with a boiling water dip so the traps would sit more flush to my body. I think I'll be doing that agin once I get the back armor fitted. Since the dremel was out, I added the indents on the hand plates too.

Keep up the good work!

I added some Velcro to the center chest and the sides so I could do a rough fit test of the torso with the chest: Then I went about getting the outer chest’s upper tips to properly “close”. I used a heat gun and very slowly “bent” the tips so they would lay nicely on the inner chest. It took a few applications to get it, but I think it turned out really nicely. USE EXTREME CAUTION WITH THE HEAT GUN! I used one quite a bit on my ANH Stunt TK, so I was comfortable with it. Then I built up the inside with scrap ABS so that the Velcro would adhere properly between the inner and outer chest pieces: Then added the Velcro and put them together: I’m happy with how it turned out.

"I can't wait to build this Stunt kit to at last EI. CENTURION."