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Greetings from a future member in-process. I purchased a set of WTF ANH armor from its previous owner and will be joining a build party in two weeks. Did a test fit a couple days ago and lost my freakin' mind when I looked in the mirror. 7 year-old me thought it was the coolest thing ever! I've read a lot of good advice in the forums over the past few months and made specific purchases to make my trooping easier. A little about me personally. I'm an AEMT and work in the ER in Sacramento. Been a volunteer in Search and Rescue for 14 years and studied martial arts for 30 years. Looking forward to taking orders from Vader...

These are really interesting, thanks for sharing them !

People sure give me the looks on the trains only with my 138L suitcase hahaha!

Congrats! I hope you enjoy the journey to EIB/Centurion. I certainly did. Can't wait to see your next steps forward

Some links you may find helpful Sugru ABS paste

For the gaps in the back I used white Sugru. It got me through my EIB approval

Time has a habbit of slipping away at times with real life. Correct satin black is best, doesn't hurt to check Vocoder should ideally be painted black using a satin finish, but gloss is acceptable. Lines should be crisp, clean, not extend beyond the ridges and symmetrical on both sides . Some references

@ukswrathHi Tony! We miss you here. If you were here, I would have dropped this build off at your house, and it would've been redone to perfection months ago. A fellow trooper from the garrison was admiring my sweet fan setup in my helmet after a troop on Friday night. (Her fans failed, and I was showing her how I could switch on one fan or both fans with your awesome system that slides right into the base of the helmet.) So, I've gotten more done on the build. @gmrhodes13 Thank you for the helpful links and build threads. Restrapping the abdomen and dropping five pounds fixed the issue with the side closing up. If it still looks wonky, I can always add a shim. I'm always up for a good challenge. Continuing on with the story of fixing this build, most of the snaps had to go. They were very hard to close even after I oiled them and my husband couldn't get most of them snapped either. It felt like it took so much pressure to close the snaps it would snap the plastic. Not good. They had to go. Straps in the shoulders worked fine, so those got to stay. Everything else was tossed into my "maybe I'll have a use for it in another build" drawer. So, this overlapping medieval strapping system was transformed into something that looked like the side strapping on my other TK and now does not overlap. This also helps the other side align better. My husband and I both decided the backplate needed to be trimmed down to look proportionate to my frame. Not a lot, but it did need to be resized. We are fortunate we have done this once before. We keep using the other set of armor for reference to know how big the pieces should be. So, this is the untrimmed backplate as it looked when I was trying it on at an armor party in the beginning of August. (One shoulder is not fully strapped in these pics.) Trimmed off just a little bit since you can always take off more later. I'm double-checking the CRL for what it says about return edges on the backplate. It doesn't. We decided to add a return edge since we will need it to install the "bracket" strapping system. Creating a nice straight return edge using the heat gun and a wooden cutting board. The cutting board helped ensure the new return edge was nice and straight like it had been created from a mold. My husband used a Dremel and pliers to remove the extra snaps. I couldn't watch as I was worried he was going to Dremel through the armor. But, all four snaps came off, leaving the piece clean and ready for brackets to be installed. While the heat gun was out, some gentle reshaping of the kidney piece to bring that side piece in more, (to "close the gap.") Comparing the new backplate to the old one to double-check how we are doing with sizing. The new backplate has more return edges under the arms and on the sides. But, as long as they aren't digging in and it looks proportionate, they can stay. On the old armor, we created shims to hold the brackets. This worked well as the brackets never broke or cracked the armor even during ten years of heavy trooping. It is one of the few areas of the armor that hasn't cracked. So, we are going to do this method again and add the extra shims to the return edge to hold the brackets. The armor is starting to look more like something that will fit me and that I'd actually want to wear. My husband couldn't keep the names of all the armor pieces straight, so I helpfully added labels to help with my vocabularly. The brackets and screws were tricky to track down. TrooperBay doesn't make them anymore and my original ones came directly from RS Props. (I bought their strapping system.) Fortunately, we have a stormtrooper chat within our garrison and I've been posting over there about this build. One of my garrisonmates knew of someone through his First Order build group that knew someone that could get these brackets. To make a long story long, I got the right brackets, screws and straps. I'm undecided about what to do about the connection between the kidney and the buttplate. The current straps seem to be holding it well My husband thinks it needs two more straps. On my original TK, the kidney and butt plate are connected by brackets. Open to advice on what to do about this area. This particular area of the armor seems to fit well as it is. OK, that's enough for today. I'll do a post to catch up on the progress of arm and thigh strapping in another post.

Thank you! I had an absolute blast building this starting in April. I’m already getting some battle damage from trooping so i’m glad I submitted when I could. Had to improvise with a pauldron ^ Big thanks to everyone who helped and my DO @Doggydoc for taking the time to critique. I’m happy to tweak this costume further but even more excited to pass on this knowledge to future troopers. Thank you @Cybergrunt and @starsaber25 at my local garrison for all your tips as well as @revlimiter and @MaskedVengeance on Discord with your amazing reference build too

At the encouragement of @ukswrath, here is a post I originally made a year and a half ago on the Anovos FB build group, which is handy for all makes of armor, not just Anovos. ABS Paste?!?! WTF is THAT? I've seen variations of this question over and over. So perhaps this will be helpful. ABS paste is homemade glue for your ABS plastic. It literally melts and reforms the plastic into a solid piece, so it's more like welding than gluing. But as the warning phrase "it literally melts..." foreshadows, you should be careful. Making couldn't be easier. Get a GLASS jar. Don't be that person who makes it in a plastic cup. You know... the one that puts plastic melting stuff into a plastic cup. You've met that guy. Don't be that guy. All you need is a jar, some ABS scrap, and some construction grade acetone. Nail polish remover is NOT strong enough, even though it has "some" acetone in it. Pick up a bottle at Home Depot or the like. (For people in other countries, like the UK, where Acetone is not readily available... you have my sympathies) For containers, I feel a glass baby food jar is ideal. It's just the perfect size (unless you doing something epic!), stupid cheap (if you don't already have one somewhere), and easy to work with. I'm going to assume baby food jar, so if you choose a 2 quart mason jar, scale as needed. In general, ABS paste is practically free, other than the price of a tiny bit of Acetone and maybe a buck for a jar of baby food, if you don't have a suitable container already, since your source material is scrap from your own build. (never toss that armor scrap!) A NOTE ABOUT FUMES: Pure Acetone is nasty stuff. You really don't want to be breathing Acetone fumes. A whiff here and there likely won't cause lasting harm, unless you have existing pulmonary issues, but still, do your best to avoid breathing a lot of the stuff. At a minimum, you can end up with a NASTY headache. At worse, you can actually cause damage to your lungs. Use your own level of protection that feels best for you... some want to wear a full respirator (with a volatile organic cartridge), others, like myself, are content to work outdoors and minimize breathing it. (Once the jar is capped, it should be fine to bring indoors.) FILL the jar with the tiniest scraps if ABS you can get. I literally used the curly-que and powdered scrap from under my belt sander, after all my rough cuts, in addition to cutting up a few pieces of scrap into 1/4" square pieces, with scissors. And now the magic. Add approx 1 teaspoon of Acetone (and remember, I'm assuming a baby-food size jar... scale accordingly if you're trying to go big and make enough for your entire squad to build with!). Cap the jar, wait 15-20 min (or more, no worries) and then check on it. Poke it with a stir stick. (You can literally use a stick. Although IMO, a wooden coffee stir stick (free at Starbucks!) is ideal, and Popsicle sticks have their proponents, too, as does the toothpick crew, for detail work.) If you literally do not have a stick, a strong piece of scrap you don't care about will do, just be careful where you set it afterwards. But poke at it. Get an idea where it's going. Then add about 1 tsp more Acetone. Re-cap it again, wait 15-20 min, then check again, and this time, stir it a little more seriously. Note the consistency. You'll probably want to add some more, perhaps 1 more tsp, perhaps less? You may be starting to get a feel for it by now. Let sit for a good 1/2 hr, then check and stir AGAIN. We're going slow. Slow is good. Watch some TV or read a book. You have better things to do than watch ABS melt in super slow motion. At this point, you SHOULD be close to ready to go. If not, I recommend letting it sit overnight before checking it again. (in fact, that's not a bad idea in general, but it's not strictly necessary) Only add more Acetone if you still really think it's too thick and clumpy in the morning, after stirring it some more. Repeat until you reach that magic mayonnaise moment. Correct consistency is *roughly* mayo-like. I'd say somewhere between Elmer's glue (a little too runny?) and Toothpaste (perhaps a little too thick). Too runny = bad. Remember the "melting plastic" part? You don't want that running down your armor. Too thick and you may get air pockets. Shoot for the Goldilocks zone. ) When you're ready, apply with a stick. Let it dry (duration depends on thickness... maybe 20 min, maybe overnight?) and sand it down. Repeat until pretty. Relatively small amounts (read: the small patches that ABS paste is generally best for) should be relatively safe to use indoors, just be aware of the fumes. Larger projects (or sensitive spouses... not that it smells too different from the nail salon, in my mind) are probably best to work on outdoors. The beauty of using the same plastic your armor is made from, to make paste, is you get a dead-on 100% perfect color match. No painting needed! (note: The level of polish/sheen will not be the same, but the color itself will be a match. ABS paste isn't really good for large area applications... and trying to do that will likely end up causing warping from too much acetone anyway) (2nd note: ABS paste is not as strong as the original plastic. It's not actually a glue, even if it looks like one. For connections needing a very strong join, use CA glue, as usual.) (pre-sanding... but note that color match to the Anovos armor!) The paste doesn't really go bad, but eventually it'll harden and you'll need to add more Acetone. Keep it capped, and it'll last longer, of course... you can dry it out quite fast if you leave the cap off for more than a few hours. Future batches you can probably go faster (read: add more acetone, sooner), but I recommend the slow approach when you're starting out, until you have a good feel for it. Good luck!

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