kiyotei
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Posts posted by kiyotei
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Hi Paul,
miscommunication there, the shoulder bells hang from the shoulder straps, not the biceps. I have the biceps attached to the shoulder bell. I got rid of the strap that some guys use which goes all the way around the bicep to hold it to the shoulder bell. I used Curtis's method of securing the bicep-shoulder bell assembly. It looks good, works fine, and you can't see any black strapping. I was guessing you had TM. Is your bucket TM as well? I looks really wide in the pics but then again, I've never seen a TM bucket in person. FYI your armor looks awesome.
Jim
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Paul,
I like how close your shoulder bells hang. I cannot get the AP should bells to come that close to the body armor. I use straps to hold them to the shoulder but they just don't seem big enough, I'm guessing its an AP thing. What kind of armor is yours?
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I know you are referring to me. In the end once I finally got the thigh glued using an abs welder, it held. It actually did not turn out bad now that its done but I had lost my nerve and desire to take on any more butt seams. Here is what I recommend but FYI, I did not actually trim the seam as I recommend below, I thought of this after the fact. Here are the steps I would recommend:
1. Overlap the seams and tape them in place.
2. Take tracing paper and place it over the thigh.
3. Try to trace the seams curve on the paper. You can use this as a template to cut the plastic strip. As you noted the "seam" is not a straight line. Following the curve. This is not as easy as it sounds because the seam is not well defined in a few sections making tracing on normal paper very hard to do. Get thin thin tracing paper.
4. Keeping the overlap seam in place, trim down the center line of the seam. Most likely, unless you use a dremel to cut, you will or should cut thru the top layer and then recut to get the second layer. By cutting the seam when its overlapped means it should give you a nice matching butt seam. I did not do this. I trimmed my thigh one side at a time not realizing how hard it would with the multi dimensions of the curved piece to get a proper butting.
5. Now untape the trimmed overlap and butt the two edges and tape from the front outside edge.
6. Since the outside seam is curved and hard to glue a strip on you should glue a strip to the inside seam first. Its flat. This will will be easy to glue. I found it hard to keep the middle section pressed together while waiting for the glue to set. Tape didn't do the trick because of the curves in the plastic pulling the seam apart. Yes I also used clamps but I didn't have any clamps big enough to reach the middle section of the seam.
7. Once the inside seam is dry, then glue the outside seam. You may want to glue just one end of it, let it set, then slowly working your way down the seam a few inches at a time.
8. Use the abs welder glues, not epoxy. I found the epoxy just wouldn't get a good hold because of the curved seam.
I hope this helps. I recommend having a helper for glueing. Let me know how it works. I may go back at some point and pull the epoxy seams apart and do the butt seam, but I'll save that for later.
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alas for me, if I don't trim, I can't function in the armor. No point in being a trooper in screen accurate armor who can't move his arms or legs. I don't make a good statue. Without trimming the arms I really could not even touch my helmet with my hands, that's how little I could bend my arms.
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did you find that your right thigh was much wider than the left thigh at least at the bottom? Mine was significantly wider and so I had to overlap the seam in the back a lot more on the right thigh than the left thigh. I also see that you did not trim the corners on the ammo pack. I was looking at Curtis's ammo pack and he trimmed the bottom two corners. I will have to trim mine as well for fit purposes, they catch on my leg pieces. I guess it has to do with how tall you are and how much spacing is between the top of the shin and bottom of the thigh pieces.
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Curtis,
Did you find that your one thigh piece was much wider than the other? My right thigh piece was significantly wider at least at the base.
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I ordered my Novus today. I'll be needing it to clean up the armor as I finish building my AP soon.
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That's good to know. I slipped a few times with the dremel before I started masking any area near the dremel zone with tape.
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I found with my AP helmet that the left ear fits real well and the right ear fits completely differently and not very good. I made the mistake of initially trimming them the same way. So my advice is be very careful when trimming them since they are physically different shapes.
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I trimmed it off. On the one shin it will be covered by the knee cap so you can't see it anyhow.
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I figured I'd get more traffic for this question posting it outside my armor build thread...Ok working on the thigh pieces. I was testing them out by walking up my stairs. Basically its very difficult to walk up stairs. The question is as I trim them down, how easy should it be to walk up stairs? I don't want to over trim the length. I've been trimming the top part mainly in the front. That seems to be the most limiting part, though I have removed a little in the back too.
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I am always amazed at how awesome a job you guys do weathering/aging your armor.
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You're in mill creek, is that near Edmonds? I think my neck pain was related to the tetanus shot I got and being a bit sick. That shot left my shoulder and arm really sore all week.
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Curtis,
How about posting a few pics of how you secured your thigh pieces. In one pic I see a strap hanging down so I'm guessing that was at least one attachment point. How many and in what locations did you add straps to hold the thighs in place? That is the last pieces I need to add to my armor. I think mine will need a lot of trimming to fit my short legs.
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I used fusion flat black. I didn't want the inside shiney at all. No primer needed with Fusion. Worked really well. I painted my helmet before I put it together so it was pretty easy. Definitely mask the entire helmet to prevent over spray.
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Very cool looking commando helmet. I am actually just building my armor so I have not spent any long time in it yet. I'm playing with strapping right now and trying to finish up the thigh pieces, then I'm done. I'm also playing with padding in the helmet to get it to sit right.
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actually its an empty helmet. I've been sick this week so maybe it has more to do with my illness than the helmet weight. I'll have to talk with my personal trainer to get some neck exercises so I can troop pain free, LOL.
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on the real helmets, were the black teeth cut out and had a black mess or are the black teeth solid painted plastic like the grey ones?
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I have AP helmet
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Is the grey paint on the mouth lighter than the grey on the decals? I only ask because when I used the tester grey I found that my mouth is some what lighter. In the photos you took they mouth does look like a lighter grey.
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So do you guys find you get a sore neck after wearing the heavy helmet for a while? I find my neck gets sore just after wearing the helmet for a short while. Its pretty heave thing. I guess I need to build up my neck muscles. I would imagine after trooping several hours one's neck would be totally sore.
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I have ap armor which has the buttons molded into the plate.
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It looks like the snap is inserted thru the abs plastic, is it ok for the silver snap to be sen like that? I realize its pretty damn hidden under there but don't want to make any assumptions.
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how did you get your buttons painted so perfectly, how did you create your masking so you could paint them so well?
VSF Helmet?
in Hard Armor (General Discussion)
Posted
This helmet is for troopers with massive brains, a side affect of all the cloning they did, think of the aliens in the movie "Mars Attacks".