pandatrooper

Here's another Hasbro build. I've actually finished the blaster, just getting around to uploading the pics. I've got 2 of them, but eventually I'd like to do a nice pipe style kit with better detail. Primarily, I plan on using the Hasbro for when I'm not concerned about using it for troops, etc.. I wasn't too careful with filling holes in the resin parts as I may eventually replace them. The thing I wanted to do with this build was be able to keep the resin parts removable. I want to be able to separate the halves at any time, because later I might want to install electronics or do some kind of lighting mod. Most people tend to keep their Hasbros permanently closed and glue the resin parts on, but mine will be easy to remove the part and get the internals. I've got 2 Hasbros. I noticed the white one only has one light on the tip where as the black one had one at the base and one at the tip. Starting to sand all the lettering off This is called a "coupling bolt", got it from Home depot. I'm going to use it for the stock to join the 2 resin parts together, along with glueing them. This is so that I can have the stock swing in and out of position as 1 piece. I'm going to Dremel out the base of the stock arm, and glue / rivet the socket end of the coupling bolt into it. the bolt will pass through the bend metal arm part. Dremelled out a channel for the coupling bolt. Stay on target.... stay on target.... I roughened up the coupling bolt with the Dremel, and used E6000 to glue it in place. I also drilled a hole for a rivet. Rivet for the coupling bolt Job well done, just set it aside to cure. The rivet as snapped into place. Stock is fitted into place. Nice and strong, and it swings out in 1 piece. Everything has been prepped and sanded, ready for paint. A small way to add some detail: grind the not so great sculpting / casting on the stock, enlarge the hole to 1/8" and pop in a rivet instead. I also cut the stock retaining tabs (or whatever they're called) in half so that i can always split the blaster in half

Matti, you have a sharp eye! I got scared there, and just grinded a little at a time. I will grind the nose corner some more for my curved lenses. I just left it as is for now, as I installed a flat lens since I'm going to troop at work tomorrow and I need to see what I'm doing. Thanks for the support guys. I'll post some more pics soon, and some finished ones from work tomorrow! Can't wait to suit up in the morning!

Finished the belt and holster. See pics above.

Looking good Steve. You can overlap the back of the shins or butt seam them and cover them with a finishing strip for the ANH look. I started a thread on the subject, something like "how do you close the back of the shins" or something like that. Try search for it. I ended up butt seaming mine and using strips to cover the back. Based on your kit, the alignment is off just like Stuka's build. Similar to the issues I have (check my build thread). I found I needed to use a heat gun and iron to get things to line up the way I wanted to.

Thanks guys. Arron, I haven't polished anything yet. Maybe it's just the camera flash that makes it look shiny? I do have Novus polish, I'll give it a nice finish after everything is complete!

Just finished the belt and holster. I went DIY on the holster. I used some fake leather / vinyl material I had at home, doubled up the material but I sandwiched in a thin sheet of styrene plastic in between the layers, to give the holster thickness and rigidity. I simply cut the plastic about 1/4" smaller than the material and sewed it together. For the retaining strap, I bought a $2 black belt from Value Villiage (used clothing store) and cut it up for the strap, and added the snap button and rivetted it to the holster. The holster is held on with 4 rivets (in the hero style) The belt is a little different, I chose to do clean edges instead of the ragged edges. I just like it that way. Folded the material over. I sewed velcro on the inside of the belt, as I may consider attaching it to the torso via velcro so that it stays horizontal all the way around, rather than just the rivets at the front. Finished the arms, here they are as completed units. The hand plates have been attached (per my tutorial) and the elbows are connected to the biceps. The bicep to shoulder bell and bicep to forearm were done a bit differently. I did one end as a snap plate, and a black 1" elastic connector, but the other end is attached via industrial velcro. This allowed me to adjust the length easily without needing to install a snap, which I find hard to get the spacing right on the first try. I did it this way so that it was ready for halloween, but once I get the inner padding all finalized *the current ones are "make do for now". I may do a snap to snap elastic connection to a finalized length. The adjustability is very convenient, and hasn't fallen off, etc.. Here's a really good image looking down the bicep / elbow join Shins and thighs have also been completed. I paid special attention to the ANH finishing strips, smoothing all the edges and rounding the corners. Also note the white rivets (I had to paint them as I couldn't find pre-finished white rivets) Upper shin foam, simply attached with velcro. I find this is the only area that really needs padding. For now, I closed the shins with a small piece of velcro in the back where the ANH strips overlap, and a small velcro tab at the top inside. I have another idea for shin closure I will do a tutorial on later if it pans out. Inner thigh snap with an extra large snap plate, made for the garter connection (I ended up making some elastic garters that connect to the belt in a "V" shape. It keeps the thighs aligned perfectly. Thigh detail for the battery packs I've also redone the eyes on my lid. I Dremeled the inner corners deeper and installed the black bubble lenses for the true hero look and ultimately my EIB application. The only small detail I'm not 100% happy with is the black outline around the ear cap detail. I used pin stripe tape from a hobby store, but it started peeling / bubbling. I'm going to remove it and re-paint it by hand. Just a couple of finished pics More to come (waiting for pics from a friends good camera)

Torso is complete (minus ab buttons). I chose to install suspenders and a different method of velcroing the sides together. Not that the ANH rivets are exposed snap are visible. I'll be painting the rivets later. A little test fit. Dang, those are some sexy knees! Here's how I did my garters for the thigh armor. Around my waist, I wear a simple 1.5" web belt with a fastex buckle up front. One each side is a V shaped garter. You could use a straight piece of elastic, but I found that with the V shape, the thigh armor stays perfectly positioned no matter how much you move. I tried it with one piece and there was just too much movement for my liking. One side of the V is permanently attached, the other is adjustable. When I made them, I didn't know exactly how long they needed to be, so I left one side adjustable. You can make both sides adjustable or permanently sew them, that's up to you. I'll probably make another garter for myself that fits me perfect. For now, these more than do the job. This is the inside view. The garters extend into the thigh and attach via a snap plate.

Since CAP originally used an older version of AP molds, there's some serious wonkyness. The alignment wasn't what I expected but again, you get what you pay for and I just made do the best I could. Hmmm... what's the lesser of 2 evils here? I chose to align the tops as best I could, and fix the knee area via heat gun / iron. I used a ton of clamps, and the magnet trick to get things aligned and glued Again, some pretty gnarly alignment. Pretty much everything is out of what by a long mile. Argh... Thank goodness I have a heat gun / iron and Stuka's great tips! Fixed this super wonky edge here. First, i glued the front of the thighs - fixed the front alignment, then evaluated how far out the back seam was. Used the heat iron to get the general shape, then smoothed it further with ironing. Then I trimmed the edge to match the other edge, and then used the Dremel to even out both surfaces. Don't grind too deep, the iron should get you most of the way. Then just smooth it out, sand it with 200, 400, 800 then I used wet sanding 1200. A little polishing, and she's good to go! Gnarly shape + Dremel + sanding + wet sanding + Novus polish = not too bad of a result

I actually started the build quite a while back, but haven't had a chance to get all the pics done / uploaded. My armor is VT / CAP built in the ANH "Hero" style. Although the build has turned out OK, I think if I had known what I know now (based on all the great knowledge here), I would have made different choices. Oh well, you live and learn, and in this case - I made the best of it. Ideally, I'd like to get another higher quality kit at some point and fix some of the mistakes I made. Let's start with the box. Everyone starts with the box! Lid out of the box. The details are softer than I would have liked, and the cap n back was pretty wonky. Some tape to hold it in shape and a heat gun fixed that. Cutting out various pieces. Eyes and teeth have a rough cut The masking tape isn't to mask the teeth, just to help protect the lip edge against mistakes. I used Humbrol but the texture of the paint was horrible and took 3-4 days for 1 coat to dry! I switched to Testors 1138, worked great. You've probably seen my funky teeth mesh thread Teeth painted with mesh installed Vocoder painted I chose to cut out the original aerator bolts, dremeled out holes and inserted T nuts instead. The tips were really warped and not to my liking. I'll probably order some better ones later. Somewhere along the way, I forgot to take pictures. It took about 1.5 hours to trim each ear piece. I'm using a green flat lens for now, but I have black bubble lenses I will install later for 501st CRL and EIB. The helmet is completed, just need to finish the tube stripe decals Little TK likes it! Various arms and legs beings assembled Hand plates assembled per my tutorial

Take your time to get your life in order, family is most important! Thanks for finishing the final few orders. And thank YOU for helping to supply the TK community with great products and great prices!

Hey Seth, I posted similar question a while back. the torso assembly and rivets for screen accurate look can get confusing, here's the thread on the subject. The pictures and diagrams posted were immensely helpful. ----- Also, Stukatroopers Flickr page is a great resource. -----

Not sure if you have already, but check Stuka's tutorial. My armor is from older AP molds (CAP / VT) and it doesn't line up worth a dang. Much can be done with a heat gun and heat iron though.

Anyone know where AP is located in Canada? I had not idea, I always though it was the USA.

As a person with game development experience, I would take the screenshots and game models with a grain of salt in terms of accuracy (unless that's the style you want to pursue). Judging by these images, the stormtrooper model is fairly low poly / low resolution. They may not have modeled it accurately in the efforts to make the model more efficient, render more of them, etc..

I'm not that familiar with rubberized paints. Was it just overspray that dried, or did the paint "stain" the plastic? If it was overspray, that should come off easily. If it stained the plastic, it may have soaked in. Try some Novus plastic polish, it might take it out. I used Novus on mine and it seems to do a good job of taking out marks, etc..

I would try polishing it first if you've already cleaned it as best you can. If it's ABS, worst case you could wet sand it, then polish it.

Point taken. Just thought it'd be a way to help people new to the hobby understand. I know it's a complex issue.

Congratulations! Very well deserved and an inspiration to many!

Thanks for the feedback guys, I understand. It’s not that I was suggesting to create contact info to promote recast products, more like a listing to make people aware of who is a recaster and who isn’t. I find it somewhat vague in that recasting info is sometimes buried deep in threads. Would it be better to bring it to the forefront, that way people avoid them? And if people don't know who is recasting, how would they know? Kind of like: "Known quality armorers": - Company A - Company B - Company C "Known Recasters": - Company X - Company Y - Company Z As least this might help educate people to make the right choices?

The Fett blaster looks awesome Steve! Very cool! Can't wait to see more pics from your AP build. I'm getting close to finishing my build. Mostly the belt and TD left, and painting my blaster.

Would it be a good idea to start a list of recasters, and possibly some kind of experience / rating system on their goods? Obviously, no contact information would be displayed or encouraged? Possibly a list of legit armor makers and known recasters? If it's something like: "Company X" - known to recast XYZ armor and ABC helmets - poor communication - known Ebay seller - etc.. I was just reading the "ebay armor" thread and thought for new people getting into the hobby, they might not know that someone is a recaster. Also, it's rather confusing in terms of armor maker history, and who got what from where, where these molds orginated, etc.. Would this help people make better decisions?

There's a tutorial on here that was bumped up today re: painting the chin / vocoder portion of a helmet. ----- I think citadel paints for miniatures are water based acrylic, is it not? Check the can or bottle. Personally, I prefer enamel (solvent based) paints for plastic, but that's up to you. I would just suggest going to a hobby store and getting a bottle of Testors black. They only cost a couple bucks. Painting it by hand isn't that hard.

http://www.collegehumor.com/video:1923217

You probably want a 10 or 11 actually. Check some online comparison charts, I just did a quick check and it says UK 10 is a US 10.5 or 11. There's a good amount of toe room in the TKboots, but they do fit narrow. http://www.safariquip.co.uk/i_shoe_sizes.html http://www.i18nguy.com/l10n/shoes.html http://www.dmusastore.com/uk-us-shoe-size-conversion.html http://www.convertalot.com/shoe_size_converter.html

A picture would help a lot. Also, what size boots do you wear?