Defiance7x13

I was just wondering if someone could give me a heads up. I sent in my application about 3 weeks ago via the 501st site, but I haven't heard a peep. I looking to join with the Southern California Garrison. Thanks for the help guys.

You both look Awesome, great work! I bet you guys had a blast

I now hold the above blaster in my hands as I speak, and let me just say this thing is bad @$$! It is way heavier than I would of expected, and I am very grateful ! It also feels very sturdy, and it fits my holster also provided from Vern perfectly! Great Job Man! Everyone who's held it so far has been extremely impressed.

That turned out awesome! Great work, and what a Lucky Kid!

So I went to my first party last night with suit in tow. Man! What a blast! I had my first experience suiting up while outside in the cold standing in the street. People who had no idea who I was, were completely blown away.... I even saw a car drive past me twice just to get a better look at me, with giant smiles on their faces... And all the kids thought it was the coolest thing since sliced bread bread and followed me around for quiet some time. And of course everyone wanted to check out the helmet. However there was one little girl who looked at me, and said: "what are you?" to which I replied, you know like star wars.... to which I got a blank stare I posted for many a picture that night, some much more tame than others (crappy quality I know, waiting to get the high res shots) Turns out I can shoot pool "kinda" (helmet off of course) but still got my butt kicked by Cobra Commander (he had the unfair advantage of being able to bend at the waist) And Ive decided to replace the remaining velcro with snaps (my shoulder bells kept coming lose from about my arm) All in all this was a great test, I was suited up for about 4-5 hours without any major mishaps or blow outs. And that includes the armor being pulled, touched, poked, and hit throughout the night. With less than a week to go before my first Con, I am very happy with how it preformed. And think I should be able to blend in with some of the "real" 501st guys on the floor. And I'm confident it will hold up through the con after party and concert

I was out in Hollywood and Burbank today crawling around a couple shops that buy out old movie and tv show wardrobes from the local studios. Anyways aside from some really cool stuff. (great place to find robes for a jedi by the way) I think I struck gold when I found these... My guess is they should pass perfectly for Imperial officer boots. Ive tried to compared them to the pictures of the imperial boots that windlass studios is promoting, and they seem pretty dead on. But since I am no expert is such matters, Im wondering if any of yous guys who have Imperial officers uniforms or Tie Pilots, hell even a Han Solo could help here. But for only $80 bucks, and perfect fitting size 13 1/2 knee high German style boot, I couldn't pass them up. Too bad I cant get them off without help. <_<

Ive done some searching, and aside from killing time at work looking through old treads. I really cant find what I am looking for, so now I will turn it over to the experts for your advise... I seen a few lid's insides "finished" with textured Rust-Oleum and or "plasti dip". Is one suggested over the other or is there other ways to go about this? When dealing with the plasti dip, is it better to get a can of "brush on" or "spray on", or both for that matter? How many coats of primer do you normally lay down before staring the "top coat"? My main goal in to increase the lids durability and maybe give it a little more mass and weight to it. Ive noticed when wearing my efx compared to my RT-mod, aside from looking like crap on the inside the efx has got the some nice weight to it. And heaven forbid it takes a fall, I think it would survive pretty well. Also Ive decided im not a big fan of seeing my decals from inside the RT lid with a bright enough light source on the outside. And since I have to clean up the inside of the efx (new pads & lenses), I figure I might as well do both so they are uniform. I know some people prefer a lighter weight helmet, but if im going to be wearing the thing all day. I at least expect it to feel like a helmet, and when I get cracked in the head with a random light saber from behind, the extra piece of mind (and padding) wouldn't be bad either.

For someone like myself who had no idea of where to begin in starting a TK, this site was a god send. I mean it really did take all the hard work out of researching, as im sure many of the early member's would of had to spend months and months researching to gather enough resources otherwise. And with said provided resources, there isn't any reason I can see that most able minded people couldn't get the needed supplies together and build a authentic looking suit. That really is "Troopers helping Troopers" in the truest form. As far as what boots,"internal strapping" or even helmet padding originally used on the set. In truth, the answers to these questions will not cure cancer or solve the problem of cold fusion. If someone doesn't want to spill the beans about what they found out, the lack of information really is going stop anyone else from continuing to build an authentic looking suits or in general improve life as we know it. The only thing the lack of knowledge denies you is the ability to participate in the Fan-boy pissing contest that it "my suit is more accurate than yours". You all know that the general public lacks the knowledge and understanding that makes it possible to care about such things. As long as they see "real" looking storm trooper they are happy. (The fact that people are willing to mob Rubies wearers for picture says it all) But what it does prove is, that the information is "out there" and if you want it for yourself, all you have to do is little investigation maybe paired with some footwork. If one person can discover it for themselves, why cant anyone else? I mean it didn't stop them originally, did it? No one expects armor makers to hand out copies of their molds so any "joe" that wants pull their own can do it. Why would anyone expect any different from anyone else. My view isn't meant as a dig at anyone. I personally, was very naive when I first contacted my local garrison. And my questions & the request that I made, though at the time sounded innocent enough. After I educated myself by researching on my own for a short time, I now see my words as very rude and even disrespectful. What I forgot was, much like anything else in life. Don't go out expecting a hand out, otherwise your most liking going to return disappointed and empty handed. Instead I choose to go out willing to do the hard work to accomplish my goal. And most of the time I succeed. In this case I been able to obtain 95% my goals so far of: obtaining the "materials" necessary complete a suit to 501st clearance and be done before the "trooping season" officially got underway. My suit is done, I should have the "final" piece soon. And all of this was completed without anyone having to share anything that wasn't already out there. Sure I cant show off my suit to impress a fan boy who froths at the mouth when explaining what frame rate Lucas shot Episode IV in. But when I walk out my front door all suited up, all my neighbors are looking out their windows or coming outside to take pictures me, people who happen to drive by light up wide eyed, and kids stand around gawking in awe. To me that says I did a damn good job, and that's good enough for me.

Glad to hear it was staged. I've seen "stuff" like this go down with my own eyes. And at the same time, this also puts my mind to rest. I was wondering why they stopped with just that one Biker scout. Why not the Speeder bike itself? There was some really nice pieces in general. And usually once a pack starts in on something, they don't let up until the "job" is "done".

This might be hard for some people to watch. But see what happens when you leave town and leave your "bat-cave" wide open. I guess it also doesn't help that you happen to be dating a psycho. Good thing that "Snow Trooper" only cost about "$100"..... Right....

Did a little more work to make things fit and sit better on me. Found out my room mate keeps a heat gun for tuning his snow boards. I rounded the bicep pieces and opened the shoulders a little more so they aren't so tight on me. Finally I rounded the just the bottom of my shin pieces in order to make them fit around my boots better. I also added some extra foam inside the shins to keep them from rotating. So far it seems to have fixed the problem. It happened to be cooler this night, so I stayed suited up and walking/flexing and generally moving around for a good 45 mins to put stress on the suit. The Thighs look funny in this picture, but are being pushed out due to the banana seat. Other than that, once I have my blaster that I have on order. I will be ready to troop I believe.

My local Home Depots stock the black chemical gloves in the "tool" area. You may have to look around, as the staff at home depot aren't always the brightest crayons in the box when it come to products on the floor.

Hope its not a re-post.

It was a nice day out, And I was able to get some nice quality shots of my suit. Please excuse the turned out biceps and pushed back bells and the sagging thigh. I will make some adjustments to those. But here goes nothing. Then for the test run Had a blow out... Then for the real test.... Who says you need to be Biker Scout to ride a bike huh? :bikerscout:

That's the easy way of going about it. I did about half my suit with a hammer and the provided tools before I broke down and got the pliers. Life was much easier after that.

The picture sucks, but you can see me wearing a hand made chain mail jerkin and helmet a few years ago on Halloween. A buddy of mine started it after high school, and used to work on it while we would play D&D/star wars/rifts or whatever was running at the time. It took him month and months of work, but really not much in materials. I would say less than $100. But that was a long time ago. Another on of my friends liked the idea and made a similar shirt with a chrome finish around the same time. He used to wear it riding his street bike and at metal clubs. It was pretty awesome looking. Once again made for I belive less that $150. ( he used a better metal) The shirt and the helmet together weigh about 50-60 lbs. I'll be honest I couldn't rock it all night at the bar. After a few hours I had to de-suit and let the locals play with it

Blue tape is your friend, and if you cut everything bigger than I you estimate, you can always take it down more. Those were the major things I learned from my first build. And its harder to mess up things sanding by hand, but I will take you much longer. Yes it is over whelming and yes it looks like a lot, but just take it one piece at a time. And there will be points where You will think you are taking off a lot, but in reality AM was built to fit dudes who where over 6'6" and 250+ so if you aren't quiet that big, you will think you are really messing things up. But trust me, when in doubt as long as you over estimate, you shouldnt ever really find yourself in trouble. Just make sure you take one of your "belt" stips and measure out your Joint strips, if you are going to use them, and set them aside. The rest of the "belt" plates should give you plenty of extra material for shims, joining strips and anything else you might goof on in the beginning. I screwed up plenty in doing this kit, and thats with following Terry's and Brian's threads. But I was able to find the light at the end of the tunnel. Dont give up yet....

I got a pair of these. I trimmed them down just a little bit, but were a perfect for RT-Mod lid.

I saw a post somewhere back that said that they were the only one in their family that was trying to eat right, and it wasn't going so good. I can see where your frustration is coming from but let me relay a story to everyone. I had been smoking cigarettes for close to 15 years. And over that time I made the joke of saying im going to quit a few times, but the reality was I never putting my heart into it. As a result I was never able to kick the habit. That was until I QUIT. Now if you know anything about smokers is, we run in packs. And if your a smoker, most of the time the people you hang out with are smokers. And if someone smokes, everybody has to smoke. Now in the past when I had "tried" the group of friends that I ran with at the time were anything but supportive. So as you can guess I didn't manage to quit smoking for very long when I did try. When I made the decision to finally quit, its was on my terms. It wasn't because someone told me I had too, or it was life threatening or any other reason beyond make a personal choice and telling myself "YOU/I will no longer smoke cigarettes". At this point in my life, both my room mates smoked and the majority of my close friends all smoked. So in the beginning it looks like it was going to be an up hill battle. However I found the people around me were more supportive of my choice. It was very hard the first week, and I even broke down brought a pack of smokes when I was a concert. Smoked the whole pack that afternoon myself. I fell down sure, but I got back up and told myself "you made a mistake". "What are you going to do from here"? Its been little over a year since that last pack. I haven't had a cigarette since that day and that's the longest Ive ever gone since I first started smoking. That was by far one of the hardest personal trails/vices that I have overcome. Hanging out in smokers homes or out drinking and watching everyone else have a smoke but you really sucked in the beginning! But what I discovered was, if you are determined enough yourself others would see your success and then try to follow suit. At first people were shocked to see me not smoking. And after a while slowly one by one the people around me started to quit smoking themselves. And it wasn't cause I was preaching of saying look at me and do what I do (to this day I still keep an ash tray in my car in-case someone wants to smoke while we are driving) They just saw it could be done and wished for the change themselves. I still have some die hard friends who continue to smoke, and more power to them. They just haven't found a reason or met the reaper yet. I currently weight around 200 lbs and 6'2 (I go up and a few pounds normally) but at my biggest I was almost pushing 240. And even at that height I wasnt carrying the weight at all to my liking. I was working IT at the time, which meant lots eating crap and very little physical exercise. I decided I was tried on not being happy when I looked at myself in the mirror. And when I thought about it, the last time I was happy with my body was when I was kid and before I hit my "chubby" stage that I could never seem to out grow. So what did I do? I stopped eating fast food and stopped drinking sodas. And I learned to channel my problems, fears, worries, and general frustrations into exercise as apposed to eating (which was a huge vice). Then I started be aware of the amount of calories I was taking it at any given time, as well as portion size. (Processed and fast foods will never beat fresh and home made) Now I dont have a home gym or a gym pass. But I do have some floor space and I still have a usable body. So I started doing push ups and sit up in the beginning. After a while I invested in a "perfect push up" kit. It was only 30 bucks (ive seen them go as low as 15 now) and I committed myself to improving myself. After about 30 days I went from being able to do a set of 10-15 push up to about 25-30. Not only did I feel better, I looked better. Then soon after I decided to invest in a bike, since I hadn't had once since I was a teenager. And after a while of sticking with it, I started to notice guys would hold there girls a little closer and the girls would watch me a little longer when I would enter a room. I don't consider myself good looking but more on the average side. But as my confidence continue to grow, I started to see that people tend to think more of me, just by the very way I started carried myself. Now dont get me wrong, I love to eat, especially home cooked food made with love (and real lard). And the dude who works the graveyard shift at the local donuts store know me on a first name basis. And I eat at Alberto's Mexican food at least once a week (so what If I have an addiction). But I do all this in moderation. And I make sure I balance out my rewards with health low fat, high protein choices as my main staples of nourishment. I drink insane amounts of chocolate milk but stay away from any bottle or fountain drink who's parent company is COKE or PEPSI. And I make sure I exercise regularly. And I dont mean going to the gym at all. I park at the far end of parking lots to make myself walk the extra distance. And when I shop for items like 20 lbs bags of dog food or gallons of milk, I dont use a basket or cart unless I have to buy more than I can humanly carry with 2 hands. When I am in a building that has stairs and elevators, I always use the stairs unless I have to transport something that cant be done so up stairs or I have to cover 20+ floors. And when I cant make it down to the beach to ride my bike, I ride around my general area (and often that means getting harassed by the cops, or sometimes the dirt bags the cops should be harassing in the first place. My neighborhood can be a little wild sometimes ) And of course I continue to use my perfect push up that I purchased for 30 bucks a couple years back. I dont do anything beyond that of what any other reasonably health person could do. (And my body is all busted up from years for training guard and police dogs for a living) In the end each person has to ask themselves have I failed to reach my goal because "I can't" or because "I won't"? I pose this question quiet often in my life when I am confronted with challenges I wish to overcome.

Did a full test fit this morning will all soft parts and helmet. The reactions I got from one room-mate (who knows nothing about the original trilogy and only very little of the clone wars because of her kids) was "That Looks awesome!" shes been watching me hide out in the garage and build over the last few months. I don't think she really had any idea of what I was doing in the beginning. Of my 2 god-kids, The 3 year old boy was speechless when I walked in, and didnt say anything until I took off my helmet. And only after I kept it off, would he walk up he even walk up to me. After a slew of questions and getting to try the helmet on himself everything was cool. As for the 4 year old girl... Well lets put it this way, she only would look at me wide eyed when as long as I had my helmet off. Anytime it was on, she was hiding her face in the couch. These lucky kids on the other hand (thanks to their dad) have been exposed to all 6 movies in both Blue ray and DvD quality respectively with surround sound and wall mounted flat screen display. I'm going to date myself here, but I remember if you were lucky it was "copied VHS quality" "Original Trilogy" (even though I will troop for them, I don't fully "support" episodes 1-3 or "special edition" 3-4. Im just old school like that) on a TV with a tube smaller than most of the screens you are reading this on . All in all I will say impressing a star wars newb (she offered to grab the camara and start snapping pictures ) and scarring two kids with the sight of a storm-trooper walking into the house, were great first time reactions to get for a "finished" test fit for the an unknowing audience. I did had a glue blow out on shoulder strap (curse you E-6000!!!) And I think I will be applying Pandas "thigh trim" to the bottom of my upper thigh plates for more mobility. My goal is to ride my bike fully suited up. If a dude from San diego can Sail a boat in full TK I can ride my bike and survive. (mine is on the right) Completed pics will soon follow. Got to make my adjustments first. But the photo bucket has been updated along the way. Please excuse the blurry camera shots. A big Thank You to everyone one both big and small on these boards who have made getting to this point possible. Without you all, I would of either ended up with some recast POS that wouldn't of fit without some major shimming on my part if at all. Of spending twice the amount I am currently in for some recast POS that wouldnt of fit without Major shimming on my part! Let alone throwing my armor in the trash or on e-bay thinking I passed "The point of no return" after making a mistake (and lord knows Ive made some major ones, at one point in the beginning I was thinking of ways to save for a rubies suit) I cant wait to get out there in a few weeks blaster-less or not and make my real troop. And maybe with a little luck I will be 501st applicable and FISD passable

Look what came in the mail today!!! Now all I need to do is get my hands on a blaster and I will be 501st ready! Seriously if you have a giant head like I do, this is a great helmet! Its a little tight going on (tighter than my efx) but feels like it has more room inside of it. I could easily get some fans in there. Sadly I dont think I could ever fit into a AP, TM or Cap-W like most of you "Normies" out there. But after getting this helmet from Rob, Im ok with that.

I'm interested, did this person pass with this belt? And was it one of Rob's black belt?

Ive always loved this video. Sorry if its a repost

Aside from the comics, the all time best Batman IMO was from "Batman: The Animated Series" When if first started back in 1992. There was no "corniness" or "over the top" from Batman/Bruce Wayne and it also featured the best version of the Joker since "the killing joke" Mark Hamill's voiced Joker. But I like the "89 Suit" as the best of the live action, however I wouldn't pass on a Adam West suit either.