Jorran

I moved on to the thighs and when I looked at the back I noticed a couple of issues. Picture first, questions second: This is the back of the right thigh (the same issues exist on the left one as well). I lined it up so that the knee ridges at the bottom matched up. Everything was cut to the trim lines. Here are my questions/concerns/lamentations: There is a raised edge on the outside half for a cover strip to sit on, but not on the inside. I guess this really doesn't matter much since the cover strip will...well...cover it, but it still seems strange. There's a return edge on the bottom of the inside, but not the outside. Plus there's an extra 1/2" of plastic. My plan is to trim the inside to match the outside, losing that return edge on the inside bottom. That leaves the extra 3/4" on the top of the outside thigh. I guess I'll be trimming the whole top of the outside thigh so it lines up with the inside. Does that all sound OK? I haven't found too many problems with the body pieces of this kit (just inexperience on my part), but these thighs just don't line up well at all.

Excellent - thanks all!

The new Centurion requirements for ANH stunt helmets state that "Tears/traps should be hand painted or use decals that emulate hand painting" (emphasis mine). This last phrase leads me to assume that there are some decals that do emulate hand painting and some that don't. I'm going to be ordering my helmet next week and the seller informed me that it does not come with decals. This is my very first kit and I don't trust myself with hand painting at this point - but I'm also building with an eye towards Centurion and would like to make sure that the bucket meets those requirements as closely as possible. Who sells decals that are acceptable for this Centurion requirement? Thanks in advance!

Excellent, Tim. Thanks! I have that tutorial bookmarked and will be using that method when I get to strapping my torso. Thankfully, I finally have a completed progress picture to post. It seems like forever since I've made significant progress. According to the new Centurion requirements, "there are no visible rivets or brads used to secure the sniper plate to the left greave," so that's the way I've attached mine. Might as well start down that road now rather than later.

Thanks, Tim. The ab plate seems to fit perfectly, although I might heat it and bring it in on the sides just a little. That's helpful to know because that means my chest and back are basically positioned correctly, and I just need to focus on the kidney and butt plates. Do you know anyone that sells a nice suspender setup? The instructions that came with my kit just have a lot of strapping between the individual pieces, and that was the direction I was headed. But if I can find a good suspender setup I would definitely look into it.

While I wait for the cover trip to finish curing on the right greave, I decided to do my first test fit of the torso armor pieces. I have a slim build and I know I'm going to have to heat and bend several of the parts, but I wasn't sure to what extent until tonight. Front Side The chest plate's width seems to be about right. The ab plate needs to come in on the sides a bit. My main question: is the chest plate too low here? I looked through a lot of EI builds and on several it seemed like the chest was a little higher - closer towards the neck line. Back Side, Part One Here's where most of the work is going to have to happen. I think the back plate is fine. It's a little crooked, but that's because my shoulders don't sit level - the left shoulder has just always been higher than the right. The kidney plate is CRAZY wide, and I can't really tell which side is up. Finally, I'm holding the butt plate in position where it fits well - I'm assuming that gap between the butt and kidney plates will be covered by the belt. Back Side, Part Deux This is just showing the same view, but with the kidney plate flipped. Let me know what you all see that I need to fix. Thanks in advance for the help as always!

Thanks guys. The main site here is blocked at work (thankfully the forums aren't), so I'll take a look at Centurion requirements when I get home and make sure I follow those. I'd like to get there someday, although it will take some time since I have a Hasbro (with Doopy's latest kit) and the Mrs. isn't likely to let me embark on getting a new blaster anytime soon. Still, it will be better to have the armor up to snuff ahead of time. **EDIT** Ok, I see the Centurion requirement now: "Ideally there are no visible rivets or brads used to secure the sniper plate to the left greave." I'm going to start working with the heat gun now to get the knee plate closer to being flush with the greave so I can just glue it together.

Alright, after a couple of rounds with the heat gun, I've now overcome my fear and finished the left shin (sans the sniper plate, which I'll get to in a minute). I feel pretty confident using the gun now, which is a far cry from what I would classify as "near complete terror" a week ago. Special thanks to Terry and Jeff for your help! While I wait for the glue on the right shin to cure, I got the sniper plate out and positioned it on the left shin where I think it should go. As you'll see in the picture below (special thanks to The Boss/Lovely Assistant/Hand Model), if I square up the knee plate to the shin it covers the ridge on one side (not visible) but leaves part of the upper shin ridge on the left (below the thumb in the image). If I were to lower the plate to cover both ridges, you would then see the upper part of the shin peaking up over the right side of the plate. The other option is to tilt the plate so that it covers both sides of the shin ridge, but then the plate would look crooked from the front and I like that option the least. What would you suggest? Is this a big deal? Finally, does it matter that there's this much space between the plate and the shin? I could try heating it up to form better, but that seems to be a lot of space to cover. I've read the academy tutorial on this area and it seems like just the two rivets will be enough. Thanks again for the advice everyone. Now I'm off to practice with rivets - yet another part of this process I've never done before!

Yep, we ended up doing all of those things you just mentioned after I posted the video: 1.) Adjusted where I was holding the shins. This allowed me to hold the calf closed exactly where I wanted and then farther, so that when the piece cooled and retracted it was where I wanted it. 2.) Heated more towards the front - up towards the front cover strip ridge, including the upper return lip. Now that we've conquered that part of the left shin, the right one will be a breeze. Thanks as always for the help.

Thankfully we got this figured out. My assumption is that the heat gun I borrowed is not as high powered as the ones you guys are using. We heated the pieces a lot longer (something I was very afraid to do initially), and now the gap in back is much narrower, and the vertical separation is only about 1/8", so it will easily stay closed with the industrial strength Velcro. Getting ready to glue cover strips now - pictures to follow!

Terry has been instrumental in getting my block head to understand the way to go about properly assembling my TK. Dealing with all of my questions...the man is a saint. Saint Panda!

Thanks for the feedback as always! I went several more rounds with the heat gun today, this time on high, and I'm in the same spot as when the weekend started. Forgive my poor filming skills in advance, but I took a quick video to show what my process has been. Just a note on the video: the shims are glued and cured in the front - the clamps and magnets are just an extra (and probably unnecessary) level of support. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Oh7RLpwTDrk My guess at this point is I'm just not heating up the armor enough. But when I tested the heat gun on high on a scrap piece of ABS that came with the kit, it buckled after 45 seconds, so I'm hesitant to warm it up longer than that. Thanks in advance for any extra help!

Sorry for all of these questions, but this is my first go-around with a heat gun and I really don't want to mess things up beyond recognition. Tonight I grabbed a few scrap ABS pieces from my hours of trimming, set the heat gun on low, and ran the gun back and forth across the surface for 60 seconds. The plastic was malleable and I was able to shape it to whatever position I wanted. So I grabbed the left shin (which is now glued together and cured) and worked the heat gun over the right side for 1 minute. My thinking was to just heat the right half since it was the side hanging low and try to reposition it. After one minute the plastic was warm, but after holding it in position for a while it just returned to its low shape. So I tried an addition 1:30 = same result. Additional 2 minutes = same result. Additional 2 minutes = same result. So after 6:30 the plastic still would not hold the shape I was shooting for. With frustration mounting and patience thinning, I decided to put everything down and come back to the forums for help. Some guesses as to what I'm doing wrong and how to fix it: 1.) I'm not heating it long enough. 2.) I'm not heating it hot enough (set the gun to high instead of low - this option scares me because I don't want to end up with marshmallow). 3.) I need to heat both sides of the shin. 4.) Should I heat up both sides and then clamp them in position? You're looking at a fish WAY out of water - please help!

Thanks for the feedback, all. I'm definitely on the skinnier side, so I'm trending towards removing it. But like you suggested Mason, I'll finish out the rest of the strapping and see where things fall before making the fatal cut.

That's interesting you show that because in my other thread [Linky] I was instructed to NOT cut off that last block. Now I'm a little confused. That picture is pretty convincing.

Ok, thanks Terry. I found someone at work that has a heat gun, so I should be able to give this a go later this week. Should I just keep that front seam clamped during the heating, or glue it shut first?

I need to revisit this picture and ask a follow up question. If you take a look at the back, let's assume that the gap closes and holds. In this picture, the front is clamped together so that the top and bottom is flush. Then you look at the back and see that if I close them as-is, they're going to be low on the inside (right side of the picture) by 3/4" at the top and bottom. Um...help?

Based on the excellent, quick replies I got in my last shoulder bridges thread, I set out to attach my bridges this weekend. I got set to place them in front and have my wife trace a guide outline so I could glue them in the correct spot. As I held them in front and looked in the mirror, I noticed that they hung REALLY low in the back. I took a tour through a couple dozen EI ANH build applications and didn't see any that look like this. (A couple notes: [1] when I did my test fitting I had my under armor on, so fear not when you see the t-shirt in the following images; [2] one of my quirky features is that my left shoulder is considerably higher than my right shoulder, which is leading to a bit of asymmetry in the way the chest and back sits.) Photo Evidence (sorry for the blurry images) I'm holding the bridge where I think it should go in front. This placement makes it so the sixth bump is right at the end of the chest plate. Having it here, the front end of the bridge is right on top of where the pectoral area starts rising out of the chest plate. Turning to the back, you can see the bridge floating. I put a red line in the picture to show how far down the bridge comes when it's pressed down in back. I know that the bridge isn't secured in the back, but instead held in place with clear elastic or heated to fit. The thing is, when bent into place, the bridge actually sits on top of the upper corner of the OII detail. This seems like it's way too long when compared to other suits, but I'm not sure what can be done to correct it. Any advice? Is this something that I should even be worrying about?

Ok, thanks. The test fittings have been just fine with them as they are, so I was confused by the instruction to cut them off. As always, I'm glad I asked here first.

Hey Troopers! I was working on trimming my shoulder bridges recently. The instructions that were written on the excess plastic said to trim off the big ridge. There's also a penciled in cut line indicating that I should cut it off (it could be the first or last big ridge, depending on which end you're looking at). Example (taken from TK-9539's EI request thread): But it seems like I see the big ridge on the front and back of every single thread I've checked. Am I supposed to cut this off? (I tried to look at the Academy pictures, but the main site is blocked here at work. Thankfully I can still access the forums.)

That's great news, Tray! I'm glad to hear you guys were able to improve your process and crank out better helmets. I love the kit overall, so this will just be the icing on the cake. Plus, as I've said before, your communication and willingness to help has been top-notch.

Progress report: got the last snap plates glued on and all the straps through the arm pieces tonight for the first time. I was thinking of running the strap from one shoulder all the way behind the neck to the other shoulder, but after looking at several builds I think I'm going to go the route of a short bit of webbing from the top of the shoulder bell to a snap on the straps that run from the chest to the back plate. Anyway, here's a shot of the arms on. Let me know if you experts see something I need to fix - otherwise I think these are done. Robert, the shots of the strapping in your build thread are great - thanks for posting those. Jeff, that's a great explanation of the shin setup, thanks! I'm going to glue the inner shims on them first thing in the morning. One question: those straps that run from the top of the chest to the top of the back plate...are they white or black elastic? I've seen build threads that show both colors and I'm not sure what's accurate.

I'm eagerly awaiting an answer on this as well.

Thanks for all the feedback on the heat gun, troopers. Robert, I saw your thread in particular and what can happen when heat guns go bad, and that's the exact thread that has me spooked! My wife has let me know that this is my only kit I will be getting, so I'd like to not irreparably harm any pieces. My right forearm is curing, but here's the completed left one. I just need to add the strapping between the bicep and forearm and I'll be done from the shoulders to the hands. Slowly but steadily I'm gaining ground.

I started on my shins. I used the same procedure as the biceps and the forearms. 1.) I measure a little more than 10mm from the edge and dot out a cut line. Because the raised edge isn't very sharp, it's hard to tell exactly where to measure from, which is why I give myself a little extra room for the cover strip. 2.) Clamp my ruler on and get ready to cut with my box cutter: Once I got that side cut and ready for the cover strip, I clamped the sides together to take a look at the back. I've looked at the FISD tutorials and read many build threads, and I think I'm still a little confused as to how the calves work in the back. This is the left calf. I'm using the cover strip method for the rest of the suit. I know the calves remain open and most people use velcro to close the gap once they're on. Do I still put a cover strip on that left side, and then put the velcro on the inside of the cover strip? Will velcro hold together when there's this much of a gap to close? I've been scared of heating any of this kit and have been able to avoid it so far. Thanks for the help!