Airborne Trooper

Need some advice here. I have to shim my thighs and I'm wondering what's the preferred method here. I already made the shim with some thin For Sale sign just so I had a way to glue the back together as seen here: Now the question I need answering before I proceed is do I make the finishing strip V shaped or do I leave it rectangular like this: You can faintly see lines drawn if it is recommended cutting it in the V shape. I have already cut off over an inch off the top because I'm only 5'5" and put in the ANH style notches. Plan on cutting the notches out the bottom for better mobility. Might end up trimming more off the rear top so it doesn't poke me in the butt.

Glue a piece before leaving for work in the morning and another when you walk back in the door. My wife caught on to this trick and started greeting me at the door with the kids saying, "tag, you're it!"

Clamp your metal ruler down, do one light pass to get the initial grove set with your shop knife or exacto then go over it a few more times with more pressure each time. Remove the ruler and snap it off. If done right, you won't even need to hit the edge with sandpaper. If you need more abs, at least trooperbay's 100% matches the MTK

When's he seeking GML approval?

Skip the elastic and use webbing on the left ab/kidney hinge

Fantastic job, Trooper Dad! Ok, now let's get to the electronic portions for the bucket

You could use a little heat to bend the belt to conform to your body. For the clip some clear tape or clear coat on the side not seen

Like Tony said, Mike is a one man show. He runs trooperbay and also runs a sign company. The last thing I ordered took like 2 weeks. I try to source items locally but you can't really find tube stripe templates at home depot lol.

I have Irish twins at home, an 18 month old and a 6 month old. As soon as I get home from work, my wife is handing them off to me before she has a nervous breakdown lol so I can definitely understand. You may want to consider doing a complete arm with just inner strips, testing it out and make changes to return edges for pinch points THEN put on the finishing strips. The best thing about all of this is there is no right or wrong way to do it, just aim for screen accuracy in the final result as much as possible.

I've only used my dremel for shaving down my ears, as a drill to do holes for the kidney/ab, and drilling holes for snap plates. If I had a real cordless drill I would have put the dremel up a long time ago. For long straight cuts, get yourself a long metal ruler and clamp it down. I use my exacto knife to score and snap. On items with lots of curves, e.g. the chest plate, I trace a line with a pencil then follow it up with my exacto knife. I go back maybe 2 or 3 passes then follow it up with my scissors on the trim portion. I'm able to go along and pull off piece by piece of the material I'm getting rid of. I've been working on my build for months and you'll get more confident as you go along. If you make a minor mistake, it's nothing a little ABS paste can't fix.

Wish there was a box full of goodies when I bought my MTK kit. Just so you know MTK is made by the same guy who owns and operates trooperbay. Make sure you watch his tutorial videos on the site a million times, and if you haven't seen it, check out Ukwrath's build thread as it is super detailed and will help you a lot. I'm currently building an MTK TD and there are a few other MTKs in progress. Good luck with your build and have fun!

Watch out for that overlap. Also, use a long metal ruler and try to get your cuts as straight as possible doing the score and snap method for a cleaner fit when you butt join. I got my pouches from blaster 8266 and they are super top notch. They even came with wood inserts.

I'm not sure if it's the kit or if you needed the extra room but you have a lot of ridge line exposed on the thighs.

Russell is great on detail. I think he could pull of a fantastic captain. He'd probably be zooming in 10x on blu-ray screenshots to get the weathering patter just perfect! "But the direction of the sand is painted in a 48 degree angle." LOL

I could afford to trim some off the back, mine has a lot more return than the kidney. I have plenty of room where I glued my snaps that I can experiment.

Russell, maybe you should consider doing a sandy next and go SWAT. I would be extremely interested to see your OCD when it comes to weathering lol.

Sweet, looks like I'm removing the bottom return edge of my back plate. I was wondering how the return edge would effect the snap strapping.

I just love the texture on those RS buckets. You're off to a great start!

Off to a great start!

I have watched Trooperbay's videos probably a million times and there's no way I can reproduce his techniques and I guess it just comes with years of experience putting armor together. He uses CA glue and can probably piece armor together in a few hours tops. Wouldn't recommend doing it by yourself. Armor party with a lot of supervision from experienced builders and have it sized to you several times to be sure, maybe.

Kirk, I would be hesitant to use anything you can't go back on. I only used CA glue in my build on 1 side of some inner strips and on finishing strips that I knew 100% was the way I wanted it.

Thanks, brother! Means a lot coming from you!

My son was visiting for 3 weeksso I hadn't had much time to work on my armor. Been picking away at it last week and this weekend. I ended up trimming down the shim as I made it much bigger than needed once I put my black compression shirt on. It's not pretty on the inside but I put some extra abs paste on the edges where the shim support sits. If I could start over, I would have used much thinner ABS as the backing because I can't get rid of this small ridge without completing sanding away the ABS paste and completely exposing the seem. I think once I weather it and the belt is over it, it won't be as noticeable. Spent much of Saturday making snaps. My neighbors love me at this point Beginning to finally get this thing together! I think I might add 2 more snaps on the butt to kidney to keep the edges aligned. I'm going to get some pictures of it on tonight and I'm sure there will need to be some adjustments. I can't wait to get this portion done so I can move to the legs. I can almost see the finish line assembly wise. Still need to purchase the gloves, backpack, pauldron, and blaster.