Nicky

I can do it all by myself because I never suit down The hardest part is the canvas belt, I have velcro all the way to its end so I need to pull right to hide all the velcro. For the canister I feel the ledge on the kidney plate with my thumbs so I can center it before clipping it. Sometimes to hide it properly I put the neckseal under my underarmor shirt and make the shirt end right where the neckseal tubes start. Then I ask my fellow troopers to check everything out and they go "Yeah it's all good", so I go "I know, just wanted you to see. "

Something like this. I picked a neck wallet that came with a plastic envelope on the inside because the phone and the money might not like the 100% humidity under the chest plate. Accessibility is a problem, but an advantage too. Without your phone you focus on your trooping and people can't steal from you easily either ---------

Very nice work, I love the work on the helmet it looks very neat and "ideal". The parts for your forearms aren't fit as shown in post #47 so fixing the ledge issue by trimming is a clear solution to me and you will be very happy to see that you don't need extra loose space in the forearms and that it looks better when slightly snug.

On crucial parts you never heat the ABS until it becomes soft, you do little by little and repeat the process until the curves match. What I did was hold the part against the table while applying vertical pressure from one edge, heated on one half where the curve needed to change, stopped, waited a bit and repeated the process, after awhile I flipped over and did the same on the other half. If you heat until it needs to be held in place then it will warp, you will see finger marks where you held the plastic, ie. a disaster.

I assume we're talking about resin builds. If you check on top bar there's a reference gallery. Which basically shows how there's no weathering on the screen used props. Active weathering isn't needed when your gun is already metal, the reason you weather it is because you want plastic to look like metal, then you exaggerate the wear to have the fake steel show. The right coat of black is more important, so you will not see any screen accurate weathering as it's more of an artistic approach where anything goes, with some sense to it. Many people will not use any protective coat, and who let it wear out passively over time and use. Check out Google images, not only for E11's but other gun replicas. For example I inspired myself from the chinese assault rifle in post-apocalyptic game Fallout 3 and nobody can say anything against it

Scratch that, didn't get any delivery. So I'm still waiting. I think England and their royal postal service or whatever they call it should check themselves, this is too slow, unreliable and untrackable.

I had the same issue with forearms not matching (T/MC) but that issue disappeared after using the heat gun. Here's my forearms: After heat gun: Once you can hold them two together with one hand you're good to glue without hassle.

Only with scissors, yes that's going to give you pain very quickly. Have you tried xacto/utility knife, and score and snap technique?

I had a non-delivery issue with doopydoo and e-mailed a few weeks ago, they responded very quickly and said they'd send a new order out. I'm picking it up this afternoon.

Yeah guys, chop chop! I want to read more T/MC threads

Many talents are hidden and takes a first project to test them out, here you can find lots of guidance but we can see differences in perception to detail and overall quality of a build, or that extra mile of creativity that's always welcome unless it violates the CRL. When things go wrong it's not due to a lack of talent but lack of patience or small misunderstandings, or it's our fault because we explained something too quickly Some artists spend countless years not knowing they actually lack talent, like most rockbands, doesn't keep them from going on. So worst case scenario we still manage to build something serviceable

You're underestimating the costume. 501st approved or not. Asking a <$200 price tag on a Stormtrooper costume sounds like you have not seen a stormtrooper costume up close, or thinking it's just a lot of foam or rubber-like fabric you glue on the undersuit. Even the least accurate styrene plastic stormtrooper costume is a hell of an impressive full body armor that just doesn't fit in a gym bag. The size of the thing and the amount of parts, their weight, even without counting gloves, undersuit, belt, harnesses, helmet or not, will cost over $100 to ship already. Even the cheapest unassembled kit will require you buy toy gun kit, holster, boots, soft parts, tools, powertools, snaps, straps, glue, paint, clamps, magnets, screws for another $500-1000 unless you're using leftovers from a previous costume. My suggestion is that you forget about it this year, for Halloween 2012 you can wear a nice looking but cheap white suit, black shirt underneath and get a Stormtrooper helmet from ebay for around say $200-300, regardless of quality. You'll make people laugh, say wow, etc. You can keep an eye on ebay in case someone wants to get rid of his stormtrooper costume but don't hold your breath. Even when it doesn't fit anymore people spent so much time perfecting their kit that it would break their heart to sell it or give it away. If you ask a 501st member to lend you his armor, he will say no unless you're childhood buddies and he doesn't care about damaging his kit. We (501st members or applicants) pay $2000 for our costumes because it looks simply great. Once it's fit to you and you wear it in public, everybody's looking at you and you're automatically the coolest person in the world. You can be ugly underneath you'll get laid anyway. Is that a good explanation? haha I might sound like an elitist but our elitism isn't based on budget but on hours tweaking tiny barely noticeable details, for fun.

Congrats! I also wanted to add that it looks really good overall and in details, clean lines, paint job etc. and that you look tall in this fit.

What Ingrid said about the thighs. Unless the tubes are all filled up with muscles all down the knee But from the rear view I see it isn't the case. Did you make any mods and have new pics? It looks great, I love the helmet. Can you take pics of the inner strapping system? I'm curious. That it was pre-built saves you cash, mess, and a lot of time. That extra time you should use it on modding the 1-2 details that stick out using just xacto, sandpaper and E6000. It should take half a day at most. I don't feel like the one to tell what has to be how but in my opinion you can also improve by raising the biceps a tiny bit if you can, and check in a mirror in idle position, and reducing the forearm length or rather raising them too since it's only an inch thing around the wrists, so that your hands look bigger People shouldn't argue about the line between recommendations and criticizing because here is a rare place where we never point out a problem without advising a solution in the very same sentence. Being happy and content are two separate things so we have to bring things to the table and some people (like me) check out every thread and learn all the time.

Not if you intend to stand still and never move Also since not all TK's are equally as wide the shoulder bells are not fit on many people. The elastic strap is meant to hold the balls in a slight forward position, for the gap to appear preferably on the rear side. EDIT: hold the bells* sorry.

You men are pigs!!!

Central heavy yeah. I was wondering because when I walk I feel it doesn't stay vertical if it wasn't for the thigh being in the way the barrel is headed.

Now I see where the satin clear coat does its magic! Great job. Is it rear heavy or does it sink well into the holster?

Sir it's because you search in the "hard armor" forum, should be "assembly, mods, painting". I remember there's a 2 page discussion that is quite rich in insight... Karin posted it, nevermind

I admire the mother's initiative! Bullies are jealous about everything. They bully the different because they can't fit them in their imaginary chart of superiority and being different means there's nothing the bullies have that you'd envy. If you live and dress the way you want then your parent must love you and approve of you too, so the bullies hate you for that and will make sure that at school it's their turn to be loved/feared. The worst thing you can do is give them credit. I was not seriously bullied for Star Wars but for being happy, they made constant fun of me because of my intense interests in things that I work with and spend time on today, beside the mockery people insulted me aiming at Star Wars and how I lived in a galaxy far far away and not knowing sh** about the milky way's way of life. But now that I have a stormtrooper armor NOBODY's making fun of me anymore, they are intimidated by the looks and everything that stands behind it. There's the occasional playing the 'Imperial march' whenever I arrive at someone's party, but that's just cute. We will help Katie get a stormtrooper armor ASAP, and it will look awesome, it has to, with a low brow, Matt Dillon style because that looks mean. I believe it will shut everyone else up if instead of abiding by their pathetic rules she dives deeper into what she loves, and Katie will be a stormtrooper she won't care about anything that people think.

Alrighty, after 3 hours work on the hasbro: -Standard prep -Installed a 19mm wide rail -Moved the LED to the back -Modded the front sight -Modded the hengstler counter -Quick epoxy on the doopydoo parts. -Forgot the cylinders. Let's not derail the ANH TK build topic, here's the thread with the rest of the blaster story http://www.whitearmor.net/forum/index.php?showtopic=21245

Lower feedback is from a lower sensitivity, lower mike output and unidirectional pattern, then using higher pressure and higher gain to reach the same output volume to the ear. Since we are many to use similar Aker amps we will have to stress the "speak louder" point more. Feedback gets in through your bones as well to reach your helmet and resonate. It's quite funny.

Voting has started, poll is up. But do read the recent additions to the Q&A first! Interesting points were brought up.

As suggested by people in this thread, I fitted the Aker (white, 10w) inside the chest with an iComm. The Aker is supposedly a bit big for that but it went great for my kit. Now this will answer some of the questions: The iComm, meant to add static burst and voice activation/PTT to your Aker amp. Like Jim says it adds effect to the voice audio as well. I would say it filters the frequencies so you get a much more high-mid, trebley sound that breaks through ambient noise better than the wider range sound you get from plugging your mike directly to the amp. It sounds worse, but you don't need to get a super high volume to be heard, and it works better for the trooper voice. Now you can muffle some of the treble and increase the bass by sticking the speaker inside your chest plate, with your body and the ABS the sound resonates and gets even louder naturally like people wrote in this thread, the sound is muffled a bit but you begin with lots of treble. Problem I had, it hurts my own ears as my ribcage and bones bring the sound to my skull and then to the helmet. So I had to play with the volume control to find the comfortable setting. I did get feedback when it was too loud near the helmet but I would never go on like this anyway. Now a warning about the Olympus ME52 and the iComm used together, it is not an omnidirectional mike with high sensitivity so you will have 40db/mW and slightly lower output impedance... meaning that when you plug it in the iComm you can't just whisper somewhere near the mike you have to talk at least as loud and directly through for your voice to be as loud as the static bursts. For all I know the iComm does not preamplify the Mic In to your specific needs, nor did I find a volume control for the effects alone, so you have to make do or mod. I'm looking into it. Regarding the amp alone distorting your voice, it does that a bit anyway. It's not a huge speaker with a very clean amplifier so frequencies will fall and you will sound a bit "low-fi", your head being in a plastic bucket also add a natural effect to your voice.

I have a question, on how to eliminate the gap beyond what the CRL says. When you successfully shim the gap, I understand the use of webbing straps instead of elastic would help keep the gap minimal, what kind of material overlapping behind the tiny tiny gap would help making the line disappear best? Has anyone tried to fasten the two plates/shim with overlap, inner shim and/or silicone caulk?