meanders

I used the strap at the back of the shin technique to keep the shins in place bigironvault. I only needed it on the smaller left shin. The right is big enough that it sits OK. Even something seemingly as simple as fitting the shoulder bridges to the chest plate has its challenges. In their natural state the bridges have a bit too much curvature where they should be sitting on the chest plate. A dunk in the boiling water can soften them up so they sit more flush with the chest. I'm not putting a lot of pressure on the bridge in these photos, I swear There's still a gap between the underside of the bridge and the chest, so an offcut of the 2mm ABS makes shim which is attached. This means when the bridge is glued to the chest its not going to warp. As always keep the left and right sides marked. Mark out the spots where the bridges are going to go. I kept the back plate strapped on as well so I could make sure the backs of the bridges are lining up correctly with the back plate. The obligatory clamp shot! And the finished piece.

Great recovery with the tube stripes. They came out really well. I actually spent last weekend hand painting mine as well. It was the part of the helmet build I was dreading the most.

Its all coming together. The larger bolt you were referring to one the helmet, I used in place of the rivets which hold the two pieces together. That means I can put together and pull apart the helmet during construction. Makes it easier if you have to make adjustments (I ended up cutting more from my teeth as well as making a more complicated lens attachment).

Also made up some drop box covers. Takes a while to get the back cover the right shape to fit snugly into the drop box. Also a bit fiddly to get the inside strips the right width so the back cover sits at the right height. Keeping everything labelled helps. The longer side strips are only glued in the middle so the top and bottom parts flex a bit. That means when the back cover is glued on and clamped it pushes everything into place.

Built some TD clips recently. Used some 25mm x 1mm aluminium strip from Bunnings. Curve it around the TD tube so that the end sits just under the attached plate. The back part of the clip (that attaches to the belt) I bent around a couple of strips of 3mm MDF. Make sure its wide enough so it slides over the belt. Here's where the bolts attach. I used 1/8" x 12mm bolts from Bunnings. The ends of the clips are filed back to a nice smooth edge so as to do as little damage to the back of the armour as possible

This looks OK to me. I set up the kidney plate as you have it in the top right photo, so the curves of the top of the butt and bottom of the kidney match. There's also a slight groove on the kidney so the butt plate sits nicely in place. There is a bit of an angle between the back and kidney plate. This is how mine turned out. I've got the back of the kidney sloping out top to bottom. That's how it fitted after a lot of trial and error and masking tape to see how everything fitted. I ended up trying to fit as best as possible before trimming the kidney sides and gradually taking off the kidney and ab sides until it all came together. The right side photo you have above has the kidney back more vertical. But its how it fits on you that's important. Its hard to see from simply just looking at the pieces by themselves.

Yep. I've also got some other type of adjuster on the chest/ab plate straps.

Time to keep the behind the scenes stuff ticking along. So, how do I keep my thighs attached? After lots of research, as usual, on the FISD I settled on this approach. I got a pair of 50mm 3 bar slide adjusters from Adelaide Leather and Saddlery Supplies. Half the problem with looking for these things on-line is knowing what they're called. I got the metal one, but afterwards also found out they have plastic ones as well. BTW, this place also sells bifucated rivets, which are the ducks nuts if you're going for super TK accuracy. The slide adjuster is threaded through the 50mm high density elastic which is double snapped to the thighs. This then slots through a belt to hold up the thighs. I ended up using a fairly heavy leather belt. I started with a polyester webbing belt but it sagged and crumpled so I couldn't get it to sit in the right spot. With the leather belt, everything sits fairly firmly on the hips so its not going to move. The thigh strap lengths can then be adjusted if needs be. The slider is also sitting high enough that its hidden under the ab plate.

I'm using PVC cement so the joins are effectively welded together. I'm also using strips on the inside and outside. So no, the water did not affect the shins. I've not used the more popular E-6000 so I don't know what would happen there. I've always done some experiments first on ABS offcuts and whatever glue I was using, before trying to do anything. I have had a couple of warping problems when gluing the snap plates. Initially I used a lot of glue covering the entire plate, including the metal snap back. This caused problems on the thinner butt and kidney plates where the plastic warped in around the snap. After that I avoided placing glue on the metal part and being more careful with the clamping.

I wouldn't mind some clarification on this as well. I've always read the CRL as 7 tracks are OK if using a Hasbro mod, and the "But if you want" part indicated it was optional. So I haven't bothered to drill out the extra row in my conversion.

First fitting with all the strapping completed (except for the very last snap plates in the front shoulders - I've been holding off, but it all looks good now) All feedback welcome (And I know the purple tape is not canon )

Closing the sides. How hard can it be? I wanted something that was detachable, so snaps and elastic; that reduced lateral movement; and provided some coverage when the side gaps opened. So I came up with these brackets. The left and right sides were made from one piece of ABS which I heat curved and then cut in half. The left side bracket has holes for the snaps and for the exposed outside rivets. The right side bracket, just holes for the snaps. With the male snaps attached. Note the exposed top right male snap does not get added until the bracket is attached to the ab plate. The left side bracket can be attached just by using the exposed rivets. I used some double cap rivets I had left over from the Tusken bandolier build. You can also see I like to write notes to myself for work to do later. Its also a good idea when setting the snaps to tape over the holes you don't want to snap (the front right top for example which needs to have the male side exposed) You can see here how this fits together. When the sides come together everything locks into place. And from the outside.

I had a few issues with the shins which have since been resolved. After I'd joined the shins with the front strips, this is how they looked. In their natural state they opened fairly widely at the back. (Note the back cover strip not attached at this point) I contemplated a number of options to close the shins. Velcro is common. Hooks and eyes are a more screen accurate. But whatever I decided there was still going to be a lot of tension required to keep the shins closed. So I decided to try to close the shins up a bit. I strapped the shins up with some poly webbing so the backs closed to the extent of overlapping. Put these in a bucket and filled with boiling water. This softened them up so that they remained in that shape and now close naturally. So the shins now close by themselves. So no need for velcro or hooks (obviously the proof of that will be in the first troop, but it looks good so far). Top stop them closing up too much, and to line up with the back cover strip I added a "stopper" to the inside, near to top of the shin, so the inner edge slots nicely into the outer edge.

Looking good. You could probably take a bit more off the return on the shoulder bells to get it sitting closer to the bicep. I also faced the same questions about how to secure the shins at the back. When I had the front strips on the shins they were wide open at the back. But I put them in some hot water to tighten them up and now they close on their own so I probably won't need velcro or hooks. I added some pics to my build thread.

I was experimenting with how to attach the shoulder bell straps, which go around the biceps, and had a play around with the ABS paste I've been using. Some paste on the elastic strap and the ABS forms a great bond as you can see here. I then hit upon the idea of using squares of ABS offcuts (not from the 2mm sheets, but excess from the arm and leg trimming) to reinforce the female snaps attached to the elastic. You can see here how the when the elastic stretches its not putting pressure around the snap, but spread evenly across the elastic. I've used this on all the torso elastics. Also, all the elastic I've been using is the Birch High Density Elastic (See www.birchhaby.com.au - search for code 009495) available at Spotlight (here in Australia) by the metre.

Yep. Pleased with those. I even rounded off the corners of all the plates so there'd be no scratchy bits

A word about snaps. I'm using these Tandy Leather Line24 snaps. They're available locally at DS Horne. Now I don't have a heat gun to flatten the snap plates (as suggested by Glen over at the DSS) but I have an oven. A couple of minutes at 160C softens them up enough to flatten them out. I used a piece of MDF with a hole to do the job.

Where you're going to place the covering strip looks really wide. Have you looked at the tutorials here? You should be aiming for at 15 to 16 mm covering strip, which should give you about 8mm on each side. When I did this I started wide and kept cutting it narrower and narrower until it looked right and I could fit my hands through to put them on. And I'm assuming you've got the correct left arm and right arm halves since these are asymmetrical for these suits. The right forearm is a big bigger and straighter whilst the left is smaller and more curved. And undertrimming is always better than overtrimming at this stage

Yep! There's a lot of that. You should go ahead and get a pair of curved Lexan scissors before you tackle trimming the helmet. The tin snips would be definite overkill there! The sanding or grinding tool on the Dremel works well for smoothing out the lot of the curved edges.

I made up the canvas belt today. Now I haven't attached the ammo belt front yet and was deciding on where the end of the belt (i.e. when its velcroed around the back) should go? I was planning to have it hidden under the thermal det., so that the det clips sit over a double thickness of the belt. Is that the traditional approach or should I be considering something else? At the right side maybe?

Those ankles look the same as mine. The right one is a lot rounder. The real question is whether or not it going to matter to how it fits. I just posted some pictures in my own WIP thread and you can hardly see the left shin sitting a little higher than the right. How do yours look when worn with the thighs? If everything's in the right place then maybe there's nothing to worry about. My only problem is the left shin rides up over the back of the boot when I walk, so I was going to try out this solution to "stop the pop". Also, with your kidney hole problem, why not, for starters, just cut out a circular piece of offcut ABS to fill the hole, backed by another piece behind. That shouldn't stop you from getting basic 501st approval. Then if you need to later on, you can fill and sand any gaps with ABS paste. I've ended up with a couple of indentations on my butt and kidney plates where to much glue on the snap plates caused some warping. They're noticable to me, but would be hard to see in any photo's Don't throw it on the freeway yet.

Half way there and everything seems to be in the right place and proportion. Nothing holding the thighs up yet. Planning on using a belt and high density elastic strapping there.

The sniper knee plate is attached and the thigh ammo pack is attached so that almost wraps it up for the legs. Got the ab/kidney/butt all fitted and just making up the elastics for the snaps. Will post a progress picture when that's done.

Try 501tag.com instead of www.501tag.com. Something's a bit screwy at the moment.

ABS paste! Its wonderful stuff and because its just made up from your own armor off-cuts it matches perfectly. I think for those small end edges the paste would be a better approach than trying to put a small shim behind it. Your R2 looks amazing! How 'autonomous' is he? We've got a droid builder here in Adelaide and R2 is pretty popular wherever he appears.