Dday

Most people use Novus polish, to shine it you'll use Novus #1. #2, and #3 are for removing scratches. However, any standard polish spray made for plastics will work and it doesn't harm the suit.

I like this idea! When you do it, you have to take into account that one side is higher then the other, and the shape is different, and as TM says, they might take a little persuasion to get into place.

I forgot to mention, yes there is no intersection with the internal screws. The other side of the bolt has a hollow in it by design (original Sterling) for grabbing and holding the bullet in the right place, so the screw heads holding the mag head are clear. Also, keep in mind, in the way I"m putting these together, the sliding inner bolt, does not slide but is fixed in place with the screws holding the grip and into the bolt. Here are todays updates. I am very close to finished. Tomorrow I will check the final pieces and ensure they are secure on the tube. After this I will take all the removable parts off and paint them in groups. This will make the painting job go easier all of the hard corners and tight spaces will be opened by separating the pieces for painting. Camera Battery back up, the attachment for the back of the rail. Simply bolted through the rail to the sight and a nut on the inside of the tube. All Front parts attached. The 2 knobs/tensioners added to the mag housing The folding stock clip on the bottom The mag housing and the mag needed some grinding on to get them to match up well. Then I drilled in 2 pins to help it stay in place and align right. Dropped on the powercells/targeting thingies Trigger glues in Trigger guard in. If you add this now you will have to grind some in order to get the screw in the front. If I did it again, I would keep the trigger guard separate until after painting and all was assembled, then glue it in. This bolt head drops right in and screws in tight. Bolts in the front need glue to stay in. After sitting down and thinking about attaching the hengstler rail, I realized how dumb it is to try and attach it with the extra from the scope rail. So I grabbed some L aluminum I had around and cut out a bracket. Then I drilled in all the holes for the screws. I decided I wanted the L to point up (vs the common down) so I will always know my build no matter where it goes! So the blaster almost in it's final state. I discovered that the CA (super)glue doesn't work well on it's own for the pieces connected to the aluminum. It is good enough for sticking it on, but it will be knocked off easily. So I decided to try out some CA glue in one spot to hold it down and E6000 on the rest of the piece to see what kind of a grip it will have. The tape over the pieces is part of that, to hold the piece tight. I also scored into the aluminum more where I glued to give the glue more to grip onto. I am pretty sure I will add the T-Tracks as the final piece after painting. I"m not sure if the tracks on the blasters was painted at all, or just put on there, black. Once everything is painted, I will see how they look unpainted, but if the colors stand out too much, I will sand them down some and paint it the same as the rest.

You might want to consider doing a darker silver, or gunmetal for the lowered areas of the bolt that shows. The real bolts were a dark gunmetal color with the raised spiral parts more of the silver colored... I plan an experimenting with the silver color I have and some black to darken it up some to do this. I should be doing that tonight and posting the results in my thread. Oh, and I like to put my guns on "safe" Since we're on a troop in a "safe" area, any trooper who's been through basic training should know that the weapon should be secure, don't want some innocent bystanders blasted down!

Haha, yes I did. I like to update the main post as well. This way, no matter how big the thread gets someone new can see the progress and 100% of the photos instead of having to search through multiple pages of content to find each step. Right now, this thread is small, but what happens in a year or 2 when the thread of 7 pages long from people building the kits and commenting. It gets hard to find updates to the core build. So I post an update to the replies so that people following it get a notification and an update, then newcomers and people who want to see things in order right away can just look at the main post. Since all the photos are hosted externally, it's no big deal for the website. Eventually I will remove the update photos in the replies and keep them in the main thread only to lower the bandwidth on my photobucket.

Ok, updates and a photogasm. I would have kept on working on it except the camera battery died and I can't take progress photos if the good camera doesn't have a loaded battery! Here are some overview shots of the main pieces screwed on. Once I started adding the other pieces, I have removed these pieces to put on later. Here, I cut out the stuff on the inside so that I had the frame and the center block (for the sight) and glued them on separately. As well as glueing in the nose. Since the kit was built for a 40mm tube, I had to shave off the edge a bit to make it fit and look better. To make the front sight needle I took the nail from a pop rivet and ground the roundness out of the last 5mm of it so it was more flat on each side. Chopped it off and drilled a small hole in the sight block and glued it in there. To screw on the bayonet lug, you stick the screwdriver through the other side and screw it down. The folding stock is next up. I put holes in the sides with a small drill bit through the stock and the stock mount. Then I screwed in two short screws to hold it in place. It's not accurate, as here was a domed pin in the originals. Now, to attach the stock handle to the stock itself. I like adding pins to high stress/heavy pieces like this. If you don't you're really asking for trouble and repairs later on. I use the shaft of a pop rivet for this, they are great axles and pins. Simple drill a hole in one side, put some glue on the pin, stick it in. Then find out where the pin touches on the opposite side and drill a new hole there. Add some glue to the pin and the contacting resin and put it together. This is the whole thing in one piece. This is easy enough. Just shape the port guard so it sits on the pipe well. Add the glue, attach it and hold a few seconds. The front one is the same. Just make sure you face it the right way. It should be opposite the way you have the ejection port guard. The scope rail is quickly finished as well. You'll need approx. 26cm of the aluminum bar. Then you'll shape it roughly like you see here. The nose is to hold the rail in place once the back is screwed down. If you add this nose to it, it won't move or come out. The end will look similar to this and will bolt through the rail, the rear sight and the tube. You'll have to drill this hole in the tube, I didn't put it in there because it might vary based on how you cut the rail and how you want to attach it. A simple house drill and bit will do this, Aluminum is easy to drill. Now, when the camera battery is charged, more photos and building!

The ABS they use isn't dull. It is shiney, it's just not as WHITE as the PVC suits. The PVC suits are like gloss white. The ABS suits are white, but just a slightly offshade. I think the ABS and PVC are probably about the same as far as durability. If you want the high gloss on an ABS suit, just get out the plastic polish and polish it up, it looks fantastic afterwards. 1.5mm ABS was used in the movies.

The way I see it, your left thigh is in a good position and the right is a little low. Trimming the tops of these will only make this worse. If they are too tight and not coming up, just remove the return edge from the thighs vs cutting the thighs themselves. If you remove the return edge you will give yourself like 5-10mm more clearance to get around the tops of your thighs. Try trimming the return edge before cutting the tops, thats a change you will regret if it's not absolutely necessary.

It really comes down to the builder. As others have said, measurements wearing the undersuit are the best. I've build 3 suits for others based on measurements (not in person) and all 3 suits have fit well. As long as your body is within a normal size range it's pretty easy.

I think you are on the border to fit well into the ATA. Overall you are fine but the 35in waist it what will get you if you want the armor to close fully (really close though), but it should work otherwise though.

The butt plate they are using is the one used in the original Fem Trooper armors I'm pretty sure.

I"m taking interest right now in the ANH/ESB kits for run 2. See the sale thread in my signature to post interest. I have restarted this build and am hoping to button it up over the next week. Photos to come soon

Well said!

From my view, you got the placement just right. I wouldn't worry too much about the stress on the helmet at those corners, it's not under all that much stress and it it on the helmet, which is the least stressed piece in the entire suit, so once you got it riveted, you won't have any trouble. The only thing heating it up will do is thin out the plastic and give you a chance or messing it up. The stress will naturally work it's way out without breaking it.

It really depends on the armor you got. If you got a thin, flexible suit you can use brackets and elastics (wire hanger, original strapping). If you have the thicker versions you will want to go with the straps and snaps. If you use the bracket system on the thicker armors, it will crack eventually where you connect the brackets.

I think the coverstrip sizes are ok. The important part of the coverstrip is that they are similar size, but mostly that they cover the majority of the raised area. The originals used larger strips on the back of the shins because of the way they were strapped. All in all, it looks good and these things we're talking about with coverstrips and elastics won't even be noticed when trooping. The only time things like this are noticed is when we look at the costume with a microscope. If you are working for a screen accurate suit, then you're welcome to look through a microscope, but if you just want to get trooping, fix the big stuff (like the shoulder elastics) and the rest, let it fly.

Her belt is wrong and her knees are attached wrong and the shins don't fit because they are trimmed wrong. However, when just looking at the forearms, the upper end is supposed to be extra long, and stick out beyond the elbows like a weaponized vambrace. I would say if you absolutely want to trip the forearms, how you describe should work.

To get it right, you need an abnormally long neck like in the busy... lol You might consider attaching the forearms and the biceps with an elastic like the original suits, just to help keep the pieces in good relation to each other, so it's not slipping down and grinding on your wrist. Is a very well done DT. And it's easy enough to wear because there are no prosthetics and gore needed. Pop it on and go.

The original shins used white elastic, to avoid exactly that problem of it showing, if it was white elastic, you probably wouldn't even know it was peeking out at a distance. At first, I would say the gaps on the ends, under the coverstrips are too large.... BUT I have a problem most times with looking things at too much of a micro view. When you zoom out into the macro, it's not really noticeable. The only thing I would do personally (which is a bit of a pain) is replace the black elastic with white.

She will get over it once she sees the finished product! Like a custom made dress, it can take a few fittings to get it just right!

Armor is boxed and and heading to it's new home now!

I would say you are on the very edge of this armor. I think the 38in waist will get you here and you will need to use shims to get the torso to fully close. I would suggest, if you don't want to shim you go for either a RT-Mod or a AM 2.0. I think the rest of the armors will not properly clam closed without shims. However, if you don't care about gaps on the left and right of the torso, or will use shims there, all armors will fit well. You might be interested in troopermasters XL shins, they are 2 inches longer and will really help taller people.

I just finished putting together a build for a friend, 95% complete build $1009 using AM 2.0 armor. We don't have to buy the snaps/straps ($10 wholesale) since I already have them, and we haven't gotten him a blaster ($$150kit, 250 finished). Most likely he will get the DVH-DDAY blaster kit/build. He and I already have all of the tools required, so no additional funds there. So, including those things using AM 2.0, Darman, Sonnenshine, TKittel, TKboots, $1069. ATA armor is cheaper by a hair if you add the helmet, but I will have to look over the original post and probably (like everyone already told me) revise my numbers! It could be possible to get towards the cheaper end if you buy a secondhand suit, but then it's going to be pretty shoddy used FX to make it cheaper.

Or you can do this as well

When you redo the shoulder elastic, I suggest you attach your shoulder snaps (on the white elastic) more forward. This will move/tilt the shoulder bells forward and help close the gaps there. I think the way the straps are too short on the top is the cause of the torso problems I see there (separation of chest/ab, warping of the ab plate which makes the kidney stick out on the left side). With new shoulder elastic I think you're going to be doing very nice.