swmand4

Try Tandy Leather Factory's website. They sell Line 24 snaps for about $3.50 for a bag of 10. Also, the setting tool and anvil are about $4 each.

I don't know where you are located, but here in the states the most popular snaps seem to be either Tandy Line 24 or Dritz Heavy Duty size 24 snaps.

I, and I think most people here, would advise against anything eBay. Even if it is legit, you can get a much better looking suit than FX. Plus, if you get it from a vetted maker you can assemble it yourself and make it fit your frame A LOT better. You might find this link helpful: http://www.whitearmor.net/forum/topic/11538-the-various-types-of-armor-and-where-to-find-them/

Finally finished gluing the thighs. They weren't as bad as I thought they'd be. To fit them, I just taped the halves to together and expected the curved part near my knee to rest on top of my knee cap. That gives me flexibility and brings the tops close to the cod piece. However, being RT-Mod, they were REALLY big around. I trimmed ~6mm off the top of both and ~4.3mm off the bottom. More precisely, I cut 3mm off the overlapped side to remove the overlap. Then I cut 3mm off the top of the other side and 1.3mm off the bottom of the other side. Here's cutting off the entire overlap: Trimming different amounts off the tops and bottom makes the armor fit me better, but has the unfortunate side effect of making the seam slanted instead of straight up and down. My solution: slant the cover strip back towards vertical while still covering the seam. Hopefully you can see the pencil lines in the third picture. It turned out well enough. Left is non-corrected, right is corrected. Some various stages of gluing: I'm not sure I like the way the split at the bottom turned out... I guess that's normal looking, though? I might glue a little piece on the inside of the seam to give it a bit more stability and make sure the halves don't get wrenched apart. I thought the shape was weird at first, but I remembered the forearms did too and they turned out fine. It fits well so I'm not worried. I also glued the snap plates in for the garter connection, but I forgot to take a picture. I can tell you that I placed mine centered on my inner front strip. The center of the snap is 16mm down from the top of the armor. I also forgot to take back facing picture when I put the thighs on for test fitting. I'm sure there will be one in the near future Now, for my latest test-fit pictures! There's obviously still a lot to do, but the bulk of the work is done and it's really taken shape. Surprisingly, the armor is really comfortable, even with open shins and no padding installed. Speaking of which, I hate how the shins look in these pictures. They look too "fat" at the ankles. I think it's because they aren't closed and just flapping free and pulling apart. Hopefully they will look better once closed. I was even able to do a little dance on my balcony. Although, I dropped my gloves when getting dressed and couldn't pick them up. I felt a bit helpless, lol.

I once got my RT-Mod helmet on with my glasses on, but it was very uncomfortable. Looks like I'm getting contacts, too.

I like the look of the rivet repair. It tells a story and helps sell the look. Don't know if it will pass approval, but Death Troopers aren't ever shown on film or in games so I don't see why some liberties and improvisation would be a problem.

Good luck, Lee!

Thanks for the tip, Lee. My plan right now is to finish the basic parts of the armor and deal with certain accuracy details later. Ideally, I want to shorten the belt to the correct length. For now, I plan to leave it and the cod piece alone, and take stock of the situation once the rest of the armor is finished. Then I can decide if I want to modify it further for better accuracy. Same deal with the smaller details (side rivets, ab button paint, vocoder paint, etc); they'll come later. I did notice a problem during my cod piece test fit: if I bend too far forward, the middle snap holding it to the AB plate tends to pop off. I don't think this will be a problem now that I know to put things on from the boots up, but we'll see. Hopefully I can start assembling the left thigh tonight... I'm planning on using 20mm cover strips for the front and 23mm for the back. This will match the strips used on the shins.

I did a test fit with the AB plate overlaying the cod piece. Looks like I will need to modify the sides after all. And black out the Eastbay logo. Here's how it turned out: Next up I'm going to start working on the thighs.

Hmm well I'm 6'2"... hopefully I measured things correctly. Anyway, I got impatient waiting for more feedback and decided to just go for it. So here's how I attached my cod piece to the AB plate. If it doesn't work, I can always add more snap plates below the originals and either leave the top ones or remove them. I'll be doing a full test fit tonight to see how it all looks and maybe do some thigh armor sizing. Exciting!

I glued canvas webbing between the bridge and the chest plate. Most of the burden is on the canvas so it feels like a nice and solid connection, with no indication that's what was done. I used E-6000 for it.

Thanks Mathias, I appreciate that. I think I can handle the R&D costs - I just need to convince myself to spend the money

It looks like I don't have to trim the edges of my cod piece - I'm not THAT slim (but thanks for the compliment). What I'm thinking of doing is overlapping it behind the AB plate by ~1 inch. That way I don't have to trim it and it lines up with the height of the butt plate. Here's what it looks like with the belt overlaid. It covers the seam and sits in the right place. Note that I have not modified it yet to match length requirements. It looks like the swoop will almost come up to the belt... at least the canvas part once the belt plastic is trimmed. Overlaying the pieces together makes for an awkward snap plate position. I'm thinking of putting it here and using canvas straps to connect the cod and AB instead of elastic. As for trimming the AB plate... I'm thinking of lining the bottom of it up with the bottom of the kidney plate then trimming the sides and finally trimming the upper curved part (that sits under the chest piece) to match up with the top of the kidney plate. The the cod piece (with the previously mentioned overlap) will match up with height of the butt piece. Thoughts and feedback would be greatly appreciated at this point, as I have not cut or glued anything mentioned in this post yet... Thanks!

That's more or less what I did. I managed to convince myself one side had a slight curve outward and I called it the butt/down side. Although, I'm fairly certain that was an optical illusion from staring at it for so long trying to figure it out.

After days of poring over my design and trying to find some alternatives to the connectors I chose (and failed), I decided to order parts to start building this thing. Then I discovered two things: One, my Lithium Ion charge controller is no longer in stock anywhere and will not be replenished until September 25th. Two, I forgot how expensive R&D costs are. Thus, this project will have to wait a little until I redesign the charge controller and have some more money to spend on hobbies. Hopefully it won't be more than a few weeks. Don't worry, I'll finish this thing eventually.

I haven't updated in a while, so this might be a big post with a lot of info... SNAP PLATES First things first: I had to make more snap plates, so I thought I'd share what I did. I opted to use the hammer and anvil instead of the pliers since I've heard it's less likely to fail. I think I ultimately destroyed about 35% of the snaps by doing it this way... Put the stem through the hole. Put the anvil behind the snap and bang the tool with a hammer. Jut hope the snap's stem doesn't bend funny like it often did for me... NEXT: ADDING SNAP PLATES TO ARMOR When I get a chance, I'll try to take a picture of the armor interior all together. I added a couple of adjustable straps to the chest and AB plates to help keep the chest down. Even thought I put double snap plates down, I'm only using one of them. I could only find 1" parachute buckles so I can only use 1" canvas, which only has room for one snap. This seem to work really well. PUT IT ALL TOGETHER (and make sure the AB plate is right-side-up) I didn't take pictures of gluing the bicep hooks, or strapping the biceps to the forearms. I'll add a picture of the whole arm assembly at some point. NEXT UP is adding in the cod piece and trimming the sides of the AB and kidney plates as they overlap a lot. BEFORE doing that, I will post a picture of the sides and my proposed cut lines to get some feedback. I'm also looking into cod piece alignment before gluing any snap plates to the ab. I'm thinking of overlapping the ab on top of the cod by about 1 inch. This looks like it will align the bottom of the cod with the bottom of the butt. I guess I'll post some pictures and see where Lee ends up with his build. Then it's on to the thigh armor. And eventually all the little other details like closing the shins, sniper knee plate, thigh ammo pack, painting, split rivets, etc.

Looking really good, Lee!

I actually did buy a set of them, but haven't decided if I want to use them yet. Didn't Darth Aloha use them in his build? Can they be used for centurion?

If anything, we're all learning from each others mistakes. You're doing a good job - keep up the good work, Lee.

Looks like you just used the trim job Rob did, which has a slight return edge. I literally could not get my hands in and out without trimming mine back, so yeah it will be more comfortable.

Thanks, Jesse. I use a new popsicle stick every time I spread E-6000 and guess I'm too lazy to toss it in the trash. Same with the mass of painters tape.

Ah hell... you're right, the ab plate is upside down. In my defense, it's hard to see in those helmets

I haven't posted any updates in a while, so this one will cover multiple things I've completed. First up: snap plates! I decided to use canvas backing for all of my plates. Unfortunately, I did not take any pictures of the process of making them. Probably for the best, since I screwed up about half of them by hammering too hard. Oh yeah, I used a hammer, setting tool, and anvil to finish the snaps. If I could go back, I would use the crimp tool thing. Double snaps for chest armor: Elastic strap for holding the bicep. I just glued the elastic directly to the shoulder bell: Starting to attach the should bridge. I created the straps to connect the chest and back pieces together (no pictures, sorry) and then tested how many "bumps" should be glued to the chest to allow tying to the back. For me, it was three plus the big one. So I put it in place and drew the outline with pencil. This way, I know where to scuff it up and where to apply E-6000. I'll go back and erase the lines during clean up. Since there is little to no contact for glue to stick to, I used a method hinted at in Darth Aloha's thread: glue canvas under the bridge and then glue the canvas to the chest. I made sure it would all fit and not be visible. I used one longer piece to go up to the large bump and a smaller piece that stopped short of it. Here's the canvas drying to the bridges: When I was making some straps, I couldn't wait to see the whole thing come together. So I put on what I had finished! The shoulder bell needs to be adjusted and I'm holding the ab armor in place which slightly rotates the chest, but it seems to be coming along well.

I did something similar, but trimmed back the edges with my Lexan scissors. I cut far enough back to remove any trace of a return edge. Then sanded it smooth. All before assembling, of course.

Good luck Jesse! It's looking good so far. And it's always good to see another RT-Mod suit assembled with cover strips. As for excess glue... Yeah, I had the same problem. I'll have some extra clean up on my build when it's finished.