The5thHorseman

Like you said, cut the end closer the screw hole. It will be more accurate and also bring down the panel. Nothing difficult to do if you have a dremel. Just draw a guiding line where you want to cut, make sure the clip won't move and just cut through it. Watch for the heat but you shouldn't have too much trouble here. You can also easily do that with a hand-hacksaw if you prefer. If you're not confident, practise few times just above your final cut line.

I'll be following this. There's almost no ROTJ build threads around. About reference pictures, there are few excellent and very interesting pictures about the strapping used for ROTJ in the newly released book "Star Wars Costumes: the Original Trilogy". If you haven't seen them or don't have the book, i can send them to you by PM if you're interested.

It depends on which stormtrooper version your are going for. If ROTJ, then CFO would be your choice, otherwise choose AP for ANH or ESB stormtroopers. Even if AP used to be a ROTJ based kit, it has now been altered to look like ANH (and thus ESB). Stormtrooper ANH Stunt Stormtrooper ESB Stormtrooper ROTJ

Glad to hear it's moving on again! About the ab button plates, something you should consider modifying before gluing them is to square the angles. They aren't supposed to be rounded as you can see on the picture below:

Nice little tweaks you did, even if the velcro for the shoulder bridges kinda hurt me . Sure, the bridges will stay in place nicely on a mannequin but i wonder if they wouldn't become noisy when in motion? And that neckseal from Veedox is really nice, i wish i had the same. I just don't know if Stunts had a full tabard like that though.

A good thing to do would be to shorten the straps that go from the top of the shoulder bells to the shoulder bridge straps. It's an easy but also quite efficient way to help reducing the gaps of you have at the shoulders at the moment.

Very nice job on the blaster!! Well done.

This "difference" is just due to a different angle of view.

Congratulations! Welcome to EIB.

TM did!

Nice action pic. Using a different helmet than the AM one really makes a difference! Agreed.

Good job, however the top screw should be much closer to the end of the aluminium clip: Should be an easy fix!

Doopy kits used to come with a really bad scope rail in resin, though i don't know if it's still the case as i haven't seen one in a while, certainly because no one uses it. If you plan to build a DD kit Sean, i wouldn't recommand you to use it, flat aluminium bars are easy to find, either locally or via vendors on this forum.

There's a lot of pictures available here that might be helpful to you: http://www.whitearmor.net/forum/gallery/album/40-sterling-l2a3-mk-4/3 Once again, thank goes to Aaron.

Nothing beats the real thing! Great job Derrek and very nice blaster to own Dennis.

Yep, that's that. (ça m'a fait bizarre de voir du français, je m'y attendais pas !)

1. It's off course better if they lay flat against each other, but if you have a small gap between them, it won't affect the strength of the bond. 2. Correct, the cover stripe doesn't extend up to the bottom ridge. However, if you don't cut this small overlap you have left before gluing the cover stripes, i'm pretty sure it will mess with the alignment and gluing step. If you have a gap, on the right thigh it doesn't matter as it will be hidden by the ammo knee belt, but it will give you the occasion to practise the trimming before doing it on the left thigh. And if ever you were to have a gap on the left thigh, you could always make some ABS paste to fill it, even if it doesn't really necessitate it. 3. No consensus on this point. I don't know if there's one way to do it better than another.

About the sniper knee plate, the key for me has been to flatten the ridge of the outer/left wing. This way i was able to set the SKP sligthly higher than before on this side and minimize the crooked look:

The important point is for the end cap to be almost edge to edge with the en of the ABS ammo belt. On the pictures above it's the case, it's just that the tab of ABS is a bit shorter than what it should be.

Your biceps aren't too low. On the contrary, they are where they should be regarding your height. It's just that on your pics, especially the ones with the right arm lifted, i would have bet you had no black strap at the bottom of the shoulder bells.

Just to be clear, your belt should look like this when finished:

Well, among other tweaks your main problem if you want to go for Centurion is the fact your armor is assembled with the overlap technic instead of the butt-joint (use of cover stripes). I can see few cover stripes, like in front of the thighs and the shins, but otherwise it seems to be overlapping everywhere else. Also your right shin closes the wrong way. The outer half should overlap the inner half, like on your left shin. And, i'm not sure but i wouldn't be surprise if you were wearing the right forearm on your left arm, and vice versa. And, one thing that should have been done before your basic approval, you should have a black elastic glued at the bottom of the shoulder bells and wrapping around the top of the biceps:

That's that.

There are few things that can be improved but as Rich says, the armor looks already great! One common thing is the fact you are wearing your shoulder bells reversed. At the bottom of the middle ridge, one of the shoulder bell has a flare, this is the one that goes on the left/hand shoulder. The other one has none and goes on the right/hand shoulder, like the trooper below: Also, you can shave a bit more on the right side of your abdominal plate. This will make the male snap at the top to be located at the right distance from the edge: I can see on one of your pic that your left shin has ridden over the top of your boot so you might need to check for a way to prevent that in case it would happen to often. And even if on your pictures where you have had padding to your armor it looks better, on your first set of pics your drop boxes are all over the place. Their outer edge should be aligned with the end of the ABS belt. Basically when you snap the belt to the ab plate, just make sure the elastic of the drop boxe is stuck between the outer rivet and the snap on the inside.

If your belt rides over your butt plate in the back, it's because it's set too low on your abdominal plate. The top of the ABS belt should be right under the ab buttons or slightly overlapping them. I would also, shorten the length of the arm straps, as you've got too much gap between the bottom of your biceps and top of the forearms. It's better to have a wrist gap than an elbow gap: