maxsteele

Hey Chuck, I was looking back at Centurion builds, and I noticed Anthony (Redforce) had left the built-in shim material on his NE kit, and he installed the snap where you have your #1 marked:

(posted in wrong thread - sorry!)

TK-42430 reporting for duty to Cloud City Garrison! This was probably one of the longest build threads I have seen on these forums. I checked, second checked, and triple checked myself on this entire build. I had some mistakes (cracked ab plate! Noooooooo!) and was able to overcome them and finish! Big thanks go out to Steve and Mathias for their extreme patience when I was panicking and didn't know what to do next. You guys really kept me moving forward! Thank you to all of the NE builders who commented on here and gave moral support with the solidarity of us all having the same kit. Special thanks to Anthony for having the first NE kit to achieve Centurion and giving me a direct kit reference when getting my measurements and strapping finalized. This is turning into an awards speech. . I know I'm not mentioning everyone here, but I do want to thank everyone who helped me on this incredibly daunting journey from non-crafter to 501st member. For those who have been following my build for help, please feel free to send me a private message with any questions you have and I'll try to answer them to the best of my ability.

Thank you very much! I'm beyond excited!

I just downloaded the mp3 from the 501st site and it is working for me. Used Chrome, Right clicked on the link, chose "save as" and it downloaded fine. I'm listening to it now.

Here's the helmet bag. It fits an ATA helmet with plenty of room to spare.

Yep, that's the black elastic I used for my straps. And those are the snaps I used. I think I used 4-5 packages of them. As for the white strips, I didn't use canvas, I used elastic as well. I didn't use braided elastic, I just used 2 inch white elastic - http://www.joann.com/knit-elastic/11384401.html#q=knit+elastic&start=19

Nick, that pic you drew the line on? That's my armor. That's me standing there in my living room. I was showing Christian what an over-lap of the ab and kidney looked like, and how I cut my pieces to remove the overlap. That isn't CAP armor. The only photo Christian has shown of his kidney in this thread is the unboxing photo.

Oh ho! You were referring to my kidney plate! Sorry, not upside down. You can't see it in this shot because it's washed out, but there is a square indentation at the bottom there that I had cut out. Also, the line you drew is not where the edge is. Here is the piece just after I cut out the square notch. You'll see the return edge of the square notch: Compare that to the pic you are referring to, and you'll see you're drawing the line at the notch, which isn't where the edge of the kidney is.

I got my elastic from Joanns. One inch black ribbed elastic. I made snap plays using pieces of black webbing with a hole burned into it with a soldering iron and using #24 male drizt snaps. Then I cut pieces of elastic to the lengths I wanted to hold pieces together and installed a female snap in each side. You'll see plenty of examples in centurion build threads.

Oooh, are you saying that the kidney of CAP armor was cast upside down and that's how it is for all CAP armor?

TKBoots are approved up to Centurion. Bass Amsterdam boots painted white are approved up to Centurion as well, as I have seen a Centurion build that was approved with them: http://www.whitearmor.net/forum/topic/27699-tk-32627-requesting-anh-hero-centurion-status-ne125/

I'm curious out of the troopers here who don't have a speaker set-up for their TK, do you still talk to the public when you're suited up? Or do you stay mute? If you do talk, do you have a canned response for people when they ask why you don't sound like a Stormtrooper?

If there were two boxes in front of me, and someone was giving me the choice to take one, I would take the AP box.

I'm not sure what you're referring to? The only pics of kidney pieces in this thread are the ones I posted, which are of my kidney piece, and it's certainly not upside down There's also one other example ab / kidney pic that Jenny posted, but that one is correct as well.

For cod rivet placement, take a look at screen-used armor: For strapping, it depends on what type of strapping you wish to do. I did snap plates glued inside the armor and straps snapping into place between them. Other people use the bracket system where you drill holes in the return edges, install brackets, and there's a small bit of elastic that runs between two brackets. I studied lots of EIB / Centurion build photos where they show their strapping systems and made mine fit to me. No sewing was required.

Yep! 3 rivets on the left side ab plate, 3 rivets on the left side kidney plate, 1 rivet at the bottom of the crotch on the ab plate. Here's a great thread for rivet placement: http://www.whitearmor.net/forum/topic/26886-split-rivet-placement/

TK-42430 requesting access! Ron Lenzi Profile Link: http://www.501st.com/members/displaymemberdetails.php?userID=17363 Thank you!

You want 3 rivets on the ab and 3 rivets on the kidney. Don't use one rivet to go through both pieces. If you find you're having an overlap when you fit the pieces to your body, find the point where you want the two pieces to touch edges, mark, and cut the extra away. I know my kit is different than yours, but here is a before and after with my ab / kidney connection. Here is before I did any trimming at all. You can see the overlap: And here's the after, where I marked the midline that those pieces overlapped, trimmed it to fit, and installed the rivets on the left, and closed up the gap with the belt tightening on the right:

I did not heat bend my sniper at all. I made three glue contacts - one on each corner, and one in the center where the sniper came in contact with the knee. Then I put two magnets at each glue point, and put clamps on top of the magnets. Make sure to make some straight cuts on the ends of the sniper plate similar to this: (Thanks to Redforce for the pics - I didn't take any of my sniper plate)

Yeah, you'll be fine with how the kidney / ab is for base approval right now. The rivets and the snap aren't needed until Centurion. The square cut on the kidney is for EIB, so that should be something to look at first. Getting that in place will also help to get the rivets realigned when you get to that point.

Hey ya Chuck, thanks for the pics! For the snap placement, The Centurion builds I've seen have placed the snap as you have it marked for #2. However, they had the built-in shim material cut away as well. I'm really not sure on this one. I'd look for other opinions on that one before putting the snap in. If you are going to go for Centurion, two issues that there may be is the rivet placement and the bottom of the kidney. For rivet placement, your bottom rivet is in the cod area rather than the ab area. With the kidney side, there is a square to be cut out. You can see it as part of the extra shim area, but I'm not sure if you'd cut all the way over to it with the extra, or cut it to where it would be without the extra on the sides. Here's a pic to show a screen-used rivet placement and square notch cut: I assembled an ATA helmet, which is 2-piece, so I can't really give much feedback on how the NE helmet is assembled.

Looking a little closer, both the shins and the thighs are closed with velcro. I don't have an issue with velcro for shin closures, but the thighs should definitely not be velcro-closed. It also looks like the shoulder plastic is what is getting used to connect the back to the chest, and I see velcro squares in the front. The shoulder plastic should be for looks only and not a functional connection. The back-to-front connection should be with elastic. It also looks like the forearms might be closed with velcro as well. I'm seeing some sharp edges that look similar to how the edges are on the thighs and shins. There are no rivet covers for the belt. A very minor detail, but a detail nonetheless. I'm with everyone else here. Get a kit from a trusted vendor and build it right from the beginning. Don't get stuck with correcting someone else's mistakes.

The first boot and the fourth boot are not accepted because there is a seam in the front. The only visible seam you want is right below where the bend in the "U" on the elastic sides is. The third boot is a completely different style than what was used on-screen and is 100% not approvable on any level. The second and fifth boots are what you're going for. If I had to choose between those two, I would go with the second one, as it goes higher on the tops, which will help the shins have something to sit down on and potentially prevent them from slipping upward.

Second on Mathias' statement. Stay far away from velcro for strapping like the thighs. The only places I used velcro on my entire build was to close the shins (didn't want to do the clasp system), some velcro on the tops of my boots to hold my shins down on them, and the straps for the drop boxes (the velcro is inside the boxes so I can adjust or remove them if I wish). For my thighs, I used a garter belt with adjustable snap plates. I bought mine from Vaderdave - http://www.whitearmor.net/forum/topic/26463-tk-thigh-garters-available-for-immediate-delivery/ . I wanted a belt system that I could individually adjust the height of each thigh, and I have zero sewing experience (or a sewing machine) to make a set of these. I went one better and install a second snap above the first one he provided, so I have two snaps on each thigh for extra protection. It was suggested to place the snaps inside the thigh about 2 - 2 1/2 inches from the top, but I found that I couldn't adjust the thighs high enough with my kit. I ended up placing the snaps about 8 inches down inside the thigh from the top. I can still reach to snap them in, I'm able to adjust them up high enough, and two snaps on each gives me extra peace of mind. I have walked around a bunch with test fits and walking around the neighborhood, and haven't had a snap on them fail yet.