Haribon72

Completed some heat bending and shape. Here's the finished look.

Repair work on butt plate and strapping bracket. We used left over plastic, cut to size, sand and glue.

Re-visiting the Ab and butt plate assembly. We're going to eliminate the flapping butt plate and tighten up "family jewel" area. We really need that bottom ab area to pull in the butt plate. We also had one of the strapping brackets break the armor. So we will be showing our repair work. Done.

Awesome build!

Congrats man!!!!

Wait a minute.... you got trading cards from Tony????????? Where's mine?????????????? As for the lower legs, I think you're fine.

Looks so brand new and shiny.

Sorry, I didn't take much pictures of the arms and legs build. The day went on... and I think the BBQ short ribs and beer (kinda) slowed us down. Here are the day end pics I took of his 85% finished lower legs. We will add the 20mm finish strips and the sniper knee on our next session. The lower legs have the butt joint requirement with white velcro to hold them together. Okay....to be continued.

How To Work the Back of the Thighs and Lower Legs Okay.... there's a purpose to my method with the thighs, lower legs and arms. Earlier in our thread, we left the back parts untrimmed. Now that we have a full day, Bingo is going to wear the center core to get use to the plastic costume. While he's wearing it, we will put on the leg and arms to get his final fitting. This is the perfect time to get the right measurements before trimming and gluing. We created a "clam shell " phase on the thighs and legs. This makes it easy to fitting, mark, and trim. First we measured the length (without boots). He has muscular calves so we want to add comfort first. Then we cut them down and added the boots to get the final fit.

Morning came and he wanted to do a test fit with my ANH stunt helmet. On this day, we had garrison members help with the arms and legs (mostly sizing, shaping, cutting, sanding, beer, laughs, jokes, Star Wars talk, and BBQ. Bingo installed the mesh screen for the frown using hot glue. Nothing fancy. I recommend your paint your inside bucket black so it won't show the hot glue work from afar.

As he was cutting, I was sewing his velcro straps. Yes, I'm learning how to sew.

We decided to freestyle it and shape to Bingo's hands. NE armor is tough to cut. It took several minutes to cut. More shaping. Done. Set aside for now.

I've never worked on ESB hand plates. So were doing some reading.

Gloves and ESB handplates. Reference check. Bingo picked these up at OSH hardware store in the house cleaning aisle. EDITED ON 11/12/2015. We have abandon the chemical gloves for this project. We have updated to black silk gloves. Link here: http://www.whitearmor.net/forum/topic/33467-team-armor-build-ne-esb-in-northern-california/?p=440047

Shoulder Bells. Jingle Bells. la la la la la! The swoop going to the left the left. Added snaps and labeled them for easy identification. Set aside for now.

With the bicep cut-outs, we made the j-hooks. Now there's a lot of discussion about the hooks for ESB. We're going to make and add them for trooping use and avoid any further discussions. Done. Set aside for now.

Tape it back up, mark, cut, and shape them to screen accuracy.

Biceps. Identify left and right. Size them up to Bingo's biceps. Cut. Cut off the return edges.

Next, we size them up to Bingo's forearms (length first). We will remove the wrist and elbow areas later.

Remove all the return edges first.

Right arm has twelve square dips. Yes, I know these are ANH references, but it just makes sense to get the forearms identified.

Let's prepare the forearms for Bingo. Reference reminder. Identifying the left forearm. Left arm has eleven square dips.

Time to add the grey. Allow to dry overnight and we will re-visit with an exacto knife to clean off the smear marks.

Here's the look before painting the outside black border.