Cob

Roughed out the eyes by penciling along the mold lines, then scoring and xactoing out materials. I think the tear-duct side of things may need to be trimmed a little more, left room to grow on this side just in case. Need to study some pics. Insides: Outsides: After looking through the reference galleries on the site here, it looks like I should trim the inside and upper corners of the eyes slightly so that they're a little more angular. http://www.whitearmor.net/forum/gallery/album/13-helmet-a-new-hope-stunt-star-wars-identities/ It also looks like a lot of the ANH Stunt helmets have a lot of sloppy trim around the eyes, so other than altering the shape on the corners I am going to leave the sides of the eyes alone. For the frown -- The cuts above are just getting my toes wet; looking at the reference gallery on stunt frowns http://www.whitearmor.net/forum/gallery/image/2247-anhstuntfrown2/, there is plenty of room to go wild.

Absolutely. I'll bring my hobo bindle of plastic. :-) Noted of course. The shirt I was wearing there previously was a running top, so thin fabric, pretty close to compression gear. Did a little bit of cleanup; mostly just tidying up the rough parts on the edges of the forearms. The right arm is trimmed down to where the 5/8" coverstrip should go, but there's a lot of extra room compared to the left arm. Was planning on doing the helmet after the armor, but I don't need to wait on undersuit, strapping, gloves etc to work on it. Think that is what I will work on next.

Hello everyone! Long time lurker, but you might remember me from the top selling thread earlier this year "did I just ruin my doopydoos kit?" (No. Apoxie Sculpt putty will fix anything. Even relationships.) Since then, I had been slacking off, not finishing my E-11 and doing a little spotting for Cloud City Garrison here in Oregon. I finally wrapped up my AT-ST, and joined, but still very much a total newb. The Armored Calvary Division is happy that my spray-paint test threads have finally died down and they can get back to discussing more lofty topics like the top one shield generators ever dropped by imperial ground attack and what the proper ratio of crumpets to snowtroopers to pack your walker with is. AT-ST is a great kit, but it definitely needs some Stormtroopers to hide behind. Not a lot of people are familiar with it (you're a... space pilot?), and I'm also having a hard time keeping my goggles clear. Looking forward to rocking out with the same great green tint, but with some fans blasting all my sweat and mouth breathing off of the lenses for a change of pace. The missus, "why didn't you just make a stormtrooper instead?" So pragmatic. At the seaside beach troop, "see honey.. that's a sandtrooper, aren't they awesome?" (hint hint) "No. It needs to be clean and white." So here I am. Maybe she will let me get away with a heavy weapons trooper down the road... So, this Monday my ATA kit finally landed. I think most people felt stoked about their shipments, but it's been a bit of a worry given my paralysis on the E-11, and all of these different parts that need work. I've been a little lazy about my research leading up to this but I know based on my AT-ST helmet build, that it's all just a matter of time and effort. And thankfully, I can savor it a bit while I build new skills, because I'm not in a huge rush. However, I knew that i had to start cuttin' on that plastic in order to show it who was boss. I was planning on starting with the shins, but watched a couple of the trooperbay build videos and went with the forearms. Started with pencil, tracing the inside lip of the curve. Scored with an x-acto blade and then snapped it off in little chunks. Eventually I was removing the entire inside plastic in one part. I left no return edge on either the top or bottom of the forearms. Not sure if this was a mistake, but I could probably melt the top of the forearm if it was. Day two of working on it. I made a paper template of the 5/8" coverstrips for the forearms. I made a "half-coverstrip" template of 5/16", and used that to trace a pencil line on to the outside of the plastic. Then, I used a metal straightedge to redraw along that line, then score it with the x-acto blade and snap. None of these ragged edges are cleaned up yet. I think I already may have experienced at least one armor nibble. Despite the no return edge on this, there is a slight lip on the inside that will need to be filed down. No compression suit top yet, so I figured I would try on with my woefully-underused running gear. I can barely squeeze my hand into it (the forearm, not the running gear), but I have small arms (circumference wise.) The length seems pretty good as-is. I can bend elbows and wrists okay. Bass Amsterdam boots arrived yesterday, but I'm now on the TKboots waiting list. I was planning on breaking the Amsterdams in with some double socks this morning, but I realized that I was running the risk of showing up on a "Jeans and Sheuxs" blog. Put them back in the closet for now. Next plan -- not sure? More research maybe. Maybe file down some edges and work on getting some cover strips made. Thanks for reading, and sorry in advance for the slow updates that will be trickling in!

IS-10054 looking for 501st forum status! http://www.501st.com/members/displaymemberdetails.php?userID=17598

Inspiring work deebo! I got interested in the 501st while thinking about costumes for a 5k run.. Half marathon is just crazy town to me. . Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Others can answer this better, but definitely -- you'll need to source all your 'soft parts' and accessories. Boots, holster, belt, etc. You'll need whatever tools are necessary -- clamps, glue, tools to cut your plastic. I haven't hit this part yet. My doopydoos is going very slowly. You'll also need a spring and aluminum for the top rail; as well as hardware and tools for any modifications that you want to -- and there are so many different mods on the forums here it can get demoralizing. :-) Apoxie sculpt (for patching holes), clamps, rubber bands, socket head screws, a hacksaw, E6000 glue, a vise and a dremel have been my purchases to date on that project. Having access to a drill press would also be very helpful for mods. Hope this helps!

I took my socket screw-head and used a pencil to lay down some thick guidelines; then used an xacto to cut into the resin along the inside of the marked area. In hindsight, I didn't need the xacto step. After getting going with the file set that I had, I realized that it was way too fine toothed to move a decent amount of resin without being there all night, so I decided to get a little bolder. I didn't have the dremel bit that gazmosis recommended, but I hooked up the flex shaft attachment and the little tungsten carbide bit and gave it a whack. I had a little bit of a problem with the bit slipping out of the inside of the area where I was carving, and left some damage along the outside of the muzzle. If it doesn't sand out and the paint doesn't cover it then that gets to count as added character. I had to put the barrel into my vise (which does not suction very well to the tool storage thing which I'm misusing as a workspace) and use both hands to control the dremel. Managed to get the socket head stuck in the hole (you can see above that it's still not perfectly round), but I got it out and then cleaned it up a bit with the file. I also put the drill bit into the hole and turned it by hand, but it didn't really help anything out there. For future folks reading this -- Overall, if I was starting from scratch on a new blaster kit -- I would have filed down the plastic lump there. Center and mark a spot for a guide hole with pencil. Drill the guide hole with a dremel, then drill out the main hole by either turning the bit by hand, or in a drill press if you have one. If you have a flat-bottom drill bit, that might work better, or you could just not drill down all the way and finish up with the dremel cutter which left a nice flat surface. So! Cheers! Thanks for the recommendations, patching this up ended up being a lot easier than I expected.

Thanks gents! I really appreciate your great responses. Definitely not competent with the dremel, this is literally the first thing I've ever dremeled. :-) I didn't even think about using a file... it seems like it should have been obvious now. New plan: I'm going to pencil mark it off tonight and try and file it down by hand. If that goes badly -- backup plan. Backup plan: I picked up some 3M Bondo Spot Filler Expoxy Putty last night (recommended in someone else's thread as it has a similar softness to the resin). Let it dry, and then sink a new guide-hole, and then try and hand bore the hole. Thanks again, I'll update with results.

Referencing: http://www.dremel.com/en-us/customerservice/ManualsAndLiterature/Documents/2011%20Accessory%20Poster.pdf So that looks like... a #115 5/16" high speed cutter? So do you recommend that I just keep winging it? I also thought maybe I could magic marker out the areas to not remove in black and maybe that would help. I was using a #561 "Multipurpose cutting bit", I also have a #9001 tungsten carbide cutter that someone recommended, but is said "not for drilling" on it, so I didn't do that.

This is a Doopydoos E11 Complete Resin kit, and I don't know what I'm doing - so I am learning as I go. I bought a dremel and a workstation that works like a drill press, but then learned you can't seat a 3/8" bit in it, so I probably could have researched that better... I don't have a lot of tools or handy knowledge. The top hole -- well it was kind of bubbly and the initial guide hole slipped and was off-center. Then I decided maybe I could just dremel it down and slowly expand it out to the correct shape. In process I sort of realize that isn't going to work out perfectly and stopped before I carved out too much. The bottom hole worked out great -- I used the dremel press to make a guide hole and then just hand-worked the 3/8" drill-bit like a hand bore to carve out the resin. Soo -- I'm pretty sure this is fixable, but I'm not sure how. Is there some sort of putty or epoxy that I can fill this with that would have a similar hardness to the original resin? If so, I could patch it, then drill a new guide hole and then hand-bore it like the successful hole. I'm not sure coming in with a drill over the unpatched hole is going to be feasible, especially without having a real drill press.