stormtrooperguy

krylon gloss white. the color is close to the epoxy stuff, and it dries in 10 minutes. i'm hoping to troop in this suit next wednesday, so speed is of the essence!

Since the recessed areas where the hovis live was sort of thin, i painted a layer of JB kwik along the insides to shore them up. Camera Roll-88 by stormtrooperguy, on Flickr The helmet is on the road to doneness... Camera Roll-91 by stormtrooperguy, on Flickr

i tried the white rustoleum appliance epoxy. YUCK. 24 hours to handle and a WEEK to recoat? forget that! i typically spend about 10 hours total painting a clone head to toe... base paint, colors, weathering, etc... no way am i spending a month painting something white! i stripped the epoxy stuff back off the helmet. huge pain in the butt, but it was faster than doing the whole suit would be with the epoxy. i grabbed a bunch of other brands of gloss white. i'll use whichever i like best of that lot.

finished cleanup on the helmet, sanded it all out, and put down a coat of white. it's not as smooth as i'd like, so i'll wet sand it tonight and do it again. i hope to have the helmet done in the next couple of days. holster is ordered, boots on the way. it's coming together! i'll be recycling my under armor and gloves from the clone. i'll need to make a new neck seal though. i've got an extra underarmor shirt, so i'm thinking i'll use that for the neck seal material.

All done trimming the armor... just gotta sand the edges. I couldn't resist, so I put the helmet together. I'll have to take it apart to sand it and paint it, but it was cool seeing it together. One AWESOME side benefit of all the clone stuff... a dark green face shield yields 1 clone visor and 2 pairs of stormy lenses. And I've cut out 15 clone visors in the last 2 weeks The eye holes aren't even fully trimmed there, but I taped the lenses in anyway, just to see it.

I just ordered the boots. I had been planning on over $100 for them so I'm really glad to have had tkboots.com pointed out to me. Tonight I had been planning to work on Jabba the Hutt in my driveway, but it's looking rainy again. So, I may have to work on the stormy indoors instead

Jumping in on this... if you use the All Purpose cement from the plumbing aisle it holes HIPS perfectly. Anything but the all purpose is doomed to fail. I'm probably going to go that route myself since I have a ton of it and it's held my clones together well. The key with that is to use it like you were doing plumbing. Thin coats on both parts, then rub them together a bit before final placement. The cement dissolves the surface of the plastic a bit, so when you rub them together you are ensuring that the softened parts blend well together. Once the solvents evaporate you'll have a nice, permanent bond.

Nice! Way better looking than the caboots, and CHEAP!

I'm trying. I'd love to get back to that 175 I was at a couple of years ago! But ditching Vizsla? That I don't know about... I mean, rumor has it that I should have a couple of minions by then. I can't let the Deathwatch go unled!

I did this a long time ago, but hadn't been posting here. The base Sterling is an interesting beast. It's been circulating in my garrison for years... longer than I've been a member even. People kept getting it, saying that they were going to finish it up, putting it in storage, then selling it. Thankfully I broke the cycle! A funny story from the pickup. Shipping something like this is fraught with peril. Despite being properly deactivated (the entire receiver tube is solid steel!), it's still an awkward thing to pass around. To look at it, you would never know it was a non-firing weapon. I went to meet up with the current owner to get it. He was at his son's birthday party, and asked that I meet him at the bowling alley to get it. I pull up and call him. He comes out, and I expect to get a box. No, I got a machine gun, full clip in place, handed to me in the parking lot. EEP! So I toss it back in his car and ask for a bag or something. He has a CVS pharmacy shopping bag. Take what I can get I suppose! Put it in the bag and now instead of carrying a machine gun, I'm carrying a machine gun in a shopping bag. Thankfully we got home without incident! I was dreading a speeding ticket or something the whole ride. Next came a period of hunting on the RPF and eBay for parts. I ended up with 2 Hengstlers. I accidentally cracked the clear screen in the first one. Thankfully the person I bought it from had another. I found the scope on eBay for a very reasonable price, which surprised me. I really wanted the M19, but none came up. And fashioned the scope rail out of some steel bar stock. I picked up T track from Saberfreak on the RPF. The cylinders are from Sci-Fire. And finally, all together: I did decide to paint it. I didn't do any sanding / stripping of the base parts, but I wanted it to look "straight off the assembly line", so I coated it all with a satin finish black. Shown here next to my Hyperfirm:

very nice! i didn't strip mine, but i did paint it. that left the texture underneath and gave it a feel of something that's seen some battles but has been maintained / cleaned up often. i ultimately decided that i couldn't deal with the differences in color between all the different pieces. the counter, scope and gun didn't look like all one part on mine.

I'm not posting pics of the mundane stuff, but I've trimmed most of the kit. I have 1 thigh and 1 shin left to go. Sadly, that was when I realized that it was 3:15AM and I needed to leave for work in 7 hours. Trying to figure out what to do about the arms. The cast-from-original one is such an odd shape. I'm not sure I'm keen on it, and am considering banging out my own version. Lose the heritage, make it more idealized? I'm really sad about the ab/kidney. I'm 1 inch from closing them without shims. An inch!!! Grrr.... So, a-shimming I will go. Or maybe a-dieting I will go I still have my old caboots, but they are a mess. So, I'll be in the market for new stormie shoes. I'm also thinking that I'm going to replace the dome/cap with a non-bumpy. While the bumpy cap is accurate, I'm just not a fan. I love the detail in the face, and in my mind it's a shape to put such a sharp face with such a soft dome/back. Once this stuff is sorted I suspect the assembly will go fast. Am I right that most folks are using rustoleum appliance epoxy? I use that on Palpatine canes and it works wonders. Nice and strong and super shiny. So, I'll likely use that anyway. There are no other painted HIPS stormies in the NEG, so I don't have to worry about matching. Actually, we barely have any stormtroopers at all, which is why I'm doing this. I think we have 2-3 regular troopers at this point.

thanks for the heads-up. request is in

CC-7602 requesting 501st status. http://501st.com/members/displaymemberdetails.php?userID=3421

Hello troopers, I just got my ATA kit in the mail on Saturday, and am looking forward to building it up! Right now I'm soaking in build threads and assembly tips. This will be my 3rd trooper kit. I started off in 2004 with an FX TK. 5 months and about 40 pounds later I fit the suit better and got a GF2 helmet Then 2 years and another 10 - 15 pounds later I ditched the FX armor in favor of an AP: ...which I then converted to a sandtrooper. I've spent the last couple of years deeply entrenched in the Clone Wars, and making my own animated style clone helmet, armor and weapons. Now that I'm "done" with that, I want to spend some time in the OT again. The only thing I kept along the way was my E-11. It's a deactivated Sterling with original scope and counter. The T-track is from an RPF run of vintage cabinet drawer track. May not be the exact same stuff, but it's close and I like the idea of having something on there that's from the 70s. Since the E11 is ANH style, I'm probably going to go that route with the armor. Though to be fair, I don't really plan on trooping with the 14 pound beast of a gun all that often. I'll probably mold some parts of it and make up my own scratch built / cast parts trooping weapon. I'll skip the pics of the ATA parts coming out of the box... you've all seen those already. I'm hoping to start assembly later this week or early next. I'm working on this, an animated clone pilot helmet, and a rehab of the NEG's Jabba the Hutt puppet, so time is tight. But, I haven't had any original trilogy white armor in a few years, so I'm excited to get back to a classic. One question I have is regarding the "missing arm" from the kit. I seem to remember that 1 of the arms was a fan sculpt and one was cast from original. Is it the more flared one that's original? If so, I'm thinking of making up my own new bicep to make the pair match better. It seems a simple enough piece to work out. Anyway, this space will soon be full of glue and paint

I don't think paint really makes HIPS any stronger. In my experience HIPS is pretty tough for impact in general, but where it gets weak is that it will continue to tear along the slightest crack with very little effort. For example, I hit the chest of my clone armor with a hammer, and it did not break. But, I over-trimmed a piece, leaving a slight razor cut into the finished part. I was able to tear it completely in half easily. As far as the fear of painting it goes... with the exception of the helmet and ab buttons, you're just painting the suit white. Coating something in a single color of spray paint is really easy... I'd say don't be intimidated and just give it a try.

Wow! I've got a new stormy kit on the way to me, so I figured it would be good to come over here. It's my 3rd time building one, so I wasn't really expecting to find anything new, but boy was I wrong!