russellr2d2

Try some masking tap on one side of the ruler. Not a total fix but really helps. That all I use now. Then make three or four real light cuts do you are not putting pressure on the edge of the ruler. This gets the cut started, then you almost song need a ruler and you can finish the cut with medium pressure. Then bend and snap! Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

And kawasakie to you too! The strapping is going to be a battle! Trying to find the right shoulder length that allows the back to drop down enough to cover my butt. But, when I added inches to the length of the shoulder strap this happens. I get that big gap in between my back and the plastic. BLAH! I think I will go ahead and connect the abdomen via the clam shell method and I can figure this better. I looks like THIS is the hard part of the build! Now I can also see how far down my back the back plate was. The strap is not centered on my shoulders.

if it didn't turn out to your liking. SLOWWWWW Down. • Use sandpaper only (180 or even 220 grit) to fine tune the ears. No Dremel ! Work slower. Fit the ear note the high spots and scrub a pencil in the area so you see it later. Fit-sand-fit-sand...sand LESS and fit more will help you get that closer fit. • Also cut a notch at the top of the round portion to fit over the overlap of the face and back of the helmet. This allows the ear to lay much closer and flat on the side up near the round area of the ear. • Don't worry about it being perfect...the original helmets were wide open by our standards. Slow down, have a beer while you do this, watch Big Bang theory or a good movie. Have fun! Good Luck! Your going through what we all did!

Ahh so des kah ! Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Question: Why do people attach the bell snaps way up high as seen in this photo by "Barcode" for his centurion application (hope you do not mind me referencing your photo, thank you). I have seen many photos like this where the bell snap is wayyyyyyy up into the bell. Why not down near the bottom edge?

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IT HAS TO BE PERFECT !!!!

Thanks Tony, I think what you suggest plus some extra length on the shoulder straps. I am going to do some tests with tape on the shoulders until I can find a better fit. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Did a test fit of the back armor with straps snapped over the shoulders to the chest piece. The back armor does not go down far enough by about 4". I assume the starts at the top at the shoulder straps. I have about 3" space between chest & back plates on the shoulders. I think I need to open this an additional 2"-2.5" to lower the entire back armor. Right now the butt plate is way high on my butt. Not a nice picture which is why there are no pictures here. [emoji15] Any advice on how to get the back armor which must all be tight together, little or no space between the three pieces to cover ah-hem..., everything. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Back all together: I figure that since all three pieces must be butted against each other there is no fitting to do. So juts strap em' together! The front will be another story! Don't do the split rivet in your cod piece like this. Cut it short to be down inside the rivet first then set it together. The female snap will not hold well because the center cannot fit together...the rivet blocks it. I had to grind down the tangs with a Dremmel....not fun. All ground and the snap top fits well into this one. But a PAIN!

OK back to work ! Strapping the back continued. I tape together the top back and the kidney plates. Find the right spot to add a snap plate and mark it with pencil each plate. These snap plates are positioned exactly where each strap will fit to. The distance of these snaps from the lower kidney snaps is exactly the length of the straps made for them. I believe the corners of the back should fit inside the kidney plate like this?

OHHHHH GOSHHH ! I like posting as much as building...you get all kinds of help right away here (reminds me of the R2 Builders forums where I would be out in my garage building and run in to ask a question...have a snack and return to find an answer!)

The kidney notch must line up with the end of the butt plate? I will need to trim off the ends of my butt! OUCH! well figuratively speaking of course. A couple shots of the original armor shows that the butt and kidney notch line up.

STRAPPING THE BACK PIECES: I was thinking that all of the upper back, the kidney and the butt plate fit flush up against each other (touching?????). I might as well start making straps for the back and wait for your opinions on how the three pieces fit against each other. Do they touch each other???? or should I leave a 1/4" space or???? Here are some photos of how I am setting up the back armor strapping... __________________________________________________________________________________ I am making my straps with the ends folded over and I will insert a very thin piece of plastic as reinforcement around the snap. This way the elastic is not being pulled against the shaft of the snap when I pull off snaps. I got this idea from my building buddy Daniel Stafford. He and I have been building together on occasion. These layers leave just enough snap shaft to reach through and make the snap go together correctly. All edges of the elastic and the hole are burned with a soldering iron to prevent fraying. Positions of the three straps for the Butt Plate to the Kidney plate. The center strap in position but not glued yet. SHOULD THE BUTT AND KIDNEY PLATES BE TOUCHING ? OR ABOTU 1/4" APART??? I will make all the straps ... and then position them in the armor and to glue them. This way the lengths will be exact. I lay the strap with snap plates in the armor to find the correct position of the plates... then glue them in (I think this will work ). See the gap between the butt and kidney? Too tight ???? or ????? This is my big question before I glue down all the straps.

BUT IT HAS TO BE PERFECT!!!! [emoji31] Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Back to TK building ! Strapping the arms. Here are the biceps horizontal strap. It is simply glued into the inside of the bicep. I am waiting for later to add in the bottom shoulder bell snap. Here is how I glued it in with E6000. Under the clamp is a scrap piece of plastic to hold down the strap and keep a sharp line glued down across the width of the strap. Result... Starting to glue in the snap plates. If you saw my earlier posts about how to make snap plates, you would see that I flattened the plastic down around the snap to make the plastic plate lay flat. Here is the result close up. Note the seal around the plate with no gap = a tight hold. The 20mm kidney plate cut outs on each side. The fit of the kidney and butt plates. • NOTE the bump in the separation between the two pieces? WIERD that this is supposed to be the correct orientation. • But I am assured this is the correct fit. The front edges of each piece should line up straight. This is the edge facing down against the work table in this photo. Note curve of the back looks natural. • The belt is supposed to cover this misfit between the two pieces???????? • NOT CORRECT positioning is shown below which I am told fools a lot of people. (as I am told but it is weird that the seam between the two pieces fits so well this way) • The butt piece is lifted away from the table and angles a bit up off the work table from a straight line as above. Curve of the back is all wrong, looks too straight to me. Silver snaps in bottom. NOPE: they are black snaps I rubbed with "rub n buff" and made them silver. It works!

LOOK SIR DROIDS!!! Not working on my TK this week in order to get ready for Celebration. R2D2 is relaxing on his "Droid Maintenance Module" built especially for R2 to sit on while he is repaired or refurbished. Tomorrow he is off the the convention. See you there!

Strapping the right arm: getting it right is not easy! I am finding that I have to try out snap positions to get just the position that keeps the cover strips aligned. After gluing the snap plate in three times and pulling it out I had a brain fart and started taping the plate in first to try out the snap position. lots of putting the arm on and taking it off to move the snap plate. Goo Gone is good for cleaning dirt and bits of glue but it does not dissolve the E6000. That has to be picked off.

Again not my idea! This snap plate construction and heat modification idea is in the How Section by Gmrhodes13 And now 1/4 of a stormtrooper. This ATA armor seems to be made just for me. I do not think I will need to trim or add anything to get it to fit me. Even the ab and kidney wrap around and just touch perfectly (I could stand to loose 1-2 lbs). IT IS HARD TO GET INTO ARMOR!!! I tried to put on both legs but couldn't bend enough!

SNAP PLATES - (Nothing else to do right now) OK this may be sort of dumb but here is how I made my snap plates. Maybe some other nubie may benefit from this. I started by cutting off a bunch of pieces that will be snap plates. I rounded off the corners and sanded smooth the edges so they will not catch on my undersuit. I also sanded the bottom of them to roughen up the glueing surface. Then I found a drill bit that was just large enough to allow a snap piece to be pushed through the plastic. The parts of a snap and how they go together. The part goes through the plastic and the other drops down on top of it. The snap will look like this ready to be punched with the special tool available on AMAZON. To use the tool you need a hard surface. I have the anvil part of my vice to punch against. The punch is used like this. You must hold it upright or you will not get a good seal. You hammer it down and "roll the center post down" into the center....see next photo. When you are done it should look like this. Note the center post is rolled down evenly in the center of the snap. The special tool does this as you tap with a hammer. The snap should be tight, but not so tight you flatten the center post. Keep that rolled look to the center post so it seals evenly around the center of the snap and holds tight. To make these fancy heat them up with a heat gun about 6" away from the snap and let them get good and hot. They will deform a bit but, that is OK. Then I used a socket driver end to press the hot plastic down flat around the snap. This way the entire plastic surface is flat around the snap and you will get a better gluing surface later....see next photo..... On the left is the modified snap plate with the snap flush with the plastic. This will give you a better gluing surface. On the right is the snap before heating and pressing with the larger diameter socket driver.

Arm bone! Here is one arm strapped together. The cover strip aligns naturally with careful placement of the elastic strap. The strap is slightly pulling the forearm over to the left to help keep it aligned. It all depends on how my arm is positioned.

Do all under suits do this? I have a new Eastbay. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

I saw somewhere that people put foam on the back of the shin to push the knee plate out beyond the thigh. Also, I have seen a post or two of putting the knee plate in hot water and bending it out. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[emoji54] everybody is going to see my undies!!!!! We certainly depend on Velcro to keep things together. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Here are some photos of my shins on and what happens to them. Some questions too. Here are the shins on my... umm...shins! They tend to sit naturally like this and the knee part of the shin is right at my knees so the length of fit seems perfect. I am lucky the diameter is fairly loose on my shins. The knee plate sits right at my knee nicely....whew!!!! The bottom of the skin sits at the boot as you see. This looks normal to me.....what do you guys think? Too high, too low.....just right? JUST WHAT IS THE ACCEPTED HEIGHT THE SHINS SIT ON THE BOOT??? Here you see I have a high and low position. I think I've seen both. Neither is more comfortable for me but I think I like the higher back leg better. Here is the backs. Remember there are no bra clips or Velcro running down the back. Only at the top for now. I am testing the double cover strip idea here (See shin building posts earlier). Note: on the right, the bottom is slightly open already. The boot is pushing on it to open. Annnnnnnd ... here is what generally happens when I walk or pick up the leg. The back opens at the bottom where there is no Velcro YET. The shell comes out of the built in channel and pops out and does not go back in. I will add a small Velcro tab at the bottom. QUESTIONS: 1) How do you control the height the shins sit at? With foam inside the leg so they do not slip down? 2) In order to minimize black area showing in my legs & thighs/hips. How high can you pull them up? THANK YOU EVERYONE!