Rystan

That might have been the case in the past (re: untrimmed ears), but not since the run in July. These are as they came straight out of the bubble wrap.

I'm going to have to defer that question to someone more knowledgeable...with either device.

Boots, part 2: So after a trip to Home Depot early last week, I'm in possession of a quart of Acetone. And then it only took until Sunday for the stars to align and the clouds to part so that it was dry enough to sit out and scrub for 2 hours). [Okay, Saturday was nice, but took the family to the County Fair to eat bad Carney food.] Boots after phase one of deglazing from last week: After about an hour of scrubbing, one done: I was more methodical about the scrubbing process once I saw Ron's "after photos" and knew how far I had to take it and that I wasn't going to ruin the boots. Before I just rubbed randomly until the rag was black and then switched spots on the rag and kept going until my hands were purple. This time I targeted a single 1" area of the surface of the boot, scrubbed it down until the sheen was gone and then moved on until the boot was "done". You'll notice the carcasses of the abandoned vinyl gloves in the lower right. Rookie tip: turns out, vinyl gloves get eaten by acetone. Fortunately, as the result of either already scrubbing the top layer of shine off, or the use of a thicker cloth, I didn't end up with "purple" fingers this time. Boot 1 was tolerable, boot 2 took a lot more patience, so I moved out to sit by the pool while the kids swam and used the "carrot" of a dip as the reward for finishing. Speak now or forever hold your peace (preferably with horror stories of what'll happen if I don't take it down further), because I'm declaring done and moving on to the white paint unless I hear otherwise.

Keeping it in the Disney family too:

Seems like from some of the reading I've been doing on the topic, another advantage from having the cod separate Ishtar it makes partial disrobing (or going to the bathroom) easier. Worth considering just for that I think.

A heat sealing iron sounds like it might do the trick, and Pandatrooper, among others I'm sure, have done amazing things with one but I don't know yet whether I'm ready to spend the money on a tool I'll likely use once. I've got access to a heat gun I just have to go pick it up. It's going to help with the bends in the belt ammo belt and shoulder straps.

The frown line extending down under the helmet makes appear very bird-like to me.

Another tip I've been using a lot is to just search on google and add "site:whitearmor.net" without the quotes to whatever you're searching for.

And no, the forearms have sat since the last update. I found some time today during daylight hours so I worked on those things that require ventilation (spray painting helmet interior, acetone on boots to finally remove shine), and/or noisy tools (teeth and other helmet work) that I wasn't able to do normally after 10 p.m. when I've been doing most of my work. I'll have a more detailed post on that progress probably tomorrow. If I'm going to have everything done by Fan Expo Canada in 18 days, I feel like I've got to start making progress on the torso. The work on adjoining the arm and leg halves is a known process at this point...trying to tackle unknowns early to make sure I have time to adapt if needed. Probably means I'm going to have to break out the sewing machine soon lol

Every time I think I know which return edges go/stay, I either get confused or see conflicting information searching through old threads. I've taken to trying to hone in on individual pieces as I'm working on them. When I find conflicting information, I tend to "side" with the person with the highest post count. If I can find something by gazmosis or one of the other high ranking FISD even better. The magnets have been working okay, but not particularly great either. I've found if the joint I'm gluing is under any sort of stress, the magnets don't really have enough strength to counteract it. I'm likely going to see about getting some longer clamps and look into some sort of "wrap strap". Worst comes to worst, I'll just stand here and hold the damn forearm for 24 hours lol.

I wasn't planning to, unless I have to. My guess is that he had to for height reasons? At 6' 2", I shouldn't have that problem.

My plan is going to be start with the cod and work my way up and back for fit.

I believe that the ABS polish everyone uses/recommends is called novus.

Pretty good. Got a bunch more done today since I could work outside and before 10 p.m. will have pics later. How about with you?

The thumb/spoon print goes on the left, per: http://www.whitearmor.net/forum/topic/7263-bicep-question/

Next up, some questions: For the butt <--> kidney plate...there's a slight curve in one part of the kidney plate, does it go Up High: Or down low: I feel like it makes more sense to go down low to closer follow the curve of the lower back, but the problem I notice there is that the two pieces end flush if arranged like that. With the curve near the top, the kidney plate sticks out toward the front of the body further than the butt plate. (circled in the above picture). I know there's supposed to be some sort of notch at that point so I either am going to be trimming from kidney plate to match up to the butt plate, or trimming both to add the notch (after figuring out where the cut between the kidney and abdomen pieces needs to be (remember, tall and skinny guy here so I won't need to shim, but rather remove plastic in most cases) Thoughts? Also coming up soon (still need to do some more research), butt and cod trimming: I still need to investigate where/how much needs to get trimmed (return edges, how round, and how much to leave between the legs, etc)...not really soliciting for the info at this stage, but if someone's got advice or pointers, I'm all ears. I've seen some people go with suspenders, I'm assuming they'd go between the kidney plate in the back and the abdomen in the front? Necessary? On the biceps, I've removed the bottom return edges and the return edges along the outside of the arm (I'm seeing that you want to keep at least some if not all of the inner bicep edge. I measured up some marks for cutting the bicep, but I stopped because I'm not particularly happy with the test fit. It fits snug once it's on my arm and I can flex/move my arm fine once it's on, but sliding it up/down my elbow/forearm scrapes pretty fierce, mainly because the outer bicep pieces are pretty boxy at the bottom. The circumference measurements at the forearm bulge/elbow bend are pretty similar to the bicep as I measure it, but I could definitely use it to be more rounded at the elbow. Do I just cut/glue/cover strip it and then attack it with a heat gun to round it out? Or back away from the measurement a bit so I've got room to slide it on?

So when we last left the Telemundo soap opera "Todas las imágenes del antebrazo" (All the forearm picutres), our plucky hero (That's me...and hey, it's my story, I'll tell it how I want to.) left off with the decision: Do I: A ) Remove 17.5 mm from the red sections & 27.5 mm from the blue halves. or B ) Since the over all ABS being removed is 55 mm + 35 mm, or 90 mm, remove 22.5 mm ( 90 / 4 = 22.5) from all 4 sections to keep the proportions even. or C ) Remove some amount only from the blue side (which will ultimately be the side facing the front when the armor is being worn) [i'm thinking 22.5 to be on the safe side...can always take more later). Repeating the same process for the elbow end front only, get the inner & outer cover strips installed. And THEN worry about the red/back side of the forearms (taking new measurments). My gut (and memory of looking at other build threads) tells me that C is probably the best/safest/right answer. So, I decided to pull up my big boy pants(*) and went with option C. I chose to start with the front facing side of the forearms so that if I ended up with a wonky looking side (eg. the cover strip too close or far away from the dimples) it would hopefully end up on the back instead of the front. I made my measurements and took about a quarter (minus a mm or two to leave extra if needed) of the total amount being removed from the inner and the outer each. I clamped a metal ruler along the marks to both draw the above lines and as a guide for the box cutter for the score and snap method of cutting. I've found that drawing the line with the pencil even though I plan to cut the same line allows me to gauge as I'm cutting (and after the snapping) to see how much the tip of the blade tended to "dance" and come off the guide ruler. After cutting both pieces, I decided that the good idea was to "waste not" and reuse some of the trimmed pieces as the inner strip as they we already roughly the right length and complementarily (I think I just made up a word) curved to the forearm pieces already. I rounded off the corners as well as contoured the ends to match the profile of the armor pieces so there wouldn't be any unsightly overlap. I sanded the whole shim and the inside edges of the forearm pieces, liberally applied E6000, let it sit for a few minutes while I prepared my taped magnet pairs. (*Yes, I'm calling my Star Wars pajamas my big boy pants!) Inside view: Outside view: Rinse and repeat for the other forearm: And we wait: Now that we've watch the above 2.5 times, I can begin working on the backside of each forearm. (Note: the observant among you, which frankly is all of you, will notice that I chose...yeah we'll go with chose over forgot...to wait until after the front side was glued before measuring and making the backside cuts.) It made for some tight work so rather than use the box cutter to score and snap, I opted for a pair of "titanium" scissors to make the cuts at that point. It was so tight and I want to make sure I could get them cut and glued before going to bed so they could dry/cure all night that I neglected to take very many pictures. \\ As many of you are aware, navigating little packets of magnets (say that a few times fast) in such tight corners made me long for the days of playing Milton Bradley's Operation. It sure would be nice to have a few extra arms when trying to get the forearm pieces, shims, clamps, magnets and tape...lots of tape into place. 24 hours wasn't really enough time to let the front edges settle flush and they started to peel up when applying pressure on the backside so they received some extra glue and clamped/magneted/taped a second night. 2.5 more cantina performances later: right forearm: left forearm: There's still a good bit of separation between the inner shim and the armor halves (still only on the front halves...so much for them going smoothly by going first) Should I deal with getting them flat/flush before adding the outer/visible cover strips? If so, any suggestions for combating the pulling/separation? I'm thinking that I might have to employ the use of a heat gun to stop the pieces from trying to pull apart. I'm hoping that the visible cover strips will help keep it flat/tight provided I can get enough pressure on them while they're curing. Thoughts? I'm also thinking that before gluing the cover strips I should probably deal with the wrist edge jaggedness, seen below: Finally...(I know...me too) I know I have to wait until the rest of the arm armor is finished in order to check for fit, but I think the length is pretty good. It pretty much fills my entire naked forearm from wrist bend to elbow bend and there isn't a ton of gap at either end...will worry about that for now...

Have you consulted with MightyTank?

Thanks Tim! I am looking to go for Centurion but might have to swap out some pieces at some point or so I've read to get there. I should be able to get EIB as it comes. I followed your build pretty closely to tide me over while waiting for my armor to come. Yours turned out great!

What I thought we're the TD ab buttons we're the uncut river covers for the belt. Although it came with two sets. I'm not building a Sandie so I'm not totally sure all of what goes with their costume.

There's guides on the net and on youtube for scaling/resizing pep files before you print them out. You have to use the non-free Pepakura Designer, but you can use it in trial mode without paying, it just restricts you from being able to save any changes you make to the model. The biggest trick is figuring out what measurement you want to scale to (and then making sure you check to make sure all the unfolded 2D pieces fit within the print region of the paper size you're working with.

I'm by no means an expert, but the only area I think stands out a little is when viewing from the back, you might want some more tapering in the thigh...especially on the right leg. It looks to flare out a lot...although it might just be camera angles? Take anything that I say with a grain of salt as I'm still working on completing my first armor piece.

Questionable cuts?..that's why we have cover strips For the slight angle join, maybe try softening it up with a hair dryer or heat gun just prior to gluing/clamping/magnets? Question: Are you doing the inner and outer cover strips at the same time? I just did the inners on one side..but at this rate it'll take me 4 days per armor piece. (inner, outer, inner outer)...Ugh. Hi Bryan, I know you asked Rick, but I figured I'd chime in too...I cut equal amounts from both the inner and outer pieces. Hopefully it doesn't make the cover strips appear too close to the dimples.

Congrats, Ron! I think the local news should be following this build! Thanks for the help you're give me on mine too.

Oh and yes, I did the elbow end measurements last night after posting the process I was considering and there will be slightly less removed at the elbow end and thus it will result in a tapered forearm narrower at the wrist and wider at the elbow. Thanks again!