bearings

Still cleaning up E6000 boogers and putting arms and biceps together, and now I have plenty of little clamps. The biceps should be all done after this round. Forearms need one more round for the other side. Taping the sides has helped, thanks for the tip Andrew and Vern! Question about the Thermal Detonator.. it's supposed to be 7.5" long, but my end caps barely fit over the ends of the pipe which makes mine a little more than 8". The pencil line in the photo is about where the cap comes to, should I trim the pipe some or just sand the ends of the pipe down to make the cap fit more tightly?

Thanks for the advice, I'll give that a shot. I was already using masking tape on top of the strip just to protect it from the magnets, so I'll do a little more to help the strip stay put.

I saw a deal on Amazon, 10 clamps for ~$8... So I have 30 clamps arriving tomorrow! Nothing fancy, just the smaller plastic/spring clamps, but should be fine for my purposes.

So after 24 hours I inspected my glued armor pieces... Mostly ok except that the heavier clamps on the forearm caused a bit of drifting. Good thing E6000 comes apart easily enough... 6 out of 8 cover strips were fine, that's a win right? I have things cleaned up and ready to be re-glued tomorrow, when I'll have more clamps coming in from Amazon

Very cool!

AW YEAH! They can't hang with my white boots

Also, here's a picture of my Bass Amsterdam boots.. they still need some touching up (more white on the fabric, less white on the soles), but so far so good. Hopefully they hold up over time.

"I have enough clamps." -Nobody ever

I did some test fitting in between trimming them off, I think they're fine for me with both removed. If I need a little more room, I can maybe do an inner strip to help support the gap. Here's a taped up test fitting of one side with both ridges removed and ends butted together:

Thanks Germain, exactly what I needed to hear!

Ok, I'm double checking the bicep size before I go crazy and glue things down.. they might be bigger on me than I previously thought: Should they be this roomy? I feel like if I have to trim them down that I'd probably get rid of the ridge, or the cover strips would overlap it too much. Appologies for the bed-head look, but here's a test fit on me:

Thanks for the feedback on the drop boxes, everybody! Hoping the kids will let me have some time to glue forearms and biceps this weekend. Pretty nervous about the first parts being glued, but it'll be fun!

Yep, that's me over there as well! I work in Boca Raton, off Spanish River in the back of the FAU campus research park. I live in Boynton though, just barely north of Delray Beach. Congrats on your MTK kit, I thought about going that route but AP was better suited to my body size. An armor party sounds fun, but only if we could get some pros in to help us At this point it would be the blind leading the blind, lol. I haven't yet met any of the Everglades squad guys, but they seem pretty active when looking at their twitter feed. I honestly don't go to their forums as much as I should, have you tried checking there for some interest in a get together?

And Troopermaster says 15mm thick here: http://www.whitearmor.net/forum/topic/14587-drop-boxes-how-thick/ The pre-trimmed AP ones are closer to 19mm, so I'll definitely knock a few mm off of them!

Thanks for the photo reference, Vern! After a little more digging around, I think the pre-trimmed outer drop boxes might be a little too thick. I saw this AP Centurion post as a reference: http://www.whitearmor.net/forum/topic/28241-tk-51500-requesting-anh-stunt-centurion-ap132/?hl=%20dropboxes In that application it was pointed out that his drop boxes were a little too thick, which leads me to think that kev's lines are probably closer to the right depth. I think I'll trim the outer ones to match the inner ones. The above thread also referenced these photos from the archives, which looks much thinner that mine currently look.

I got my inner drop boxes from KW! I started trimming based on the lines KW had drawn, but after I trimmed one it looks like this when I insert them into my outer drop boxes: Should I: a ) Leave it like it is b ) Pad the inside to make the inner drop box sit flush with the outer drop box's back (i.e., the inner drop box's lines were too short) c ) Trim the outer drop box to make it sit flush with the inner drop box (i.e., the AP pre-trimmed drop boxes aren't trimmed short enough) Thanks!

My brown box filled with white plastic arrived about a week ago! It's a trimmed AP kit. I haven't had time to do much yet, but I'm starting to work on the cover strips for the arms. The biceps and forearms seem to fit me just fine as-is. Lots to do still, but I think it will come together pretty quickly. I'm planning on trying to make my own canvas belt and neck seal, we'll see how that goes later. As for boots, I went the Bass Amsterdam route + Meltonian Nu-life spray painting... seems ok so far with 3 or 4 coats. I'll post pictures of those later. I'm also planning to go with the original strapping, so I got a set of Mr. No-Stripes brackets. I'm not 100% sure about this, as I know it's not recommended for the 2mm plastics... but I like the idea of doing things the same way as the original to get things to hang properly.

I've been using iPhones ever since they've been out. I like iOS so much that I changed jobs to be an iOS developer. I'm still getting used to the size of the iPhone 6, but it's a really great phone. I did try a Nexus 5 for a month, but I didn't like it. At my office, several android guys and even a lumia user all switched to iPhone 6 when it came out. Most of the other android people just started buying the Sony Xperia Z3 Compact, so if you're considering android that might be worth looking in to!

Very nice! I'm one of the ones waiting for a trimmed kit, won't be long now I guess!

A little paint thinner should clean it up, it comes off pretty easily after it dries

Just this week Adafruit came out with a new board that doesn't even need the arduino! http://www.adafruit.com/products/2133 I ordered one and will try to use this instead of all the other things. It looks much simpler to use, I'll definitely document my build for you guys.

Also cut a little out of the barrel for some extra room to hide things:

It's been a while, but here are some updates.. I got out the dremel and hollowed out a bunch of resin today: And then I worked a little bit on getting the Arduino stuff working. I'll replace the full size Uno with something smaller when it gets installed. That speaker's too big too, but it works for testing purposes! I should be able to use the lever switch below with the trigger to make it functional.

Looks awesome, I've been following your build in preparation for my upcoming AP build. Nice work!

How much can you safely hollow out from the resin? I've got a few small electronic boards that I'd love to add in to the blaster for sound effects, but I'm not sure where to hide them. I'm considering hollowing out the magazine area to hide some things in there, possibly also some inside the barrel. The boards I want to put in are: https://www.adafruit.com/products/1381 https://www.adafruit.com/products/2000 https://www.adafruit.com/products/987 I'm haven't actually put all of this together to see if it'll work yet, but I think something like this should work.