WhiteHammer

Overall progress report: forearms and upper arms have been attached with butt joints. The front thighs and shins are attached by butt joints. I was going to wait to fit the back of the thighs and shins after hanging the thighs from the ab-plate. Two snaps have been placed in the butt plate. I think that I need a brass rivet for the cod piece, but have yet to locate on hardware store runs. snaps and canvas straps have been added to the chest and back plates. My first run as patching i used tape on one side. the second run I decided to place masking on both sides of the armor. The abs patch works really well. I scooped up a gob of it and let it ooze into the poorly placed drill hole. My expectation is that the tape on both sides of the armor will make sanding focus on the patch and not the armor itself. I guess we will see when it is ready to sand sometime tomorrow.

While I wait for my ABS slurry to be ready, I have been constructing white canvas snap plates. How do these 45 degree marks look for the belt? the marks are located 15mm from the ends.

Thanks Tusken RTT, it almost looks as though the "evenly spaced" rivets are based on where the belt sits. Appears to me from the photo you posted that the distance from the top rivet to the edge of the armor is roughly the same distance from the bottom rivet to the top of where the belt would be. Thanks Dark CMF for the ABS paste guidance. and a belated congrats on your promotion.

kidney and ab plate together

So I made the kidney plate cut outs 22mm square. I marked out the new location for the rivets. As you can see the upper two locations move very little. The lower location needs to be moved, but are the upper two hand grenade close? I will start researching ABS paste / aka Patchy McFixit. My concern is the stability of a rivet right on top of a patched zone.

What is your MOS? mine was 11B2V, a long, long time ago

I'm a solider, I can be handled rough... It's hard not to leave work early and fix this right now!

Oh this is so great. I really appreciate the help. It seems like an easy fix. I will grab some more pics tonight with progress thus far. Is there a picture by picture CRL? I see on the legion website the CRL images only shows the whole piece of armor and not pictures of the little details. For example the Level 3 cert. lists items that should included in the armor but a little picture showing what each of the list items should ideally look like appears to be missing. I have to hunt the meaning of the list item through the forums. Not a big deal, but does take a little extra effort. Is there something like this in the forums i am missing? I think it sure would be helpful to me, being more of a visual person.

DOH! was not even aware of the kidney plate cut outs. I see them now on Dark CMF Centurion thread.

So as the glued limbs dry, I started in on the torso. I drilled three holes in the torso and kidney plate, 10 mm from the edge and evenly spaced. Installed 8 mm split rivets. I am also going to use this 4 in. wide elastic to join the two halves. Then I placed a finishing strip to add support and hopefully some durability. But only time will tell. It seems like it might be a little weak to me. and with my immense girth putting a bit of dynamic loading to the joint, it just might not hold up in combat. I have yet to see this approach in the forums, how do you all think this might fair over a bit of use. I have also been researching snap attachment methods, I am trying a strip snap plate (shown below on the right) and a canvas snap plate (shown on the right). I plan on "stressing" each to see which one preforms better. I am going to guess the canvas snap is going to be the winner. I explored the velcro and snap style of snap plate and think this will be more trouble than the added attachment that comes with the velcro. We will see when the armor is battle tested. Perhaps there is a snap plate czar on the forums?

Thanks Dark CMF, I suspected that velcro might not cut it in the heat of battle. I have been lurking on BIDs ANH Hero Build and like the snap plates he made, just as you have. That might suit some of the more stressed attachment locations. Like the torso/ kidney side attachment. I like your reinforcement approach. I may do that if I have enough extra ABS strips.

My torso and kidney plates don't have much of a lip around the inside. Throughout the forums, the attachment of these two pieces appear to be mostly by snaps or the metal "U" brackets (I believe the original construction technique in the movie and looks more like a squared u or this |_| ). Based on the CRL for ESB, I think I am going to end up at Centurion. Although, I cannot be sure until I am farther along. I have seen excepted Centurion builds with both snaps and U-brackets for the inside attachments, but nothing yet with velcro. (possible I haven't reviewed enough requests) Can I use velcro as shown in this photo? My plan is to use velcro and elastic (where appropriate) and minimize the use of snaps. I am planning on the requisite split rivets and snaps as listed for Level 3 certification on the ESB CRL. Would this be an acceptable approach? and are these pictures too big should I re-size to a smaller resolution?

The rainy weekend proved to allow for much gluing and clamping

The opening of the brown box is a symbol for the adventure to come. It represents arriving at basic training where citizens to the empire become elite soldiers.