Mutter

Nick, I just saw your post! Too late, everything is already cut. I could use your feedback on the back piece I'm just about to post!

In order to align the top of the ab and kidney plates, I had to remove about 1/2 inch and left 3/8 inch for a return edge. Excess removed and return edge line drawn Now came the harder part, creating the return edge. This was the first time really using the sealing iron. Not too shabby for a first timer. I still need to go back and sand and smooth it more. The left side is a little too long, my OCD is acting up. When I trim the side of the abs I'll see how it looks then. I like the way the right side turned out. Comments/suggestions?

Thanks for the feedback Nick. I'm going to remove the excess material across the top of the kidney plate and create a new return edge.

OK, so I'm using the picture Steve provided above as my guide. Here's what I did: Drew my lines Gave it a curve (damn photobucket resizing!) and then cut it Added the trim Fit to the kidney plate I reversed the picture and repeated the same thing for the other side What do you think? Any and all feedback/criticism is welcomed.

Tino, Ian, I'd rather you ask the silly question(s) than assume I'm smart ;-). But yes, I turned it 90 degrees. The S trim is plenty long enough. There's about an extra 6 inches. Ron, thanks for the pics. I trimmed the access on the butt plate the same way you did. I appreciate the pic of the tab on the butt plate too. I was wondering where that cutoff would be. I was going to use some reference pictures as well. I understand what Steve was pointing out. My concern is if I raise the kidney up to match the crease on the ab plate, I'll have to move the butt plate up an inch or so too. Need to make sure my a$$ isn't hanging out of the bottom if I do that. I already planned on flattening the join between the back and kidney plates so that's not a big deal.

It's amazing how strong E6000 is yet so easy to take apart. Here's the magazine in it's correct position drying. Next set of pictures will be the finished blaster.

I've been playing around wearing my helmet from time to time while I do my build (like who hasn't done this) and I've never had a problem fitting it over my huge melon of a head. Until, that is, I added the S-trim. Evidently, I had just enough clearance without the trim. With the trim, there's no way of wearing it so I'll need to trim about 5mm from the back edge and about 2-3 mm from the front mask. I'm hoping this won't affect the appearance when the S-trim is installed.

Steve, I see what you're saying. Originally, I had the ab and kidney sections aligned at the top This caused the misalignment you mentioned. When I line up the horizontal line that goes across the ab with the top of the kidney notch it throws off the alignment at the top of the kidney and ab plates which should be an "easy" fix. It will also allow the back plate to sit better on the butt plate. I need to clean up the cut line a bit near the edge of the ab plate, but you should get the general idea. The shaded parts will be removed. How's it look?

I'm now fitting the ab, kidney, butt and back plates together. It looks like the armor included the deformations from the strapping in the originals. I'll need to straighten the return edges on the back and kidney plates so they sit better. In addition, the back plates have a little flange on the ends that will need to be removed/modified so it sits properly on the kidney plate and of course there's more trimming to do on the ab plates and butt plates on the side. I was planning on removing the areas I shaded with pencil. Would this be correct?

I tackled shortening and trimming the belt and knee pack. I shortened the edges of the belt so they were 1 1/2 inches and recut the 45 degree edges so they were about 15mm at the diagonal. (I'm not sure why Photobucket couldn't resize this picture properly. Sorry about that) And the knee packs. I'm waiting on building the shin before cutting to length.

I've been able to finish the forearms and biceps. It as a challenge as there were no raised ridges for cover strips so I had to measure and carefully line up the seems with the biceps. Here are a few pics: While working on the above, I also fitted the TD to it's correct length. The one I received was 7 5/8 inches. I wanted to shorten the overall length to 7 3/8 and allow a 3/4 inch space from the caps based on an original: Before After

Thanks for the feedback Ron. What looks like a return edge on the forearms is just the angle of the camera. I've been making sure my seams line up between the forearms and biceps. I've finished the biceps and the last forearm is curing. It should be done tonight. I'm trying upload some more pics of my progress so far.

I haven't had a chance to update this thread in a while as I've been focused on my TK build. I thought I was pretty much finished with the blaster until I realized I placed the magazine on at an angle. I'm going to have to figure how to remove it, glad I used E6000! And while working on the magazine, the trigger guard fell off. So much for Crazy Glue. It's currently being re-glued with E6000.

Looks great! I hope my NE build looks as good as yours!

Now it's time to size the forearms, starting with the left. This set of armor has no ridge line for cover strips so I had to determine where they should go. I sized and taped the forearm on my arm. I was just able to squeeze my hand through the wrist. Here's how it looks. The upper forearm was snug, but I was concerned about the wrist. Does the it look tight enough? Starting at the dimples on the outer forearm, I measured the circumference at various points. Half the circumference should be the center line of the inner forearm. A quarter of the circumference should be the two seam lines. I backed off about half an inch from the seam lines and drew my cut lines. The cut lines will remove the bulk of the excess and allow a half inch on each piece for fine adjustments and fitting. Before I cut, I was hoping for some feedback if my approach was a correct one or if I'm totally off. Thanks for reading! Greg

With the helmet in a holding pattern, I'm returning to the forearms. The right forearm has the curve near the elbow so you could bend your arm. The left has no such curve so I decided to put one in because I couldn't bend my arm. I overlayed the right forearm on top of the left and traced out the curve. I backed off about 1/2 inch from the line to give me some room for adjustment and then used a pair of curved lexan scissors and started cutting. And after some sanding the end result:

I made more progress on the helmet over the weekend. I had some issues getting the lid to sit straight across the face piece. The back end of the tubes on the face piece seemed to not allow for a tight fight so I removed a little from each side. Removing that piece and changing where the mount screws were located seemed to fix the issues With the face piece mounted it was time to tackle the ears. The left ear, as most agree, was "simple". The ears were pre-trimmed so they didn't require much work on my part. However, there was still quite a bit of sanding, fitting, marking, sanding, fitting, marking, repeat, repeat, repeat. The right ear was a PITA! There is still a bit of a gap on the right ear. As you see in the above photo, I placed the screw much lower on the tubes for the right ear. This closed gap on the front part of the ear but left a huge gap in the back. So I moved the screw higher up under the ear. This allowed the back of the ear to fight tight but opened up the gap in the front. My question to whomever may be able to help: 1 - Is this gap too large for Centurian approval? If I can heat up the tube and bend it a bit, I might be able to close the gap. Here's the helmet so far:

I was able to get some more work done yesterday, mostly glueing the magazine housing and clip. Inserted a pin to mount the knob. Drilled through the housing and clip to insert pins. Glued and clamp Pinned the folding stock to the barrel I also decided to do the white crayon thing to the scope. Next is to glue the scope lenses, mount the scope and counter to the rail, mount the rail and that should be it.

Right, no return edge at the wrist, but I also removed them at the elbow. Not a deal breaker but it does look better. Thanks for pointing out the signature

Thanks, Tino. I' m doing away with the 2 piece lenses and will use a single strip instead (more accurate). I'll see how the mobility is before cutting away the forearm, but you're probably right. I already messed up with removing the return edge on the outer forearm so I'm a little gun shy at the moment. Thinking if I need to add the return edge back or not.

I haven't had a chance to work on the blaster due to work, family and my armor came in and I have been focusing on that. I hope to put some time into finishing the blaster this weekend.

Thanks for the feedback, gmrhodes13. I've been reading more NE build threads and the different shaping on the forearm pieces is normal. I'll probably do the hot water treatment first and see how it goes. .

With the frown completed, I focused on the eyes. They were already trimmed when I received the armor so I only needed to do some minor cleanup. A piece of green film was included in the package but I purchased a green welders replacement faceshield and decided to go with that as it is much thicker. First thing was to create a template from the mask. Each eye was slightly different. In fact, I'm learning rather quickly everything is slightly different (more on that below). So much for symmetry. And that's as far as I got on the lenses. I haven't determined how I want to mount the lenses yet. Need to do more research. EDIT: After doing more research, I've decided not to use the individual lenses but to use the single strip across both eyes. With my momentum on the helmet at a standstill, I focused on the forearms. I removed the return edge on each piece and then taped them to mark for rough sizing. Left arm (11 dimples) done. The right arm (12 dimples) almost done but definitely different from the left. When I was fitting them, I had a devil of a time getting the right wrist tight enough, yet allowing my wrist to go through. The left forearm fit great. This is looking down from the elbow to the wrist. Notice the larger bulge in the right forearm (on the right). This is looking from the wrists to the elbows (right forearm is on the right). The right forearm is on your right. The inside right forearm has a much bigger cut-in at the elbow joint (elbow at top, wrist at bottom) and its curve at the wrist isn't as sharp. This is, in my opinion, not allowing for a proper fit around the wrist. I'll have my daughter take some pictures of the fit and I'll post them later. A few questions: 1 - Are the inside forearms suppose to be this different? 2 - Should I heat bend the right inside forearm so I get a tighter/proper fit around my wrist? 3 - Should I do a rough trim first and see how it fits then? Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thank you! Greg EDIT: I took the forearms apart and notice significant differences. Jeepers! (Left forearms on the left, right forearms on the right) Looking from the elbow to the wrist From the wrists to the elbows

While I await on guidance regarding the gap in the cap, I started to work on the frown. Being a little overly cautious, I marked the teeth to be removed on the inside of the face piece and then got out my trusty Dremmel and sanded most of the material with the mini drum sander just to the point where I could remove the remainder with an exacto blade. I used a few small files to remove the excess and here is the frown. Comments? After cleaning and filing, the final result.

Ryan, that's too cool. Gonna follow your build for inspiration! Good luck! As I mentioned, I had used a little too much E6000 and it oozed out a bit in the seams. After easily cleaning up the excess (I love E6000!), I realized there is a gap at the seam. Is this too large and should I redo it or is it acceptable?