Astyanax

5. FINISHING (part 2) Last night I masked off the areas around the grip and brush painted a single coat of gloss black: It's raining today, so the humidity is going to be far too high for me to be able to paint at all. Instead, I spent a couple hours focusing in on correctly masking this blaster for the hammered metal finish. This involved covering the scope rail, hengstler, grip, trigger, trigger guard, bolt opening, and t-tracks in frog tape. Regular blue painter's tape will work just fine, but I like that the frog tape is thinner, making it easier to smash it into corners, and that it leaves a sharper paint line (although that might not be best for trying to transition finishes). I don't think the masking has to be perfect, as the hammered metal finish shouldn't look to much like a sharp line where it transitions to the satin finish. Especially since I'm only doing a couple light coats of the hammered metal. The plastic knife, x-acto knife, and the back ends of the paint brushes are used for pushing the tape into hard to reach places or cutting off excess. Tomorrow I hope I can spray the hammered metal finish. Bill

4. FINISHING (part 1) First off, I sprayed four light coats (each side) of the flat paint/primer, each coat 10 minutes apart. Next, I followed this with three light coats (each side) of the Satin black enamel, also 10 minutes apart. You can see the results here: Turns out the Bondo helped with some of the seams more than others. I'm very happy with the front of the blaster, not so much with the back. All in all, it was a worthwhile exercise, and will help me with future builds. I think the lesson here is to try to remember to sand the seams BEFORE using the Bondo, because there can be as many raised seams as recessed ones. After all that, the t-tracks, trigger guard, trigger, hengstler, and scope rail are the only parts that will keep the satin finish. Tonight: after a little more dry time, I will mask off the areas around the grip and I will brush paint it with gloss black.

Hey guys, sorry it's taken me awhile to get back to this project; I took a little break. But back to business. 3. HOLE AND SEAM FILLING, SANDING, AND THE TOP T-TRACK I laid a thick coating of the Bondo #907 all over all the seams between the two halves, between the seams on the magazine, and I filled all the screw holes (except for the two in the hand grip). I wore nitrile gloves while doing this. It's a big sloppy mess: Next, I spent SEVERAL DAYS with several grades of sandpaper, sanding down the Bondo back to the blaster's regular surfaces, and smoothing around all the holes. This was a lot of work, but with patience, it came out pretty nice. I may not have finished with a fine enough grit sandpaper on some of the surfaces, but I don't think it matters because of the hammered metal finish we're going to end up with. Finally, I wasn't going to, but I decided to take some sandpaper to that top t-track and flatten it out a bit. I took 60 and 80 grit sandpaper with a sanding block, and went to town. It works, it's just a bit time consuming. When I ran out of pieces that could fit my sanding block, I put a piece of sandpaper upside down on a piece of 2x4 wood block, and ran the blaster upside down along the sandpaper. Turns out this was even more effective. I did not go perfectly flat with my t-track, but stopped when I had gotten this far: The top t-track then needed a little bondo and sanding, because sanding it down this much did open up a small two inch seam on top. Next step tomorrow: finishing! Bill

Yeah, I've learned that armor takes a beating, and it seems to me that any velcro that's strong enough to handle trooping for hours is eventually going to develop a "ripping" sound every time you take a step. Elastic and snaps/brackets, on the other hand, stretches with you.

They seem to not have settled on a strapping method just yet, but all signs point to something that is mostly velcro. Thankfully, we'll be able to incorporate our own strapping system.

Yeah, I hear you on the randomness. It's just that I don't recall much varieties of pops and clicks in the actual movies. Just a very quiet single click. But in-person, I can imagine this makes it seem more authentic, even when it's not. The other consideration is cost. Between good mic tips and the RomFX, it's 2x-3x the cost of the iComm setup, so I think I should probably start with that. Can always upgrade later! I was just concerned about the displaced speaker.

Ian, did you recess the magnets at all, or are the counters separated by the thickness of the magnets? Thanks!

Thanks very much guys. I think I've settled on the iComm in the chest.

Can you choose one pop affect and stick with it, or are you stuck with random? For that kind of money, I would love a little more control. Or does it matter? Thank you!

Ah, good point. I was afraid to just glue over it because of the batteries, but yeah, they'll last awhile, won't they?

Aww, thank you so much guys.

Hey guys: I'm looking into voice changer helmet electronics, and was hoping to find a full in-helmet voice amp and a changer that replicates those "clicks and pops" that we know so well. Looks like iComm and RomFX are the main contenders, but it doesn't seem like either supports a fully in-helmet solution. Does anyone know of a good alternative? I see mic tip speakers on these forums, but are they used in a solution that can replicate the clicks and pops? BTW, the RomFX solution seems uninviting, because the 8 random clicks and pops can't be set to just one kind. Or am I really barking up the wrong tree here? The iComm looks awesome, but the idea of a speaker in the chest plate seems weird. You guys who use them, does the sound coming from the chest speaker really seem like it's coming from there, or does the sound "spread out" enough to seem like it's coming from your helmet? Sorry, lots of questions, I'm just hoping to get a better idea of which solution is best for me. Ideally I'd love to go helmet only with hovi mic tips putting forth the sounds, but I want a single kind of click/pop every time I talk. Yes, I know I could blow on the mic every time I talk, but I'm not good at remembering to do that. Thanks! Bill

Nice work, I'm doing something similar. Did you ever make a decision about what to do about the counter?

21. ALL DONE So, ready to see it all? Vincent was very happy with his armor. We got pretty fast at putting it all on. This is the order or assembly I settled on after a few attempts: 1. black shirt and pants. 2. white socks 3. thighs 4. shoes 5. lower legs 6. balaclava 7. torso and back as one step* 8. shoulder straps 9. shoulder bells 10. biceps 11. forearms 12. gloves 13. helmet * I keep the three front pieces connected at all times, and the three back pieces connected at all times. I attach these both halves to each other on one side (as seen here), and then wrap it all around him, securing on the other side. Mobility is pretty good, but it would have been better if I has shortened the lower legs just a little. And here he is with his happy dad... A word about storage. I got a large clear rubbermaid storage bin, and keep all the pieces in there. The pieces will deform a little over time if you allow them to be store long term in a "smashed" state. This is especially true of the shoulder bells. I stand the arm pieces on their ends in the bin for this reason. I keep the two 3-piece torso parts intact for quick assembly, and store them in the bin so that they're "spooning" each other, helping to hold their shape. I also try to avoid letting the armor sit in a hot car for long periods, because this could cause the foam to get soft. I think my hard shell finishes will help prevent this, but it's not worth the risk! The perfectionist in me says I should have painted those shoe soles black. Think I'll make Centurion one day? Ironic that my son suddenly knows a lot more about what it feels like to be trooping in armor than I do. Again, thank you to all who have contributed questions and support through this project. It was a great deal of fun, taught me some new skills, and made me VERY familiar with TK armor, especially with how it should fit on a person's body. Ready to build my own! I would absolutely love if anyone of you who uses these patterns in your own projects, please post a pic or two of how it worked out for you, any mods you made, etc., in this thread here. I will be monitoring this thread closely for quite awhile, so feel free to post any questions here rather than PM me. Thanks! Bill

20. HELMET (Step 3) Click here for the helmet decals pattern (87 KB PNG) Click here for the helmet eyes pattern (574 KB JPG) Time for fun stuff! First off, I finished the entire bucket with the usual finishing, but no white glue. Just Plastidip, gloss enamel and glaze. I wanted to get good coverage, so I also sprayed the underside bits of the bucket by turning it upside down and supporting it with wood blocks and a piece of parchment paper. This held the bucket stable so I could get the chin and underside of the tube really well. The spray pattern for each paint was 3 coats underside 10 minutes apart, wait 10 minutes, then flip the bucket over and spray 3 coats topside 10 minutes apart. Then, switch to enamel, repeat, switch to glaze, and repeat. The parchment really helped the bucket not stick to anything whie I painted, although I did go through a few pieces. Next, I carefully masked off the ear blocks and teeth using Frog Tape. This is just like blue painters tape, but it's thinner, leaves a sharper line, sticks better, and pulls off less material when you remove it. I brush painted the ear blocks and teeth using the same Testors gray as I used for the thermal detonator and ab buttons. There's still plenty left over. I only let the paint dry 10-15 minutes, and then pulled the tape off. I did not paint the black line around the ear blocks, but a Sharpie marker does the trick very nicely after it has dried 4-6 hours. At this point that I had to address a brow ridge problem. Because of the way it was fitted and glued, the center of the brow ridge was coming down a little too far in the front, creating a little bit of a "V" pattern, like the trooper has an angry look. Most people won't care, but I figured I could mostly obscure this with paint. If you look at the masking below, I compensated for the "V" by using the Frog tape to form a new line, cutting somewhat up into the dome above. Then I brush painted Testors black paint across the line. When I pulled up the tape, I saw one or two minor gaps that I fixed with the paint freehand. Here's the result: Using the paint to correct for this was actually really effective. It's hard to tell in the pictures, but in real life it works perfectly. In retrospect, I should have painted a much thicker line, but this is fine for now. If you're following along, you can minimize the difference between brow shape and paint by making the line 50% or so thicker. For decals, I picked up a pack of these Avery Easy Peel Shipping Labels #18863. They are "clear" address labels that you can print on using a computer printer. In reality, they're a touch more "frosted white" than clear, but that works just fine for my needs. AND THEY STICK REALLY WELL!!! Using the decal template, I printed the page onto a sheet of address labels, and used an x-acto knife and scissors to cut them out. x-acto for straight lines, scissors for curves and rounded corners. Then, I carefully applied them to the bucket. Everything was easy to position except for the rear traps, so I took my time with them. These stickers do not want to come up once they've been stuck and pressed down really well. Also, watch for smearing ink. Even dry ink wants to smear off after awhile. I fixed that with a clear coat later. After this, I applied 3 more coats of clear glaze to protect the paint and decals. For the eyes, I had to break out one thing I already have that may be tricky for others to justify buying: my laminator. I purchased some green cellophane from Michaels (Jo-Ann and floral shops have it too). Using the eyes template, I cut three layers of cellophane for each eye. Here's a trick on how to do that: I took a large piece of cellophane, and folded it in half three times so I had eight layers. Then I took a printout of one of the eyes and placed it on top, with a sheet of blank paper on the bottom. It's a paper sandwich with 8 layers of cellophane inside. Then, using sharp scissors, I cut out the eye pattern. Voila, 8 eye pieces! Just flip over some of them to get the opposite eye. After some testing of darkness versus being able to see in low light, I settled with three layers of cellophane per eye. Carefully layering them inside my laminator, I ran it through. After doing this twice and cutting them out large enough to have a nice clear plastic clearance around them, my eyes were done. Don't have a laminator? My next thought would be a few layers of clear packing tape, stuck sticky side to sticky side, and a green marker. Now that I had eyes, I considered the mesh for the teeth. This mesh has some hot glue stains on it from cheap manufacturing, so I cut it into three pieces and hot glued it on the inside around the teeth space. I even used some dabs of hot glue between teeth. For the eyes, I also hot glued them over the eye holes. This was a little tricky, because I really had to get in there. I made it work by just starting with a corner and letting it cool. Then I glued the rest in one go. I had to hold it in while the glue cooled. Blowing on it helped. There will be residue glue that leaks through to the front, so I had most success pulling the residue off before it gets 100% cool. In one or two cases where I was too slow, carefully picking at it with an x-acto knife helped. And here is the finished bucket! You might notice a little bit of a "grainy" effect in the final finish. I believe this is because I was spraying in pretty high humidity. But I was out of time and it still looks just fine in real life. If you have the time and location for it, try only to spray in humidity below 50%. Also, the bucket does still come up a little too high in the back, but it works really fine for our purposes. Vincent says that it's a little tight, and hurts to put on and take off unless he has the balaclava (snags the hair), so I recommend using the balaclava to make the helmet easy to wear and to obscure any skin in the back. Vincent has a large head for his age, so other children might find it easier without the balaclava. In retrospect, if I had a little more time, I might consider buying TWO space helmets, and using the bottom 1"-2" of one as a shim for the other, to bring down the back more. But this would require angling the mask a little differently when it's attached, which could then mean a big job with the dremel on the visor opening. Nope, I'm good. So this is all the work. The armor is done. I will post one more section in the next day or so, where I show the fully finished suit on Vincent in different views, as well as share a few thoughts about wearing this armor. Thanks, Bill

A friend of mine loaned me his SDCC badge today for a couple hours and I got to got see the armor at the Anovos booth firsthand. I'm afraid I have nothing useful to offer except my excitement, as I have a totally untrained eye. The armor looks beautiful, really solid. I wasn't able to speak to anyone, as there were big crowds and there was press at the booth with cameras trying to conduct an interview. But it was nice to see the armor in person and feel something tangible: "Yes, this is worth my money." As a n00b speaking to the other n00bs: I feel good about this purchase. Keep the faith. Bill

19. HELMET (Step 2) After putting everything together and having a test fitting, I came to the conclusion that the back of the helmet rides up a little too high in the back, and that there are some gaps in the front brow and ears that can be filled prior to painting. To say nothing of the harsh transition of mask to helmet at the ears. I decided to take things to a next level. The first thing I did was to slope the bottom sides, so that the tube I put around the back will line up with the mask's tubes. So I took a Sharpie and sketched a couple cutting lines: I made the cuts using my dremel. You could use blades, but be careful of cracking. The helmet really wants to do that! I didn't feel the need to be perfect about this, because the back tube will cover it. What tube? Previous kids' helmet makers had used a styrofoam floral ring. I tried that, but it is too rigid, and its perfect roundness stretched the mask really wide, making it very strange to look at when my son wore it. It also pushed the mask right onto his nose. Instead, I picked up a roll of this soft pipe insulation tubing at Home Depot: This tubing is very soft, very porous and bendy. You can get it with a pre-cut slit down the side or without. Either way, I needed a slit just like that. Six feet cost less than three bucks. After cutting a short length and test fitting, I set about to attaching the tube to the helmet. The slit goes around the base of the helmet, and gets jammed in behind the mask tubes. I used hot glue to attach it, only gluing a couple inches at a time. When I was finished, this is what it looked like: Look at that beautiful asymmetry. For the gap between the tube and mask, I jammed in there a piece of scrap tube material. I went through many trials and errors before deciding on the proper process here, so some of my pictures may seem a little out of order. But the structure of the helmet is done. It was now time to fill some gaps and prep it all for finishing. First thing was to think about the porous insulation tube. After failed Bondo adhesion, I ended up painting it with four thick coats of white glue. This helped the tube bcome more rigid. When this had dried, it was time to break out the Bondo! I had never used Bondo, but I knew I didn't want to deal with the two-part stuff. I wanted something I could squeeze out of a tube, so I went with Bondo Glazing & Spot Putty #907. There are tradeoffs here, I learned later, because this stuff does have a tendency to crack. But sanding the cracks tends to make most of them go away, and you can always add another layer to cover them. This Bondo worked fine for me. Looking below, you can see I smeared tons of Bondo all over the tube, in the space where tube transitions to helmet, around the brow trim to fill and cover the remaining gaps, around the ear circles, and in all the places where mask and helmet meet. I wore nitrile gloves and laid it on thick. This stuff sands so very, very easily, like butter, so lay it on thick and sand lightly! I ended up probably going through about three rounds of Bondo, laying it on thick, waiting to dry, sanding nice and smooth, and repeating. I learned not to sand too aggressively, or you can get right down to the plastic layer, and you want to try to avoid that. Smoothing transitions to the helmet, like where the back tube smoothes up to the helmet or around the brow is going to be tricky, so I switched to a finer grit sandpaper, like 150 or so. Especially watch the tube, where the sandpaper rips up the glue layer. The Bondo turns light pink where it's sanded, so this really helps find the pits and divots. Again, do not worry about cracks; either sand them out or lay on another layer of Bondo. Just keep repeating the process until it looks right. This is really pretty easy, just take it slow. At this point I glued on the ear blocks, using E6000. Silicone works too. Then, I painted three more coats of white glue all over the bondo'ed pieces and ear blocks, just to seal it all up and protect it a little more. Here's what it looked like after all that: This is a close-up of the ear area. Pay no attention to the fact that it's all white (I painted before I should have), look at the blending. It may all look a little messy, but I assure you, this is all acceptable. The cracks can be filled with more Bondo, or they can be cleaned up in the last step: caulk. For caulking, I went back to the Dynaflex 230, and smoothed it in (just a little, don't overdo it) with a finger wearing nitrile gloves. This kind of caulk does pick up fingerprints and it skins up pretty fast. I don't have a picture, but I did some smoothing of the brow ridge area, cracks in the ear circles, blending points between mask and helmet, and finally around the ear blocks to smooth their transition. This picture below shows how it all looked after a few coats of paint, but I wanted to post it here to show the transitions. It's not even close to perfect, but once it's all painted and detailed and you're not six inches away, it looks really good. Time for finishing! I'll try to post that tomorrow. Bill

Fair enough, I wasn't aware. Can't blame us newbies for being a little excited and impatient about it tho!

Yep, I repainted the brow. That will be in Step 3. I had to get a little creative with it because the gluing turned it into an "angry frown", and I ended up painting it possibly a little thinner than I should have. But it came out well, as you'll see. Thank you! Bill

You and me both, brother.

Ab buttons can be arc'ing. Check it out: http://www.whitearmor.net/forum/topic/30606-ab-buttons/ Just scroll down to see. Centurion approval does not require perfectly aligned buttons. Sometimes they are, but this is probably an artifact of the particular armor on which Anovos was doing their analysis. I doubt Anovos will change it. Even the 501st CRL shows arc'ing buttons: http://www.501st.com/databank/File:TK_anh_stunt_ab.jpeg Bill

Yep, and I get the impression that the armor itself wasn't even put together yet, based on the comments about misaligned cover strips and pencil lines. They probably CA'd and Zap-a-Gapped it in a couple hours. I would love to have been a fly on the wall during that assembly. Bill

Sorry for all the spam and sorry if this was already pointed out, but this was mentioned a little while ago on the RPF forum, that Anovos updated their FAQ with a ship date of December: http://www.anovos.com/pages/classic-stormtrooper-faqs#5 That is, that's when they START fulfilling. Gonna be a busy January for me. Bill

That is still correct for screen accuracy. They don't line up in some versions.

Those two helmets look very different to me. The RS version has a bigger, longer frown, and more pronounced, deeper "bags" under the eyes. I also think the RS eyes are a bit bigger and maybe a little closer together. The "cavities" around the hovi mic tips seem bigger in the RS version, and the "cheeks" under the ears are more pointy in the Anovos version. The brow trim is higher in the RS version (yes, that can be moved probably), and there seems to be no detailing around the circular edges of the ears of the Anovos version. No question from my perspective, as far as the bucket is concerned, it is not a recast. Bill