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hupspring

501st Stormtrooper[TK]
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Everything posted by hupspring

  1. I was able to get the end caps off by holding the cap in boiling water for 10-15 seconds (might have been a little longer, it's been a while since I did it). The cap came off pretty easily after that. Just make sure you wear gloves or you might burn your fingers.
  2. Unfortunately I won't be able to make it.
  3. Thanks! Agreed on the short sleeves vs jackets too. So far I've only been wearing the lighter jean jacket at work since the AC is always on there and I took the hoodie to Colorado last month. I mostly wear the black short sleeve, but hopefully it starts cooling down soon so I can wear the jackets more (once the temps drop below 70 it's jacket weather for me).
  4. So the end of May deadline didn't happen It's been really slow going trying to finish this blaster, mostly just trying to find the time to do it. But over the last few months I've finally finished it to the point where I just need to weather it (who knows when that will happen!). There are some parts that I wish I had done differently (like the counter), and there are a couple parts that I want to fix, but I doubt I ever will (like the position of the rear sight).
  5. It's been a while since I've updated my build thread (since I'm basically finished building ) but I thought I'd add some notes now that I've done several troops in the armor. After my latest troop, the rear cover strip on one of my shins pulled off halfway as I was taking the shin off. It was probably partly due to the shin not being flat where the rear halves met, so the cover strip was at an angle when it was closed (I use the velcro method). So when I got home I pulled the cover strip off the rest of the way and cleaned up the glue residue, then gave the shin a hot water bath to try to make the backs a bit more flush. The back of the shin does sit more flush now, but I don't know if the hot water bath loosened the adhesive on the velcro (the part glued onto the shin). I re-attached the cover strip and it closes better, so I'll have to keep an eye on the velcro at my next troop. I've also decided to get rid of the Anovos hard hat liner. The longer I wear the helmet, the less comfortable it becomes as the hard hat liner starts digging into my head. I even added a little padding to the strap but that doesn't really help at all. I have the military style pads and will try positioning those to find a good fit, but I think I will also need something thicker for the sides of my head, otherwise the helmet will swing freely if I move my head side to side. I ended up ditching the iComm as well. The static bursts are cool, but for some reason, they would be a lot louder than my voice. So if I turn up the Aker volume so my voice could be heard decently, the static bursts would be really loud. If I turned the volume down so the static bursts weren't too loud, then you couldn't really hear my voice through the speaker. In the end, amplifying my voice won out. Since my wife's sandtrooper is almost finished, I'll probably get her an Aker and see if she wants the iComm. I've had problems with the hearing assist at every troop so far. I first tried the little speakers, but couldn't hear anything coming out of them unless I pressed them to my ears, so those were out. I tried corded headphones which work great, but it was a hassle putting the headphones in my ears before putting the helmet on, then tucking the wires out of the way. Finally I tried bluetooth headphones which were great in that I could put them on without worrying about the wires, but I was getting a 1 second delay which was making it hard to follow conversations. It also had a lot of fan noise...I still need to buy a fan bracket from ukswrath which should help with that. So until then, I'm not using the hearing assist and if the bracket doesn't help, I'll probably just remove the hearing assist altogether. Overall though, the armor has held up well. I was lucky enough to get in a Weird Al troop, and we had to do a brisk walk down to the after party (I think almost a mile away) in our armor, and make the walk back up to the venue to change. I'm happy to say I didn't have any armor bites or problem areas. I also may have gotten a bit obsessed with patch jackets. My wife only has one patch jacket so I promised I wouldn't get any more (for now!).
  6. I've been using a hard hat liner but the longer the troop is, the less comfortable it becomes. I've been thinking about replacing the liner with some type of padding but haven't gotten around to it yet.
  7. I used E6000 - after several troops they are still holding on just fine.
  8. The nomex flight gloves are great - my hands don't sweat in them and they fit and feel great. I also glued the JustJoseph latex handguards to them so I don't have to worry about straps holding them on. But I also tried gluing the Trooperbay latex handguards to the nomex gloves and they wouldn't stick. A little bit of pressure and they came right off. I don't know what the difference in material is, but the JustJoseph ones glued on and stayed.
  9. I plasti-dipped my bucket mostly because it looks cooler (to me).
  10. I'm definitely introverted and a big reason I like the TK is because of the anonymity. But even with the bucket on, I'm still quiet and let other troopers do the talking. Exactly how I feel. I do like trooping so I'm trying to get out more, but I do love staying at home!
  11. I'm eagerly waiting to see how they turn out - I really need some brackets!
  12. Many thanks! Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk
  13. Not sure who to address this to, but I noticed the title above my profile picture on posts still says "Expert Infantry" - would it be possible to update it "Centurion" whenever someone can get to it? (no rush!) Thank you!
  14. This is a really cool mannequin. I may redo mine using this technique. Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk
  15. Thanks! I was excited to get Centurion and now my wife likes to make fun of me. After lugging around the big Husky bin, I kind of wish I got the smaller one since I'm not putting the helmet in it. It would be nice to be able to put the bin in my car's trunk instead of taking up the entire back seat. I have to remove my son's car seat to fit it in the back, which means I wouldn't be able to drop him off if I had to before heading to troop without going back home to get the bin. But I do like having the extra room in the bin so that I don't have to break down all of the armor parts and stack them. Since my forearms and biceps are stuck together with a piece of elastic glued to each, I can't nest those parts.
  16. I finally went on my first troop yesterday and it was great! I learned a few things from the other troopers, like not to just stand there with your arms at your sides for pictures. I look like awkward trooper in a lot of pictures as I didn't pose at all. Even just putting your hands on your belt makes a world of difference! I'm the trooper just standing there with my arms down at my sides. Overall my armor held up well with no armor bites or issues other than the top of the hard hat liner digging into my head after about 45 minutes. So I need to add a little bit of padding in that area. I also had some issues with the electronics. I didn't turn up the volume on the Aker enough so my voice wasn't coming out of the speaker, but the icomm would still click after I talked. The EAS was also getting some feedback and amplifying the sound of the fans so that I can't hear anything outside the helmet. I think my fans are still touching the bucket which was causing that, so I need to re-evaluate the positioning (I have them sitting on a small piece of hard foam which is velcroed into the bucket). I really want to get one of Echo's brackets and think that will help fix it. The small camera pouch that I added to the chest in a previous update already broke. I shouldn't be surprised since it was only a dollar, but the zipper somehow broke in a way that it doesn't close the pouch when you zip it. My wife said she will just make me a small pouch. Although I may have her size it bigger to fit my phone. I also added a couple of stickers and a label to my Husky bin. I need to get some garrison and squad stickers to add. And for the interior my wife got some 1" green foam and sewed some covers for them out of old bed sheets. I just used the leftover 1" industrial strength velcro from my armor build to stick the foam to the inside of the bin. The foam is much nicer than using towels to prevent the armor from rubbing on the sides of the bin. I still suck at packing my armor in the bin so I can't fit the helmet in with everything else. I had to get a helmet bag from Trooperbay to carry it separately. I think if I took off the chest and back from the rest of the armor it would fit, but I like not having to dismantle everything when packing the armor.
  17. Cool idea. I like using a hard hat liner instead of just padding, but I'm currently using velcro to hold mine in place so it's a bit wobbly. Did you use E6000 to glue the connection points in?
  18. For the back piece you should use the hot water bath method to reshape the curves so they fit better. Check out ukswrath's thread for a good tutorial on how to do that. Make sure you trim the return edge on the side where he mentions it, or else you'll risk getting cracks (which happened to me). I tried to keep the plastic covering on my armor until I was finished but it just got too annoying, especially when trying to pull off painter's tape. After a few weeks I just pulled it all off and was much happier during my build
  19. I haven't been able make it to any troops yet (my first will be in a couple of weeks) but I have suited up a few times, mostly for pictures I ran into a few problems, like the holster screws scratching up the side of the kidney. I fixed this by putting a piece of soft velcro over the screws in the holster. I also had to trim some areas like the return edge from the shoulder bridge parts of the back piece as they were digging into my shoulders after 20 minutes or so of wearing the armor. Before May 4th, my wife wanted to get a family picture of all of us as Stormtroopers. When I was suiting up, one of the pop rivets in my belt broke, so the plastic belt was swiging free from the cloth belt. For the pictures I just used painter's tape to hold it in place as best I could. It worked okay, but you can kind of tell something is wrong in that area. A few days later I was able to fix it using a chicago screw instead of pop rivets. I might change out the other side as well since I'm afraid the other pop rivet might break during a troop and I won't be able to fix it easily at that point. The last thing I did recently was to make shin elastics to keep my shins down. I basically followed this thread. I may have put the velcro a little too high inside the shin, or I need to better adjust my thigh garter, because after we got our photos I noticed a huge gap between my thighs and shins. I probably need to lower my thighs a little and raise the shins a little as well. I'm also still working on my wife's armor when I can. We ordered her new thighs since hers are twisting so much and I had to add shims to the back, but they don't look good. When those arrive we'll have to weather them as well as the helmet my son is wearing to replace the FX bucket.
  20. After wearing my armor a few times for about 30 or so minutes each, I made a few adjustments. I got the electronics finalized and put in place. Initially I had the Memorex wireless mic, but the one I had was defective so I had to send it back and got the Steren wireless mic in return. It worked okay, but unless it was practically in my mouth, it would cut out a lot, especially if I had the slightest pause between words when talking. I then got the Wireless Trooping Systems blutooth mic and it is awesome. The mic and receiver are both very small, so don't take up much room in the armor. And they both have internal rechargeable batteries so I don't need to carry around extra batteries. Since the blueooth receiver is so much smaller than the Memorex one, there was a lot of extra velcro in the ab section where I mounted the electronics. In the helmet I got the mic velcroed in so that I don't need to move it around when putting the helmet on or off. I also have ukswrath's hearing assist setup. I tried using speakers but for some reason, the audio is very low and can't be heard unless the speaker is right on your ear, so I put in earbuds instead. I also have eqdizzle's fans - right now they are velcroed to pieces of foam, which are in turn velcroed to the bucket on either side of the frown. Without the foam, the noise was really loud and the hearing assist was just making the noise even louder. With the foam I can actually hear what's going on outside the helmet. You can see I kept the Anovos hard hat liner - I actually like the liner instead of just padding all around my head. I did try using padding but it just didn't feel right. The interior of my bucket isn't pretty, but it gets the job done. Since I put the electronics in my ab, I had a lot of space in the chest. I wanted some kind of space to carry my wallet and keys, so I went to the dollar store and got a cheap camera pouch then vecroed it to the chest space. I probably should have put it (or a bigger pouch) in the back plate instead, but I already put it on the chest so for now that's good enough. After a few troops I'll see if I need more storage.
  21. After thinking about it, I'm actually considering stashing an extra USB battery at the front of the helmet which would help even it out. I didn't even think about getting a larger bag for the back plate - maybe I should do that too. Although I'm starting to get too much stuff stuck to the inside of my armor. I already have an Aker/icomm strapped to the ab plate since I had a lot of extra room in there. Sometimes I think I should just go HWT or sandy so I can have a backpack to store stuff.
  22. I have the same problem with the helmet tilting back due to the weight of the battery at the back. Have you come up with any ideas for how to counter it? I was going to add something of similar weight to the front under the frown, but I don't know if I want to add something that doesn't need to be there. Concerning somewhere to store valuables, I picked up a cheap camera pouch at the dollar store and velcroed it to the inside of my chest. It's big enough to hold my wallet but still small enough so it's not taking up too much room. My phone is too tall to fit (iphone 6s) but a smaller phone would fit.
  23. Don't let the snaps get you down - you got some good experience at making snaps! To this day I still make mistakes with snaps. I was making a longer strap today for my chest/ab and accidentally used the outer part of the female snap but the inner part of the male snap so I had to remake that strap again. I actually have a pile of snap mistakes in a box in the garage. There are a lot of mistakes in that box. Oh and concerning pulling apart pieces glued with E6000 - you can pull them apart multiple times. Just clean off the residue once the pieces are apart.
  24. Mine doesn't have that interesting of a backstory - it's based on the title of an obscure song from one of my favorite bands (James). I've had it since the 90s.
  25. Ah I've been debating trimming the top backs of my thighs as well since sometimes they will hit the butt plate. I still haven't mastered the positioning of the thighs on the thigh garter yet, so the right position might solve it for me. Trimming yours would probably help if you could then pull them higher. You could probably even get away with not having the point in the back - I've seen several RS Props kits that have no point in the back, just a curve around the entire rear.
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