themaninthesuitcase

Im not kman but: Aligned is fine according to my reference.

I'd vote those are close enough.

So today work began on the belt upgrade. Step 1: Ordered a new belt from RWA. Before starting the belt looks all pretty and all but it's basically rubbish. 2 layers of super thin canvas couldn't support a fly never mind a blaster in the solid holster supplied, even with the 4 screws used to hold it on. First job was to get the plastics off the belt. I did this using a drill larger that the rivet in the drill on a slow speed. My drill has 2 speeds so I selected the slow one. Using the too large drill means you'll drill out the centre before the out side due to the profile of the drill. Then you can remove the washer and canvas This was done for all three of the rivets and the plastic was removed from the belt and the drop boxes were now free to be removed. A handy IKEA coat hook was used to support the belt so that the boxes were not crushed when drilling as it happened to be the right size and was to hand. Next I needed to move the rivet button caps from the other side. In all their wisdom Anvovos used some nasty pink epoxy for this which really doesn't want to come off. I began by protecting the surrounding plastic with some blue masking tape. For the first button I used a fully extended snap blade utility knife to slowly cut and pry at the epoxy until it have up and the cover popped off. I started the same way for the 2nd but there was a section toward the centre of the belt that was too well glued and prying to hard would have ripped the plastic. To cut this with the utility knife wasn't going to happen. Luckily I have a very fine saw called a jewellers saw. Think coping saw but even smaller. The stirring stick is there to lift the cover away and reduce damage to it. After a bit of careful sawing the second cover popped off also. You can see there was a small amount of damage to the rear but nothing too big. I doubt you'll see this when re-attached but it will be oriented to hide this was best I can when re-glued. The same technique was used on the middle cover. One side came off pretty easily as it seemed to not have much glue there. The other side was trickier. The cover was positioned close to the bump so getting the saw in was tricky. Once in I started sawing but obviously messed up the angle as the blade snapped. These saws are barely long enough with only about 1cm of extra length to saw in so the snap rendered it useless for this job. I've ordered some more but they won't be here until Thursday, all 36 of them. To make sure I didn't loose the covers I did remove I've stored them in the belt. This photo is evidence of this so I won't turn the house upside down looking for them. Some 2" tape is making sure they don't come out. Once the blades arrive I'll remove the 3rd cover ready for the new belt. I've not decided how to attach the plastic to the belt yet. Rivets are traditional, but Chicago screws seem like a safer option given the nightmare it's been so far. The covers will be re-attached with E-6000 which will be far less permanent. I also need to remove the remaining rivet and epoxy. Seems like the only real option is some burrs and a demel, maybe a sanding drum or a grinding stone. What ever is used I need to be careful to keep the heat down to prevent melting. I'm going to see what I can get in town otherwise it's another order to Amazon. I finished the evening by removing the elastics from the drop boxes to allow for proper positioning and accurate attachment. I was hoping to pull out the elastics but they are super glued in and curve into the interior of the box. The 2nd best option seems to be to cut the elastic. I pulled the elastic as taught as I could then used a scalpel to cut as far down into the gap as I could. This means there's no elastic poking out and I can hide all this behind the new elastic. I don't have much good reference for attachment other than this: This looks to show that 1" was used rather than 3/4" that Anovos used, which is nice as I have loads left from the shins. And it looks like they are attached about 1/3rd down in the centre. What is not shown is how they are attached. There's a small bit of brown which looks to suggest contact cement but there's also a small fray at the crease about 3/4" down from the edge which may be where a rivet was/is. Though that said the holster rivets say this is a hero belt so maybe none of this is relevant. I believe the standard is a rivet these days. If so what size do I want? I am guessing I would need a washer too, ideally on the inside face to but that won't happen here as I can't get them apart. How far down should these be attached? I'll do a couple of test runs on scrap before I do it live.

I'd fit the pads first, I suspect you'll want the bucket held secure.

For completeness this is what the DIN spec M3.5 look like once in a finished Anovos bucket: Finished bucket! by Christopher Pearson, on Flickr Also this bucket has had a complete hand re-paint.

After last nights "not a tantrum" this morning I ended up routing through our bins in a state of paranoia. Obviously this was stupid and once my wife got involved this evening the Hovi tips showed up. Inside the armour bin, neatly tucked inside the chest......idiot. Note the nice thick zip lock bag chosen to keep them safe. Formerly home to my Namisu Nova Fountain pen. A bargain of a pen that one. So now on with the 2 day progress update. First I finished of the main armour by making the last elastics I needed which were to join the shoulder bell to the bicep. These were done pretty fast. Apparently I've gotten pretty adept on the sewing machine and punch pliers now. This gave me 1 fully completed set of armour ready for it's first proper fitting. Hurray! I've not done a full suit up yet as I wanted the bucket to be done first. When I was fitting the elastics I noted I bought my left elbow when bending it. I trimmed ~2mm from the forearm return which seems to fixed it. I also trimmed about the same from the shoulder bells to reduce the flex needed to get them on the bicep. Once that was done I started getting the bucket together. After adding the ears started to work on fixing in the visor. The supplied visor is nice and wide and goes over the ear screw area. With this being the case I decided to use these to hold it in. I initially tried to measure the centre of the visor but found it quite off from the curve cut into it. So from here on accurate measurements where mostly abandoned for positioning and eyeballing it all took over. I only used my vernier to measure the centre distance for the holes. After a bit of positioning and checking I was done. There is a small gap to the face which should help with some ventilation into the bucket. Looks good though. This was also the point I discovered I'd misplaced the hovi tips so spent the rest of the evening turning the house upside down. This evening, once the wife found the tips, I carried on building the bucket back up. I started by adding the S trim. When this came off there was a small (say 2mm) gap at the join. For whatever reason I had about the same in excess. This suits me just fine as it forces the trim back in and means no glue is needed to hold it in. You also can't see the glue left that was holding it on before which is certainly a bonus. I also added some padding. I ordered some helmet pads from China a while ago which all fit with velcro. Of course this isn't an ideal fit despite the adjustable nature of them. They are all 3/4" thick and I need a thicker one at the front and a thiner one at the rear. So after some minor surgery where I cut one pad in half and glued it to another to make an pad about 1 1/4" thick and one about 1/2". I used some of the velcro tape from the Anovos kit to add the loop to the back of the cut pad. This gives me a pretty decent fit and I can move my head with out much wobble. I can also swap out the thin pad for a regular one to get a more snug fit if needed. I also have the start of a chin strap which I will finish another day. Currently it goes bucket - washer - nut - visor - washer - nut. I think I'll probably remove the nut between the bucket and the visor and put the chin strap there instead. This will mean the strap elastic can't stretch over the nut and come off. And I'll sign off for the night with my finished bucket: Next job: Belt

well done.

Was hoping to post a picture of my almost complete bucket last night but the Hovi tips are in "a safe place". This safe place isn't the bin (yay for having some heavy duty gloves) so hopefully they will show up soon.

Just pulled off the masking template whilst the girls had lunch. Pretty happy with the result. The gloss did it's job for the most part. There's 1 place where I did a lousy job burnishing down the template, the rest are all where the template creased. There's only so much you can do when that happens so pretty happy with how small the bleeds are. I've cleaned up most the tape reside now with some masking tape, just dabbing the sticky side pulls away the glue that's stuck. For the bleeds I'll use a tooth pick dipped in thinners to clean up.

Accomplished a fair bit today in the time I had but a lot of it was "rinse and repeat" type stuff. Started the day with coat 3 on the bucket stripes. This gave them a nice good colour, but still room for one more. Another 6 hour clock. Next I glued the second end of the elastic I had to remove from the shoulder bell to fix the crack. Whilst I was there I glued the elastic to join to the shoulder strap. Looking at the reference these almost touch the shoulder strap. I've left about 5mm from the shoulder strap to the bell to match this. Whilst the glue was out I glued on the large ab button plate. Next up was a job I've been dreading - the shin closures. There seems to be little reference on this other than some badly angled images. I added the end holes 25mm in and the middle hole split the difference. The distance in was around 6mm to give some meat to the bit that's left. I used the same 5/32 drill I used for the snaps as testing showed this seemed to be a good size. This was all marked up on some masking tape, a pilot drill was added using a ~1mm drill in a pin vice. The main hole was done with a power drill VERY carefully. I also glued in the elastics, aligning them with the holes. I left a small a gap to let the stretch of the elastic to work. I also only glued about half their length for the same reason. Enough to hold them but not so much they can't stretch. Last night I used some E-6000 to "tack" the brow trim in place. Just a few spots on the inside, one at each end and one in the middle. This was worthless. The second I removed the clamps it came away. I guess the glue didn't want to stick to the rubber trim. So instead I used some UHU. This stuff seems to have done the job, and sets far faster, as in 30 minutes fast. It's similar in many ways that it dries to a rubbery texture and is only semi permanent. It should be removable from the bucket if ever needed. Because I have them, and it can't hurt to have a spare, I made up the hand guards. The gloves are heavy duty marigolds, pretty tough might get some for the house too! Last job before I packed up for dinner was the shoulder elastics. I wasted a bunch of time setting up the sewing machine and trying to machine sew them. I gave up pretty fast and just hand tied them with a reef knot. Yes those marks are all on the protective sheet. This evening once the kids were in bed I did a 4th coat on the bucket stripes. I found it incredibly difficult to tell which ones I'd done vs not done. I guess this shows that I didn't really need to do this coat but I'd started so I finished it. Tomorrow I will try get the last of the elastics finished, to join the bicep to shoulder bell. With that done the main armour is done as far as I can think. I'll also get the templates removed and see what hides underneath. I suspect I'll have a small amount of clean up to do, but once that's done I can start putting everything back together.

Its a build day bonanza. Yes I am running out of ways to keep these updates interesting, why do you ask? I started off the day buffing the tubes on the bucket face. The new compound is a bit better but not massively so. That done I applied the templates I was sent. One side went on no issues at all. The second was far harder due to the more pronounced compound curve. After a bit of fiddling I got a reasonable fit, a couple of wrinkles but nothing drastic. I'd have preferred the bottom template in the image had decided to curve the other way but I think any further attempts to adjust it's position would have killed it. I used the #35 clear gloss varnish to paint over the template. The idea of doing this is to seal the template and prevent bleeds. Any bleeds will be clear and so not visible. For the 2 small creases I will push the template down again to help seal it every time I paint. Any bleed here can be fixed after the fact. The gloss takes 6 hours to cure so I set it aside for now. I dug out the belt I made earlier in the project, mainly as I forgot to photograph it but I'll also need it later. Next up was to crack out the sewing machine and remake the shin elastics. The 1st batch of elastic I'd gotten was far too hard to hand sew so I bought some more at the market in St Albans. I then proceeded to sew the hooks on to all 6 of them. This was as exciting as it sounds so I also got on with the shoulder straps. I started by getting my wife to help work out how long they needed to be. I held the armour in place whilst she marked the elastic where it got to the rear plate. I then just had to measure to the snap and finish off the straps. You can also see I sewed on the other part of the 15mm popper for the shoulder bells. That was also thrilling. The popper is centered in the gap, the offset is due to the fact that the snaps on the front are lower down that on the rear. I also cracked on with remaining elastics. I have a couple more to do but this is the bulk done now. At this point I glued in the snaps to join the fore arms and biceps and whilst the glue was out glued on the small button plate. I'll do the bigger one later. This gave the first chance to try on the armour with out holding it all together. Fit is pretty good and more comfortable than expected. I'm able to move reasonably well, nothing is overly tight. I did get my first armour bite as well, the thigh to cod . Obligatory walking up and down for 10 minutes followed. This fitting revealed a few issues. I only had 1 elastic on the "open" side. I was hoping that the belt would close the bottom but testing with the rubbish Anovos belt seemed to show this wasn't going to work. I need to file the top of the rear of the right thigh. It pokes into my bum The butt plate was splaying out and not hugging me as well as I'd like. The reason for this was the snaps where to far in to pull the armour inline with the kidney which is fine. I was also concerned before the fitting the chest plate was going to dig into my neck but this turned out to not be the case. Very glad I waiting to try it on first before addressing this. At this point it was time to break for dinner. After dinner was done I cracked out the #14 and did the first coat of blue on the tube stripes. The paint is pretty thin and rather then lump it on I've elected to do 3-4 coats as needed. I've since done a 2nd and the colour is looking far better but at least 1 more will be needed. Next I made some elastics for the forearm to biceps. I had added snaps earlier today so I was able to measure against these to make the elastics. The snaps will be helpful and allow me to break down the arms when needed for packing. I finished off the day by addressing some of the above issues and adding some missing snap plates. I pulled off the snap plates from each end of the lower kidney and re-glued them at the extreme ends. I re-used the snaps despite not being able to remove all the glue. The old glue seemed to melt into the new so hopefully the bond will be good. If not it's no great loss and I'll make new ones. I also added a new snap at the bottom of the opening side to the kidney and ab as per the Billgram. This should close up the body nicely. I added the snaps I need to join the shoulder bell to the bicep. Once the shoulder bell to shoulder strap elastics are glued in I'll measure for how long these will need to be. Last job of the evening was gluing on the shoulder plates. This makes the armour look really close to done and is a nice moment. Got a few chores to do tomorrow so no all day builds. Hopeful I'll be able to finish off the blue paint with 2 more coats and also get shoulder bell top elastics glued in. I could use snaps here but the hassle of sewing means it's a pain to adjust them however I do it. Ideally I'd like to get the holes for the shin elastics drilled tomorrow too and make a start gluing in the elastics.

I did. That's why I didn't do much this evening. That and tired.

How to paint your traps: 1: Using some masking tape I taped the bottom of the trap off to get a half decent straight line. Depending on how well you do this you may need to clean up after with a spot of thinners on a cotton bud. 2: Paint the area with #5 Dark Admiralty Grey. I should have penciled out the line I wanted. I didn't so had to clean up later with thinners. 3: Let the paint dry over night. Your bucket will now look something like this: 4: Carefully remove the tape. If the lines aren't 100% perfect it's not the end of the world, the next steps will cover over an amount of this. If you have gone too far, I did, use some masking tape to protect the bit you want to keep use the thinners on a cotton bud. The idea here is to use the tape for a straight line as well as protection from the thinners. 5: Using a thin brush, I used a #1 Humbrol, carefully outline with the black (#85 satin coal black). Ensure the brush has a good load of paint, but isn't dripping. This should give a good flow off the bristles as you do your line. If you screw up use the thinners on a cotton bud to wipe up and try again. You will probably do this a few times when you first try. Because the grey is nice and dry so long as your gentle the wet black paint will wipe off easily and not damage the grey layer. 6: Another overnight wait to let the paint dry. 7: With some masking tape mask off the top and bottom of where the stripes will stop. I used Tamiya brand masking tape, it's decent stuff. Make sure you rub the tape down well to burnish into place and reduce risk of bleeds. 8: Using a pen mark out the where the first and last strip will go. This will be roughly 4mm in as above. 9: For all 4 bits of tape do the following: Measure between the 2 ends Divide this by 11. 12 stripes need 11 gaps! Measure out this gap and mark out on the tape. Be careful here, compound error can add up. I used a cheap digital vernier calliper for this. It really made it far easier than if I'd had to use a rule. 10: Join the dots! I used the end of a loyalty card key tag as it's small, flexible and wasn't going to damage the paint. 11: (Optional) "steady hand medicine". 12: Carefully, 1 at a time paint over the lines. Reload the brush before each line to ensure you get a good clean plaint job. I found if you did 2 in one go then you'd get a small gap next to the tape. 13: Remove the tape. You don't need to wait for it to be bone dry this time. 14: Great success! 15: Finish steady hand medicine.

I'll start this update with an elaboration on todays earlier post. At lunch I was sat looking at the calendar thinking if I pulled my finger out over the weekend and rethought my plan for my blaster I probably could be cleared and ready in time to troop the Star Wars days at Legoland. Then I got home and saw the announcement that the UKG have had to pull out. Somewhat disappointing but I trust the garrison knows what it's doing and as a former Merlin group employee I can but speculate at the reasons. I hope the differences can be worked out in time for next year as whilst it wasn't my first meeting with the UKG it is one I remember well. Ironically my first 501st encounter was at a Merlin Group party. BUT the silver lining is I no longer have to bust my bum all weekend when I should be being a good dad Right back to the regular drivel: Last night I spent a fair bit of time to mark out for the stripes on the tears and the rear traps. For the tears I counted 7 stripes on the reference. Using a fine point permanent pen I put dots where I wanted each stripe t start and end. As always based on my reference and rough eye balling. Excuse the white corner, I touched this up after I did the black as I needed to do a 3rd coat on a couple of the frown teeth as well. I then used a #1 Humbrol brush to join the dots with some #85 satin coal black. Next I did the ears. I applied the outline with the same #1 brush and then did the 2nd from rear rank bump with a 3mm flat tip brush. The ear plastic is a bit dull finish wise and will need a buff. To do this I'll have to carefully tape over the grey areas with masking tape now but such is life. I've picked up a new compound so will hopefully get better results with that. For the rear traps I'll do a post of their own as I feel it's worth a tutorial style post. Though for the purposes of the WIP boom: This means all thats left paint wise is the tube strips. And thanks to my UKG Armourer I now have these to play with: Plan for the rest of today is to do the 2nd post then try buff out the tubes on the face. Depending on this I may or may not start applying the templates but I think that might be a tomorrow problem.

Wife has informed me that the tube templates have arrived I'll check them out once I'm home. Long weekend ahead so hoping to blitz the armour and get to a point where all thats preventing clearance is the blaster. I've almost finished painting the bucket, all that's left are the tube stripes. The compound I got was a bit gentle so going to pick up a different one today and see if I can get a better shine on the tubes before I paint them. Will post a proper update this evening.

Just realised I forgot to outline the ears....

Painted the outlines. Again mixed results, but generally a bit happier overall today. The traps where tricky mainly due to trying to find a good way to hold the dome at the right angle to paint a line. Also due to the thin line required to match the reference I used a #1 brush. This means you don't get a long run before the paint in the brush runs out which isn't great. You can also see that being a bit heavy handed on the 2nd coat of grey seems to have reduced the amount of texture in the grey. However I still would use an airbrush if I re-do them. The tears generally went better than the traps for some reason. On both tears and traps I did make mistakes which were cleaned up with a cotton bud dipped in thinners. Upsettingly if you look at the right tear you can see a small patch where the grey lifted. The paint wasn't very well done here so cleaning the mistake also cleaned away the grey. I'll touch this up when I do the stripes in the rear traps and in the tears. I also painted up some M3.5 screws for the ears. I only plan on using these on the 2 visible screws one each side, for the ones hidden under the S-trim I'll use the Anovos supplied screws. So again painting 5 gives me a spare for any slips or mistakes. The screws haven't yet been cut to length either, this will be done after fitting the ears. I'll leave the bottom screw long enough for an elastic chin strap too.

One of the UKG has hooked me up with some templates which is awesome. But yes, turns out I did bite off a lot more than I expected. Humbrol isn't nice to paint with. Shame there's not a #5 in their acrylic or I'd try that on some scrap.

I'll start this post by remembering those ml lost in the great thinners spillage of 2016. Many were lost but will long be remembered by the strange smell in the lounge. The last 2 evenings have been spend re-painting the bucket. I've had mixed success on this but we'll cover that as we go. tl;dr Unless you really want to don't repaint the traps and tears. With the paint all removed I stared by working on the frown. After the 1st coat I had a pretty decent layout. Again basing my work on the reference from before. I really struggled with the traps and the tears. I taped off the bottom of the rear traps to get a straight line. If you look closely the finish isn't as smooth as I'd like. I probably should have thinned out the paint a bit and done several coats. On my 2nd coat (not pictured) I was 'liberal' with the paint to give it a chance to self level bit more. The lines follow the shape on the bucket, again captain shakey hands make this non-ideal. I also did the tears, but found these far easier to get a decent finish. Probably due to them being a lot smaller area to cover. Again 1st coat pictured, not 2nd which has a nicer finish. I'm not 100% happy with these, and probably should have left the factory decals in place. Oh well too late now. Maybe next winter I'll break the bucket down again and re-do them. Preferably I'll use an airbrush for the backgrounds and then hand paint the outline. But this will have to do for this year as my compressor is still at my dads, and I've yet to buy an airbrush. I also did the ears. Far, far happier with the ears than the other grey areas. Again giving weight to the idea smaller areas being easier to paint. Once the grey areas are dry I'll do the outlines, let them dry then do the internal lines. The idea here being wet paint will just wipe off the dry if I screw up. I also have painted the vocoder. This was trickier than I expected. The first paint was wiped off and then pencil line drawn to match the reference. This was then painted in. I had a few slips on the 2nd coat that were cleaned up with a cotton bud dipped in thinners. One was a bit wet and ran, so that was cleaned up again with a cotton bud and LESS thinners. You can also see the 2nd coat on the frown here which gave a nice result. I'll be leaving the tube striped until I reassemble the bucket. The reason behind this is to help me get them lined up with the ear join. Not sure if I'll hand paint these (masking off the top and bottom) hand cut a mask from masking tape or buy a pre made mask. The 1st two I can do with no further expense, the latter will be easier but mean ordering something probably from the US.

Maybe if you use a blunt knife under there to pry lightly at the glued section rather than pull on the ear. I did mine by lightly bending the rim until the glue cracked. Of course I can't get teh glue off now but that's a different issue.

What thickness would you recommend for the chicago screws for the belt plastic? I've found a seller that does them in 2mm, 3.5mm and 6mm gaps between the heads. 3.5mm seems a shade thin but 6mm might be too wide if the belt isn't thick enough. I don't know how thick a "proper" belt is, I'd guess about 4-5mm?

I'd be taking that ear off and adding paste from the rear. It's not too hard 3 screws. Just be careful as one of mine was held on with all of the superglue!

Sorry yes, I was bending holding then with it still bent quenching in cold water.

Self hosting is probably the future. I've been using Flickr but I've started to hear rumours that yahoo may be not long for this world. Then I'm in the same mess you are.

Bit more progress. I have completely removed all the paint from the bucket now, repaint will start this evening. I gave the dome and face a once over with some Meguires Ultimate compound. This brought the dome to a nice shine but the face is a bit more dull. I should have some Autoglym polish in the shed which will fill the micro scratches and add a thin layer of glaze as well as cutting but I'll do this post paint job. If that doesn't make me happy then I'll be having to apply a wax layer but that sounds a bit excessive for a plastic space man suit. I also made an attempt to bend the left rear shoulder. The right is fine but the shape of the left means it digs in, I need maybe 1cm. After 4 attempts with boiling water with dunk times up to 90s the bend just didn't want to stay bent and was returning to the original shape. At this point I gave up rather than risking the repeated bending causing a crack, you can already see micro cracks in the surface layer. I do fit it was more a comfort thing. I reduced the return edge down to about 4-5mm which has helped so once I've worn the armour a bit in anger I can return the this area if needed. I've now glued the snaps into the rear plate for the shoulder straps so another job for today. More sewing :x I also added the right thigh ammo pack. I used the supplied rivets this time as they have far thinner legs which means I can just use a screwdriver rather than mess about with a hammer in a confined space. These don't take paint as well as the brass finish ones I have but a 2nd coat will sort it. I based my position on this reference: I more or less got it right, slightly off but close enough I think: I've not glued the ammo pack in place yet but I'll added a blob or 2 of E-6000 at some point.