themaninthesuitcase

whats 197 in real money (Yes this is a joke. Also what crazy altitude are you at if water boils at 91C?)

Seeing those mangled snaps makes me so glad I bought the pliers! I've got to bend the shoulders too to reclaim about 2". Any pro tips?

I have a source for M3.5 but only 30mm long. There's shorter ones on evilBay but I think they will be too short.

that sounds like the butt plate measurements.

The on going adventure continues. Last couple of evenings have been busy. I started last night by re-doing one of the shoulder snaps. The snaps don't aways set as well as I'd like and I didn't realise how bad this one was until after I'd glued it. I pulled of the old one and reglued a new one. I've also glued most the the snaps to the body parts only needing to do the chest and OII plate. The side is still outstanding also until I get the snaps/rivets in place. I've also yet to add snaps to the arms, though still toying with the idea of glued in 2" for the elbow vs snaps, at least on 1 side. I then re-trimmed both the rear thighs to get them to line up better and then re-glued the cover strips back on as before. The new gap is far cleaner. I have also marked out for the various holes that are needed, though I've not done the butt plate yet. I couldn't find any measurements for the crotch strap, A is 20mm and looks a bit close maybe? B is about 25ish. The solo side snap was suggested at 12mm (A). Looking at other builds this seems a touch close to the seam. 20mm is what another Anovos builder is using and looks a bit better (C, follow the arrow its basically in the cross of the B ). Measured out for the side rivets as per reference (http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v336/themaninthesuitcase/TK%20Reference/RoughMeasurementSideRivets01_zps6fiotrbz.jpg). Then repeated this on to the Ab. I've yet to drill these, I'm waiting for my bag of brass split rivets which should arrive early next week. I also started glueing one thigh again. I've used a big beefy locking ratchet clamp to hold at the smaller end where the most stress is. This seems to be doing the job and I'll leave it for 48 hours to fully set. Finally I need to re-form the back plate as is common with the Anovos kit. I have about a 2" gap which I should be able to close up if I heat form the shoulder arc which is very square. To reduce the stress on the bend when doing this I'm going to trim some return down to the following lines. The neck side doesn't need to be done as the return angle doesn't make it necessary. Once the trims done I'll have to use some boiling water to warm the plastic to allow for the bend and then cold to set the bend. Once I'm happy I'll add the snaps and be able make the shoulder elastics.

Spent the evening gluing snaps on and also cover strips back onto the rear of the thighs. I lined up the butt plate with the kidney to made sure everything lines up. I have added more to various parts until I ran out of clamps again. To get the thighs to line up I added a slight trim to both which seems to have helped a lot. Guess we'll see when the glue sets after the final join. I've also started marking up for the holes I need to drill. I took some photos but I'll post those another day as it takes me a long time to sort through things. Once the snap glue dries on the kidney I'll mark up there too.

I was thinking of doing test, but the tape was faster than 24 hours for E-6000 to dry and me be happy that it wouldn't react. Having a night off today, last night was too frustrating. Normal service will resume tomorrow and I'll figure out whats going on with that thigh gap. I picked up some 2" masking tape so will be really pulling on that to hold it down. Will lightly sand the armour side see if that helps, and maybe even wedge it in between something solid too. I should have plenty of clamps left after that so will glue on some snaps too.

The UKG Armourers suggested an inner strip to help with the gluing. I am going to trim a small bit of 1 side to get a better alignment as well. I need the room at the top but I'm okay at the bottom so will trim a small wedge no wider than about 2mm. I'm getting good with the scissors now so I think I'll be able to do it once I get a line marked up.

I was going to paint but I didn't as I wasn't sure if the paint would be desolved by the glue. So I decided to go with the proven masking tape method.

The Billhag on UKG gave me some updated versions of the snap diagrams I posted before. I've added them to my reference photobucket here. I've elected to follow the UKG advice on snap locations (including on the arms/shoulders) seeing as they will be my garrison. Bit of a 1 forwards 2 back kind of night. First some nice things: The new M3.5 brass screws for the bucket ears came. I could only get really short or really long. I got the long ones as brass isn't exactly hard to cut. The new, longer, M4 pan head screws came for the TD. Spot the new respirator. Seems the old one was well past due. Now for some bad news. The glue on the rear of the thighs didn't hold :bleep: This was the worst on but the other went too. Looks like it was down to me having the cover strip down too far and also raised sections at the base interfering with each other on one leg. I've trimmed that now to give them room. I also pulled the strips off to re-try the glue up. I noticed that 1 left has a gap (see below) it the rear, is this a problem? I can trim off a mm or 2 to close it up if needed. It will close up a touch more once the thighs are fully glued up, or at least I hope so. The photo probably makes it look bigger than it is. I think it's just down to how the trim was done when I cut straight lines. Back to happier news I started glueing on the snap plates to a few parts. I started by taping over the snap plates as I am told they can react to the E-6000 glue. This was done by running a strip of tape along my cutting matt then trimming to width and then cutting squares off of the strip. I started with front shoulders, and for some reason don't have a photo so you'll have to use your imagination. I then added the 3 snaps along the base of the kidney. Once these are set I'll do the "posterior" plate ones to line up. I also added two to the ab plate as per the Billgram. At this point I was out of clamps, and the wife was getting fed up of the glue smell (she's in the room when I do this stuff but doesn't wear a respirator as her face isn't stuck right into it). To use up the last of the glue I'd squeezed out I also added one snap to a shoulder bell for the bicep strap, this was clamped with some of my smaller 10mm magnets. None of the was done particularly accurately, I eye balled the centre and checked by using a glue spreader to measure and compare them to ensure they where at least close, mm accuracy here is a waste of effort I felt. Parts just need to match their counter parts which is easy to do just by lining them up. I also trimmed down some returns on these parts for good measure whilst I was in there. Namely the kidney and the top of the butt plate. There's still a good 5mm on there but not the massive return there was before.

I wasn't planning on cutting my TD and was worried it wouldn't look right, but it looks fine. Still not decided if I want to chop the 1/4" mainly as the chop saw is at the bottom of a very large pile of boxes.

How much glue are you using, it looks like a quite small amount. I used a wooden stirrer liberated from a coffee shop to smear a layer of glue over the entire surface to be glued. If you leave this a minute or two it starts to go tacky and makes the clamping far easier.

I should also mention the pyrm pliers are a god send. I couldn't imagine having to do all of those snaps with a hammer!

Last couple of evenings I've spent working on more of the elastics. Last night I sewed my poppers onto some 3/4" black elastic for the shoulder bells. The phone show one with the other half popped on so I don't lose it. My sewing skills aren't much so it took me a really long time. Got faster by the end though so hoping the part on the white elastic will go faster. Today my snaps came from Rebel Scum Workshop. I ordered 100 to allow room for mistakes and I also ordered the pliers. I bought a hole punch to do the holes in the webbing and elastic a while ago. It's a cheap Rolson one was I figured it would only be used for this project. I'll come back to if this was a good decision later in the post. As you can see I made a 1" loop in the end of some 1" elastic and sewed this on the machine. I then used a silver pen to measure and mark the centre. This done I used the punch to make the hole and sealed with a lighter. I found that you need something soft under what you want to punch or it won't punch a clean hole. I used a doubled over off cut of elastic from when I was practicing on the sewing machine. I also cut a 2" strip of 1" webbing for the armour plate. I heat sealed the ends with the lighter but the punched hole was left alone, the snap will press the fibres into place and the punched hole didn't want to fray anyway. It almost seems as if the pressure sort of melts the fibres together. Tests done I made a template webbing 2" long with a central hole and used this to cut and punch against with out having to measure dozens of times. This allowed me to make 25 straps pretty fast. This should be roughly about the right amount I need, but I have some questions. I based my count on the following Billgrams: These show only 2 plates joining the upper armour sections to the lower ones, yet almost all armours (including the wire hooked originals) use 3. Whilst I've seen amour in this exact layout I suspect there's a good reason most used 3? Am I just paranoid. Also they show 1 snap for each of the 2" white shoulder straps. I've seen many use 2 snaps here but then a lot use double snaps for all lengths, which I am not. I suspect 1 will be plenty but then I don't know how much stress they are under. Not hard to change but that means more sewing Finally what length should the elastics be. It strikes me as easier to make a standard length elastic and then I can have spares. I was thinking 4" (plus the folded over sections so call it 6" total). I'd then glue the plates to this distance. Again not hard to change but I don't want to make up a dozen or so and find they are too long/short. For the 3 rivet side do people use snaps still or just rivet through the elastic directly. I have also seen people use the split rivet to hold a snap in place, I'm toying with this idea but I don't have enough rivets to do any tests with I don't think. I mentioned the Rolson punch tool. Once I remembered I needed a "pad" to punch against it was fine, bit short on leverage but worked of you squeezed hard. However before I realised you needed the pad I of course chipped a punch, the one that's the correct size for the snaps. On fabrics going down 1 size wasn't a big deal as they can stretch a bit. For the snap needed in the armour this is a HUGE irritation. Fortunately it looks like pliers came with a punch tool also so I'll test that on some scrap to see if it a: works and b: is the right size.

It took me a long time to find M3.5 countersunk last night in any qty that wasn't by the 100! Also do I need washers or just nuts?

I don't plan on filling mine, the originals wouldn't have been. My reference isn't high enough resolution to prove this, but I can't see them spending the time to do it. I'd want it a bit tighter too, I'll be doing mine some time next week.

In a break from our regularly scheduled program I broke out the sewing machine. I have a new nemesis. Initially I had the machine set for a small tight zig zag but was having lots of issues with snapped thread. That one snapped about 2/3rds of the way across. After a lot of trial and error on some sacrificial 3" elastic I discovered I needed to increase the tension and also change to the next size larger stitch. This gave me almost perfect seams going forwards. On my 1 inch elastic I left the stitch the same size but reduced the tension down to 7 from the max of 9 I was using on the 3" elastic. I'm not sold on if sewing the 1" doubled over for the snaps will be worth it. I folded over 3" and after sewing this left a hole 2 3/4" wide for the waist belt. Currently I am trialing a belt I got with some outdoors trousers but the large loop gives room for a more robust belt if needed. As I did with the shoulder elastics I've not cut the elastic and just added the loops at each end. Next job for them will be to figure out how long to make these and to glue them in. Thankfully my new mask came today so I will no longer be starved for oxygen when using the mask.

25 for the top, 16 at the bottom?

So if I wanted metric (as they are easier to source in the UK) I'd want to use M3.5? And they'd want to be about 20mm long?

The included ones are nasty little self tappers. I'm ordering some pan head machine screws, washers and nylocs this evening. I'm not 100% sure on the head size though ukswrath used #6 which looks to be a 6.9mm head. M3 is 6, M4 is 8 so I'll probably go for M4.

I'll use Chicago screws I think, if I need to remove them I'll be able too. Then I'll glue on the covers with E6000 which is also removable.

I took the clamps off the plate today: You can see the plate has a healthy slant, but I'm not worried as this more or less matches the reference, maybe a tiny bit worse. I've now started gluing the corners, but it's really held in place already. I also added the cover strips to the rear of the shins. These are added to the outers and I'll leave the inners un-glued for the hook holes. As you can see I'm glad I bought so many clamps! I also used almost all the magnets I bought on the rear of the thighs (not pictured). This nearly brings me to the end of the main build work on the limbs. I just need to add the elbow elastics, thigh belt elastics, bicep hooks and shin hooks. Oh I also need to add the ammo box to the thigh. Any input on the size and distances for the shin holes would be appreciated. Starting to get exciting now. I have about 10m of 1" webbing I got for the snaps so I'm thinking of getting a cam buckle for this to make the belt for the thighs. This will be nice and low profile, I'm just worried if this will be up to the job. Tomorrow I'll be ordering the snaps so will be able to get on with the body too.

What size are the brass helmet screws? I need to get those too.

I'll probably go for something easier to remove then rivets too, then E-6000 on the covers.

in some ways melting out the rivet would give a nice neat hole rather than a huge tear. I just hope I'm one of the small amount of glue people.