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Troop #: 27 Date: February 22, 2023 Location: Atlanta, GA Event: Bert's Big Adventure Sendoff Event Charity: Bert's Big Adventure If you've read through this thread, you've probably realized this is one of my favorite events of the year. Although for the last couple I was not in my TK, mainly because Mando has been a big hit with the kids and I enjoy doing whatever I can to help get their minds off of life for a bit. It was another solid turnout this year & a lot of happy kids, there was an evening party just for Star Wars (which is what I attended) and the normal morning send off with the Disney Princess group and more Star Wars characters. It had been a while, a TK selfie was needed: Can't find the droids you're looking for? Apparently a droid beachball will do! A lot of the kids enjoyed playing catch, others enjoyed "spaceball", which was me throwing the ball and they'd hit it with toy lightsabers. There's those pesky droids:

Troop #: 26 Date: August 31 - September 5, 2022 Location: Atlanta, GA Event: DragonCon Event Charity: n/a Some of you may have seen Dolores from Imperial Human Resources on YouTube, Instagram, or Tik Tok, I'm a big fan of her skits. When I found out that she was coming to DragonCon I messaged and asked if she'd like to have an "HR-TK" to back her up as she handed out citations to con goers. She enthusiastically said yes and with the help of @revlimiter vinyls were made to apply to one of my pauldrons. The result was a ton of fun and we were super well received! Soon enough the HR-TK was officially named "Dan" and I've now happily added that to my list of aliases. We will return at DragonCon 2023, you've been warned. No one is above the law, not even Albin:

At this rate you're going to hit 50 troops within the 19 days of the year we have left! Keep up the awesome work!!!

Congrats on the 1 Year Trooperversary Adam! You have definitely made the most of it!!

Congrats Adam!!

This guy... again?! Good luck Adam, not that you need it!! Looks awesome!!

Congrats Adam! Great work!!

Adam's straps are made from lower stretch, non-knit elastic. They were also doubled over & have ABS panels sandwiched in between the straps where the snaps were installed for reinforcement. The snaps are inset toward the neck and slightly forward to keep the bells pulled "up" as far as possible and for natural frontward rotation (as much as is possible anyway with the small AP shoulder bells). This is a great solution for off the shelf, readily available elastic strapping that has some slight pull away from the shoulders.

Glad they were helpful! And yes, I used the same nylon webbing for all of my strapping, except where circled in my picture and those are elastic straps. The white shoulder straps are also elastic and will definitely make more sense when you get there, but they join the chest plate to the back plate, hang over top of your shoulders, and also have snaps for the shoulder bells to attach to. For those straps it's especially important to double the elastic over and reinforce with plastic where the snaps go through, those straps in particular see a lot of use and support most of the weight of your torso armor. I still haven't done this on my own helmet as the tube stripe decals are still in great shape, but I plan to follow @Cricket's method of using stencils and a makeup sponge, it's ingenious: If you aren't comfortable using a paint brush and thinner for removal of any paint bleed, a toothpick and thinner work extremely well too. TrooperBay for your stencils: https://www.trooperbay.com/products/stormtrooper-tubestripe-masking-templates-star-wars-cosplay

A couple of unsolicited but hopefully helpful suggestions: First is to get a heavier duty nylon webbing (echoing Doggydoc's suggestion), the thinner nylon you have will work but it's pretty flimsy, the heavy duty nylon is easier to work with and is much more resistant to the snaps pulling out. I made a hole template out of scrap ABS and used that to poke holes in the nylon with a soldering iron and it works great. An example of the nylon webbing I'm referring to: https://www.amazon.com/Heavyweight-Webbing-Inch-Strapping-Outdoor/dp/B09QJ4QZ5Z/ref=sr_1_8?keywords=nylon%2Bwebbing&qid=1658964809&sr=8-8&th=1 You can find it at JoAnn fabrics or a similar store if you have one locally, I normally use 2" wide but I do keep some 1" on hand too. The resulting snap plates I made for my kits: I've been quite satisfied with using the same thicker nylon webbing to connect my armor bits together, but I do use elastic at some connections, circled below. Flexibility is still great and the armor also stays together tightly. For the elastic connections I double the elastic over, sandwich a thin piece of scrap ABS between the elastic, and run the snap through those three layers. This allows you to unsnap the straps/connections easily and without stressing the elastic too much. Keep up the great work!!

Awesome work as always!! But...... j/k!

Something that might help you lift the thighs as suggested is to completely remove the return edge on the upper thighs. Not only will that give you more room to shift them up, it will also be a LOT more comfortable to troop in. Also that front coverstrip on your upper left thigh will poke you endlessly, so you'll want to shave that corner down for sure. One more small item that will improve appearance, you might want to shift the chest plate down just a bit more over the ab section to get a bit more overlap and remove that center gap. Good luck trooper! You're definitely close!

Yep, basically repack it and send it using the shipping label they send you. Now the question will be how long will you have to wait for a replacement to go out once they receive your current pauldron back... Definitely a frustrating reply regarding the leather though, it's not that difficult to get the right material smooth at the time of production and prevent it from happening, unless they're shipping it basically rolled up.

Congrats on your 10th!! And a great troop for it too!

Words do not begin to describe how well this turned out or how much I appreciate you knocking my blaster out too! I already enjoyed having this blaster on display when I'm not trooping with it, this just took it to the next level all around. Thank you Adam!!