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Scimitar

501st Stormtrooper[TK]
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Everything posted by Scimitar

  1. Thanks!! lol That's too cute, kids are great! Thank you again. I'll share a couple shots if anyone cares to see, mostly ArtFX+ statues with a few other things mixed in. Thank you! Although I feel like I've slightly cheated with my process for the traps and tears. I've been penciling in the outlines, then painting in the black portions, then filling in with gray. My freehand skills are not that good at all. lol
  2. Based on the idea I saw in Ruthar's FOTK build thread I purchased a motorcycle half helmet liner for mine, it fits inside the helmet very well, it's comfortable, allows for some ventilation since it's not a solid liner, puts my eyes at the proper level, and prevents the helmet from moving around on my head. This one is a Scorpion EXO-C110 KwickWick liner in Large for reference (https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00JDQ3P18/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o01_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1).
  3. I'm going to have to get creative with the placement of everything inside the helmet, my head isn't exactly small either. lol I've done a test run with the speakers and they're awesome, I'm looking forward to getting everything in there though. FWIW, the speakers aren't much heavier than the AP Hovi Mics, I think mainly because the attachment hardware is all nylon/plastic vs. the metal on the originals. Speaking of which, I solved the spacer issue with the Hovi Speakers (in this case) to my satisfaction, I tried a few different ideas and this is the one that was the simplest and worked the best in my opinion. I bought 9/16" x 1/4" rubber grommets and 1/4" nylon washers from Lowes (there were no washers included with the Hovi Speakers, so I was going to add them anyway). Note that the sizes used would be different for the AP Hovi Mics: I put the grommet directly on the back of the Hovi Speaker: And then I attached it to the helmet using a nylon washer under the nut. On one side the grommet bottomed out before the Hovi Speaker did, which is what I wanted so it could compress against the helmet. On the other side the speaker bottomed out first, so I added two nylon washers between the speaker and grommet and then the grommet bottomed out first. Everything is then firmly finger tightened: There will still be a gap on one side of the speaker and this is normal/unavoidable due to the shape of the helmet recess. But the speakers are firmly in place, oriented well, and the pressure is evenly distributed against the grommet on one side and the washer on the other: After doing that I painted the first trap (helmet came back apart so I could paint under the brow trim and so I could touch up the plasti-dip on the inside): Parts list from this post: 9/16"OD x 1/4"ID Rubber Grommets - x2 (Specific sizing for Ukswrath Hovi Tip Speakers) 1/4" Nylon Washers - x2 Minimum - Extra may be needed as spacers ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ And right before I had taken it apart, my 21 month old daughter put the helmet on herself and ran around the room yelling "HELLO" because that's what I was saying to her when I was testing the speakers out. This is why I get nothing done quickly. Haha!
  4. Thanks! I did, I wanted to do something to make it a bit different but I was also trying to get the holes for the hearing assist as far forward as possible. Probably makes very little difference overall but that's the thought that made the decision. And I totally get it about the OCD. You may be on to something with the foam, I was considering using rubber washers but the foam would probably form to the contours of the helmet recess much better. You're using the Hovi tips that came with the armor, correct? I think these may have a slightly wider base due to the speaker but I haven't done a side by side comparison to know for sure. That's the plan! Thanks for the vote of confidence! Thanks! They are indeed the next mission and the stencils are on the way from TrooperBay to fill in the lines (and tube stripes). Thanks Mark! I'll definitely post something about it when I figure out a solution.
  5. Thanks! Good luck when you get there! It's a daunting task to be sure, I was going to use the decals at first but I think I can make it look passable with paint. We'll see! ------------------------ Last night I did a test fit on the Hovi Tip Speakers, I'll need to add some sort of spacer material under them as they don't seat flush against the plastic, there's actually a decent gap. And since the plastic is thinner in that area I don't want it to crack or break from the pressure of tightening the nut down. And I completed the ear painting:
  6. Had a few extra unexpected minutes this evening, so I filled in the right ear with grey:
  7. So I took Greg's input (thanks again) and added some height to the middle ridge of the vocoder: And then I started painting on the ears, I decided to do the outline first and then I'll fill in with grey once the black dries. I also drilled a couple small holes for the hearing assist, which is obviously where I'll be painting my ear bars: All this in an effort to boost my confidence for painting the traps and tears. lol
  8. Thanks! Ah, good call on the middle ridge, I'll add that little detail the next time I sit down with it. Thanks!!
  9. Let's play Critique my Vocoder, any comments or suggestions are welcome! I noticed that there isn't too much of a "standard" for the bottom portion and even the screen used helmets vary pretty widely, so I'm hoping that portion specifically is ok. For reference, the paint used is Testors Semi-Gloss Black Enamel (1139). Rushed cell phone shots below:
  10. Thanks! I've got to go back and order from them again, completely forgot to order the helmet masking templates. Oops. Yup! I wasn't exactly shooting for 100% flush, but tried to keep it pretty uniform. I'm happy with the result. Thanks! The second faceplate in the background of some of the shots is from my buddy's kit, I've been holding it hostage until he's ready to start it, but I also offered to trim/prep the helmet for him so I'll be taking my own advice there as well.
  11. Thanks Greg!! Thanks David! I'm following along on your build too. ------------------------------------------------------ I'll start this update with what showed up in the mail, I recently snagged a DLT-19 from Slavefive, never know when you might need to lay down some heavy fire: And my S-Trim and lenses showed up from TrooperBay: Progress on the helmet continues, I'm sneaking in 5 minutes here, 10 minutes there. I got the right ear done: Then I did the left ear. Even though I followed the trim lines it ended up with a little more gap up front than I wanted, but I think it still looks good: I noticed that after everything was attached the brow was almost hanging over the eyes, so I took it all apart and trimmed some material off the dome portion: And then I decided to throw a quick brush of paint onto the frown: A couple things that I feel are worth noting/suggesting: - If you're going to plastidip the interior, it's probably best to wait until after you've completed the hole drilling (and any subsequent trimming). The plastidip can catch on a drill bit and it will pull off in a nice circle. lol Easy enough to touch up though. - For the AP helmet ears, start your fitting/trimming from the top and work down. Also, start by attaching them only by the upper two screws, leaving the bottom screw out and the lower holes in the helmet untapped (use your fingers to clamp/position the lower portion to the helmet during test fitting). I found the ears fit better if I slightly repositioned the bottom portion of the ear, which meant that none of the holes I had drilled lined up. ------------------------------------------------------ Unrelated to the build, my wife surprised me with tickets to see Star Wars in Concert at the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra on Friday night for our wedding anniversary, it was an absolutely amazing experience. For those unfamiliar with this, the soundtrack is removed from the movie and is all played live, and they nailed it. Oddly enough I found myself critiquing all of the armor while we watched for reference during my build.
  12. Hope this can help! (Link to 2672x2266 image: https://c1.staticflickr.com/5/4664/40289950901_6b1e45c811_o.jpg)
  13. Thanks for the additional resource! As noted above, I did notch the ears to add that step already so the ear fits well against the face plate and dome sections. However since the lower section of the ear isn't screwed down in the pictures, what you can't see is that the lower section does already fit well, but where my marks are is where that section of the ear makes hard contact on the cheek when it is screwed down. A little rounded trimming will soften that contact and it'll screw down nicely there. It's just where I had to quit for the time being.
  14. Thanks a bunch! Congrats on your Centurion achievement by the way!! ------------------------------------------------------------ January was a very busy month between work and family so I made no progress other than doing some preliminary trimming on most of the parts to prep them for finishing/fitting. I finally had a bit of free time over the past weekend so I started back on the ear trimming. While my goal isn't a totally gap-free fit, I did want to minimize them where possible. Basically to a point where the general population wouldn't look at my helmet and think I can't even color inside the lines, because that's what it looked like with my first round of trimming. So far I've got the upper part of the right ear where I'm happy with it and I'm still working on the bottom portion, which isn't attached to the helmet in the below pictures. You can see the marks where I'm planning to do a little more trimming on the front. I'm using the notch method at the top of the ears to seat them evenly against the face plate and dome. Even though it is more tedious, the advice to completely screw the ears to the helmet using both the screws and nuts every time you trim/adjust something is definitely a good idea to follow. Like some others here I bought a strip of tan leather and replaced the AP holster straps. I have a few completed sets left over from that strip if any other AP holster owners are interested in them, just PM me.
  15. Got to spend a little time in the shop today. I sanded both interior sections of the helmets to promote paint adhesion, then masked off the forward part of the helmet (used grocery bags to fill the frown holes) and plastidipped it (spray on). Went pretty smoothly overall. I gave it two good coats and then removed anything that was touching the plastidip (eyes, frown holes, sides) to prevent separation issues once the plastidip cured. I did accidentally stick my finger in the wet paint while removing one bag, but a disposable brush and spraying some plastidip in a small plastic container made a quick touch up possible. Might be a helpful hint, cut the grocery bags down to size so that they cleanly but firmly fill the frown holes, yet will pull through from the inside of the helmet without getting stuck. I used needle nose pliers to grab the bag ends and pull them out. Hopefully everyone likes pictures as much as I do:
  16. Well the holidays have not gone as planned in terms of free time, I've only been able to start trimming the "ears" and getting them to fit well against the helmet. In the meantime my Classic421 boots arrived from Imperial Boots today, very nice quality and the fit is good, a little extra room as planned.
  17. Thanks Mark! That's very reassuring! ----------------------- Today I've added my Home Depot Special D-Rings to both blasters, grabbed a "before/after" shot before doing the second one:
  18. Last night we received our HyperFirm E-11s, I have to say I am very impressed with these! As far as components go, I'm just waiting on my Imperial Boots order (early Dec. run) and S-trim for my helmet, and then the "gathering" portion of the build should be complete.
  19. Thanks for the encouragement!! I finally got to start actually working on this, decided to begin with the helmet. I started by trimming the rough edges off of both pieces which didn't take much, Mark's rough trimming was pretty close, just needed a little clean up. Then I cut out the teeth by using a Dremel sanding drum and smoothed them out with my sanding files. Then I used a cutting bit and cut out the eyes, finished them off with the sanding drum and a sanding block. Followed that up with a mock up with the lenses and mesh just to see how it looks. If anything regarding the trimming looks off, I welcome the input!
  20. Thanks guys!! So no progress on the kit itself, the time just hasn't been there quite yet. But my last day of work for the year is the 19th so I'm really hoping that I can sneak some good armor time in after that. In the meantime I've been comparing the pieces I want to start with (helmet and arms) to what I see in the build threads here to get an idea of what I need to do. Basically just going to take it one step at a time and hopefully watch the box steadily empty out. Meanwhile I received our helmet electronics from ukswrath (thanks again!!), some of the extra parts are for my FOTK helmet: Today over lunch I went on a quick supply run to Home Depot and got the supplies that I didn't have for this build, happy to finally have an excuse to buy a new rivet gun, broke my last one installing a convertible top: Now I just need to get Tandy snaps, S-Trim for the helmet, brown leather strips for the holster-to-belt, elastic & nylon strapping, and some rare earth magnets. Then I should be well supplied (hopefully). And for a slight change of gears, I've seen others share how they've walked down the chain aisle and have seen a random chain link they need to make their E-11 D-Ring just laying on the ground, I guess Home Depot knows when a Trooper is coming: I gave a small cheer and the employee looked at me a little puzzled as I went to pick it up. Unfortunately it was one of the grayish/textured links and I said, "Ah, drat!", although I figured I could have just repainted it. He inquired what I was up to so I explained what I was working on, he thought it was a really cool project and reached into the box that the rolls of chain sit in and pulled out a length of 8 black links, properly sized based on what I've seen posted. He had apparently just cut them off of a length someone bought because a couple of the links were paint chipped (someone was really picky), so they were just going to get thrown away, he bagged them and marked it free. So it worked out in the end!
  21. Welcome to my first armor build! Like many others I've been waiting for an Anovos pre-order, I ordered their Imperial Stormtrooper and First Order Stormtrooper standard kits. Every time I've attended an event that the GA 501st has been at I get the itch to build my own armor ASAP and I finally got tired of the "we're sorry, delayed again" emails, at least for the OT TK. So I began researching the other kit makers recommended in the Getting Started section, about the time I did that Mark had a Black Friday sale on his kit so I pulled the trigger. There are plenty of AP build threads on here so I've been pouring over them while I waited for my kit to arrive and I'll continue to use them as reference. I also intend to build this kit with Centurion approval as the ultimate goal. Anyway, today was BBB day! You may notice that there appears to be two of everything. A buddy and I will be building these kits simultaneously, although he's a few states away, so I'll be reboxing and shipping once our other supplies arrive. It was actually a less expensive option to go this route overall. Laid everything out to ensure we got what we needed: So now the real fun begins. I'll be working on this slowly for sure, I have an 18 month old daughter who loves to occupy my time when I'm not at work (not a complaint!) and who also doesn't like going to bed early. lol I enjoy just about any DIY project so I'm really looking forward to this build. Parts List for Reference Armor/Helmet: AP Lenses/S-Trim: TrooperBay Under Shirt/Pants: Mr. Skin (Amazon) Neck Seal: Darman's Props Boots: Imperial Boots Canvas Belt: AP Holster: AP Rubber Hand Plates: AP Blaster(s): HyperFirm E-11 / HyperFirm DLT-19 Helmet Audio: ukswrath Hearing Assist: ukswrath Cooling: ukswrath Thigh Garter System: Pencap510
  22. Absolutely! Grabbed it off Amazon for $15.95 w/ free non-Prime shipping, got here in 9 days: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00JDQ3P18/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o01_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1
  23. Thanks for the lead on the Scorpion helmet liner! I've wanted to add something like that to my Anovos lid for a while and that works perfectly. I used Scorpion's website and determined a large would fit my noggin better and fortunately those are still readily available. It also fits in the helmet just fine. Thanks again! And great work so far!!
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