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Matt (Bud Spaklur) wisely pointed out that having double snap connections on the right side of the ab/kidney might be a pain to get to when putting everything on. So I'm thinking of removing those and using the single snap at the top (and maybe one at the bottom) and installing the tab/slot connection as I had originally planned. Thoughts?

Thanks Dan! The tops are currently ugly trimmed for sure, they'll not stay that way. I didn't want to do take any more material away until I get the torso armor on and see how everything meets up. I also want to notch/trim the outside top of the left thigh to be a little more accurate. Stealing Tony's picture here for reference: I feel like I'm so much further away! Haha! Thanks! Good luck! I found that punching the holes in the straps to fit the diameter of the rivet obviously helps a lot. I actually used a smaller punch head and then when I used my soldering iron to seal the nylon the rivets just fit inside the holes. Also helps to space your holes in the straps inside of 20mm apart, mine ended up being 19mm apart. Keeps the gap in the armor nice and tight. The magnetic closures are amazing. I got to check out Cricket's setup at the armor party and they're super strong but still not hard to open. It immediately convinced me to do them now instead of velcro as I had planned. I'm going to try to work on them some today actually.

And the ab and kidney are connected. Exterior gap seems to be ok. Reinforcement snap plates are installed (following the wingnut snap diagram): And the right side snap plates are installed: Found out tonight I probably won't see any more Tandy snaps until the 10th or 11th due to an Amazon screw up, so I'll use the rest of the snap plates that I have available and then I'll be working on the connecting straps after that. I also need to work on the magnetic shin closures and then deal with the wonderful sniper knee plate.

Got the drop boxes and ammo belt rivet covers trimmed up: Installed the floating ab snap: Marked the ab for the split rivet connection: Drilled the holes and added a strip of ABS for reinforcement in the area: Aligned everything to the kidney the way I wanted and did the same: Got the nylon straps prepped: And once I get back home I'll be connecting those two pieces and gluing down some more snap plates. And whatever else I can find to do.

Yup, that makes complete sense. Thanks! Will definitely note that just in case. Sidenote, didn't notice until now that the cover strip on the right thigh went crooked somehow. So I just pulled it off, cleaned off the E6000 (good grief that wasn't fun), and reglued it. Definitely time for bed now.

The thighs are all together now, all that's left for them is final trimming around the tops as needed, adding the notch to the top of the left thigh, and installing the thigh ammo belt, it's just sitting on the thigh for the picture: I spent some time making a bunch of double snap plates: I had 40 Tandy snap sets and then some unmarked sets that were listed/sold as Tandy snaps, but I don't think they were. They didn't set the same way and most of them failed. So I just threw those out and used the Tandy snaps until I ran out. More are on the way but 20 plates will get me started. And I glued the first 6 plates onto the armor. Has anyone ever tried notching the return edges where the straps run across them for added alignment assistance? I think the double snap method will probably prevent most of that kind of issue but I also tend to overthink/overbuild things.

Haha! The picture freaked me out a bit too when I referred back to it and even while I was cutting that particular shin down, but it all still seemed to line up the way it was intended. I'll throw the thighs and shins on tonight and check now that the thighs are glued and the shins are shaped!

As planned my 16qt pot and shin magnets showed up yesterday. I finally got to start working on the armor and... the power goes out. We were having a thunderstorm but it wasn't anything out of the ordinary for a storm and as the surrounding area has buried power lines, outages are extremely rare. Anyway, I wasn't dealing with that. I grabbed my LED lantern, filled up the new pot, manually lit the stove, and got to work. Giving the parts a hot water bath actually turned out to be a lot easier than I thought and my worries of somehow messing up the parts quickly went away. I did the shoulder straps first and then hit the thigh ammo pack: Feeling more acclimated to how the process worked I tackled the shins. Much better. Even velcro wouldn't have a hard time holding these closed now.

If anyone here is aware of EFX's insane delays (4 years) with the Biker Scout LE helmet, it came to a point where many members of another forum emailed the Disney/Lucasfilm licensing folks all at the same time back in February. This actually seemed to have some impact as the licensing folks replied to those emails and then all of the sudden the helmets amazingly started shipping from the production point not long after. Maybe the same needs to happen here with Anovos? Below is the contact information that was posted back then, snipped together into one place for reference.

Cod rivet is no longer painted. lol And the rear cover strips are on both thighs now: I'm planning to reinforce my shoulder straps the same way Cricket did, so I cut some thin plastic scrap into covers. The thin metal strips are in the mail (Amazon all the things!). And my super simple snap plate template. It's the same width as my 2" nylon, so it just gives me a guide for the plate length and the template holes match the hole punch size. So things should be pretty consistent on the plates and straps from here on out.

Thanks! I think the closures are one of those things that if I don't do it now, I might not do it later. D'oh!! At least that's easy to fix. Thanks for the catch! I don't know what happened! I sat down and there were a bunch of people working on their projects, then I looked up and people are cleaning up and I'm the only one sitting around playing with armor. Totally zoned out. Figured I'd better get up and help clean up too! Haha! And you helped me plenty! Thank you so much!! Definitely was! Sorry to increase the jealously level. lol Thank you!

I was sure to say "hi" for you! Unfortunately, no completed Stormtrooper for me. Haha! Between getting to meet everyone, talking to others working on items I still had left to do and lending a helping/taping hand where I could, I was a little less productive on my own armor. But that's ok and I did make good progress on the legs with Cricket's help! Had I done them alone they probably would not have turned out very well (a second person is very helpful to line them up), so I'm very grateful for that. I also made some good notes for a couple different snap placements, reinforcements to prevent cracking, "Cricket Closures", etc. It was a very good day! So while at the armor party I removed the upper return edge on the left thigh, then trimmed both thighs for 20mm cover strips on the front, and taped everything together. Slapped those on my legs with the shins and Cricket made quick work of helping me size and mark everything for trimming. Here's the trimmed left leg. I had trimmed the right thigh but before I could get the right shin done it was time to clean up and pack up. So I finished the trimming at home that night and now I'm working through gluing the thighs, currently the front cover & inner strips are glued on and tonight I plan on applying the rear strips. I figured I'll wait until I can wear the torso armor so I can trim the rear to match the shape where the thighs and posterior meet: In the meantime I installed and painted the lower tab split rivet, like a few others I also added a snap base to make it more functional and easier to replace that strap if needed. While parts have been curing I've begun making snap plates, I'll mostly be using double snap nylon plates. The ones pictured below were test pieces I made while getting used to setting the snaps, I've since made a template from a scrap piece of plastic to ensure that the snaps will line up on both the plates and straps. And once I get my 16qt pot and the magnets (should be tomorrow for both), I'll be following Cricket's method of closing the shins. After seeing those in person it's definitely the way to go!

Last night I finished gluing the arm straps together, the end result is a 1/4" gap as recommended between the forearm and bicep. I also glued my ab button plates onto the ab and made the rookie mistake of gluing the large plate upside down. I blame my long work day. lol So I pulled it off and reglued it this evening. Tonight I've been preparing for my first armor party that Cricket is graciously hosting tomorrow and I am very excited to finally get to attend one! Meanwhile I threw on my boots and shins and marked the backs, but I decided that before I trim them down according to what I sized I'll take them tomorrow to get a second opinion. It just seems like what I sized is a lot of material to remove, even though I do have chicken legs. So I started looking for something else to do and ended up measuring and marking the ab & posterior for the lower rivet/snaps. And then I ended up drilling and countersinking the posterior for the snaps, which led to actually installing the snaps. I was going to hand countersink the holes with a 3/8" bit as I had noted from Ukswrath's build (I think it was his build) but I had recently broken that bit working on a car project, so I stepped down to 5/16" and it worked just as well. I practiced with the snap setting tools on a couple pieces of scrap plastic and that actually helped a lot, I definitely recommend going that route if you haven't ever set snaps before. Interior: Exterior: Interior: Exterior: Hopefully tomorrow I will make a LOT of progress!

Thanks! And a good tip! I like doing things ahead of time to help facilitate quick fixes later. For now, it's a definite to-do item after I get my basic approval.

Finished painting the ab buttons, glad that's done with. lol And I started gluing in the bicep to forearm straps. I took inspiration from Greg's (wook's) build (which followed Ukswrath's AM build) for this step and I'm using 1" elastic strap glued along the inside of the outside cover strip. Hopefully E6000 peels off of the elastic as easily as it does plastic, had a bit squeeze out onto the exposed part of the strap.

Thank you sir! Thanks! I take it you're referring to the corners? I did go with more of an idealized vs. screen accurate finish there as I preferred the plates to match the mounting surfaces, I didn't like the sharp corners there when I first test fit them.

My hope for free time over the weekend didn't go quite as planned, so no strapping but I still got a few things done. First my slotted, pan head screws for the TD showed up, they're 6-32 x 9/16" for reference. They screw into the nuts AP provides and the head is about the same size as the screws from AP. I got a bag of 50 in the mail for a few bucks so if anyone else needs any I have 42 left that'll I'd be happy to share, you'll just have to paint the heads black. And no, my math isn't wrong, I shared 4 with a buddy already. lol So after the screws got painted, I rounded the edges of the clips and bent the ends a bit as others have done as well. So now my TD is complete! (I had more TD progress pictures to post once it was done but they accidentally got deleted. ) Moving on, I decided to fine trim the ab button plates. The larger plate is correctly sized after scoring/snapping it flat at 1/8" all around. So a little sanding to ensure the edges were straight and rounding of the corners and it was done. The smaller vertical plate definitely needs trimming attention and I noted it as an item that routinely gets noticed as being too large when submitting for EIB and Centurion. Measured from the back of the small plate, I trimmed it down to 3mm off the button edges on both sides and then trimmed the top and bottom until it didn't overhang on the ab. Hopefully that all makes sense. Anyway I think the sizes of both are good, but I welcome input if not! I had seen other people use circle stencils to help paint the ab buttons but it seems like back to school has cleared them out around me, although to be fair, I only looked at a couple stores that I happened to be at. So I gave freehanding it a shot, only the blue is done so far but I think it looks ok!

No kidding, I can't wait to start on that and wear pieces without tape. lol When I was doing the ab/kidney test fits, I taped on the chest and back plates and wore the arms and my helmet. Looked like a very disheveled trooper, but it felt great!

Let's see, where were we? Monday night I didn't get to do any armor work, my daughter got some 24 hour stomach bug and that wasn't fun. Fortunately by midday Tuesday she was back to her normal self (and her strep test finally came back negative), so all good there. Tuesday night I scored/snapped the right shin fronts for cover strips and trimmed/smoothed the right thigh pieces. I still need to trim a little more off the left thigh pieces, remove the upper return edges, and then smooth those out. Wednesday night I got the left shin pieces glued together and glued a cover strip to one of the right shins. And then last night I glued an inner reinforcement strip inside the left shin and glued both halves of the right shin together (no picture, sorry!), so tonight I'll be gluing in the right side inner strip. Then I'm going to let the shins sit for a couple days before I begin sizing & trimming the rears up, let the E6000 get the full 72 hr cure time since these will see a lot of stress over time. May not need it but I can work on other things and it'll give me some peace of mind that it's hardened as much as it can. I'm hoping that this weekend I can begin working on snap plates and start strapping the torso and arms.

I am doing better, thanks! Now if I can get this residual cough to go away I'd be perfect. lol Good point! I had rounded/smoothed the underside of the strip/arm at that point where it contacts my arm and it didn't dig uncomfortably while I wore the forearms for a bit, but I was considering rounding the outer point a little to keep it from picking my undershirt. The ab did have the trim lines, that was the line provided by Mark that I was referencing and that I ultimately ended up cutting back to. And yes, the tab and slot connection is already noted and planned. I think some padding will ultimately be needed but sounds like I can worry about that when I get to more actual fitting of everything together. I'm off to hunt for properly sized slotted pan head screws. Thanks as always Greg!

So I got hit with the strep bug, took me out of action Friday afternoon and all of Saturday, finally started feeling better today as the meds I started yesterday kicked in. So I didn't get much done this weekend unfortunately. Still, the forearms and biceps are now officially done: The forearm return edges were removed to meet Centurion requirements: Tonight I got the first cover strip glued to the left shin armor piece and I started the final assembly on the thermal detonator (not pictured), which I just realized I need to undo the caps because I used the AP supplied screws and forgot about using the slotted pan head screws (that I don't have yet). D'oh! I also test fit the ab and kidney pieces, I had to trim the ab sides down to the max removal line that Mark provided (I'm skinny) and I still have 3/4" between me and the armor all the way around my body. I'm hoping that won't be a problem in the long run.

A little more progress: the second bicep is completed and the second forearm is well on its way. This forearm seemed to have a lot more tension/resistance going together for some reason even though it's the exact same as the other side, so I'm letting it cure for a while longer than usual just to be on the safe side. Then I'll put the inner strips in immediately after. And I'm already plotting another future build (on top of the Anovos FOTK a lot of us are waiting on)... Addicted or glutton for punishment, I'm not sure which yet. Maybe both.

Makes perfect sense to me, trimmed down it is. Thanks!

Appreciate the input! Removing the upper return edge on the thighs was always the plan, I think that was one of the first line items I wrote in my notes after seeing it advised so many times. lol ------------------------- A little update, both the first forearm and bicep are completely assembled with cover strips and inner strips. Now on to the next arm! Question: Is it required to trim down the cover strips between the points where the arm halves didn't line up? The reference picture for the bicep in the CRL shows untrimmed cover strips & there's no mention of it, so I'm guessing it's not required, yet all of the reference photos I've saved from build threads over the last few months have them trimmed at those spots. So I'm assuming it's to prevent the strips from digging into your arm at those points, especially on the top side of the forearm. I also painted the TD & popped on the end caps (not glued yet) to make sure I masked it off properly. I'll start assembling that once I get the next arm pieces glued up.

Wow! The armor weathering looks awesome!