ScaryGuy

It's in the description of the hand guards:

Trying everything on was really awesome! Had a big smile on my face. I already tried the hot water bath (see previous page). It aligned the back but then the front got twisted. So I reversed it with another bath. I cut the back of the knees so now the extra material is gone.

Trooperbay's description says rubber instead of latex, but he does mention E6000 to be used (sparingly).

I glued JustJoseph's latex hand guards with E6000 to my nomex gloves with no issues (see my build thread). No sanding or other cleaning. I stuffed the glove then used painters tape to press the hand guard to the glove. I let it dry for 24 hours.

Time for an update.. I put some abs paste on the holes in the ab plate. First I glued some scraps pieces near the damaged edge with CA glue. Hopefully this would make it easier to recreate a nice edge. Then cover it with some paste. I'm going to give the abs paste at least a week to cure, so I continued working on other stuff.I glued the latex hand guards from JustJoseph to my nomex flight gloves. I followed ukswrath's example by stuffing the glove on the inside. I used E6000 instead of CA glue. I put the E6000 on the hand guards, pressed it on the nomex gloves, then wrapped it in painters tape. It came out nicely, very pleased with it. Much better then those abs hand guards. I have another latex set waiting for the Anovos rubber gloves to arrive. These will be used for the higher approval levels. Yesterday I did some test fitting to determine the distance between the chest and back plates on the shoulder, and where to connect the ab and chest together. This was the first time I could fit all the pieces together. Very exciting! Overall I think it looks pretty good. The length of the thigh is not an issue, which I was afraid of. However, I will cut the back of the knees to give me more mobility. I already started with the shins. This also allowed me to cut the longer half of the right shin. The right shoulder on the back plate was sticking out. I gave it a hot water bath to bring it down and to the same angle as the left side. Before: Marked where the inside edge should be After: I also glued the remaining snap plates on. Armor TODO list: Cut knee area on back of thighs Chest to back elastic with snaps Chest to ab elastic with snaps Shoulder bell elastic Glue shoulder covers Fix abs damage Attach new split rivets Garter belt

Yeah, I know. I still don't understand why it happened. I bought it together with the humbrol. It should be save for plastics, it is used to strip paint from model cars etc. I had no issues when I used it on the ab plate buttons to redo the paint job. Maybe it was a combination of the aluminum rivets and rubbing the paint off. I thought I could feel a rivet getting a bit warmer. The abs turned soft in a split second.

Today I started working on the damaged abs. First I cleaned up the E6000 glue and removed loose pieces. I used exacto knife to widen visible cracks to allow the abs paste to flow into it. There was also a small crack starting at the bottom edge of the first ammo box. So I glued another reinforcement piece. The abs is really paper thin on this part. The right thigh also got a bit of damage. I used the paint killer when the ammo boxes where still attached to the thigh with the split rivet. The abs paste looked good to me. Applying the paste with a q-tip. I used painters tape to avoid spreading it everywhere. I glued a piece of abs to the back of the ab plate to reinforce the damaged area. I made it a bit longer and I will cut it after applying the abs paste and it has fully cured. The other parts are waiting for the repairs. I'm pretty much done gluing. Most of the snap plates are in place except for the shoulder straps and the chest to ab connection. The shins are done so I attached the velcro. Not the Anovos supplied one, I bought some new. The shins don't close perfectly flush but I think it looks quite good. I don't think the bra hook strap solution will give a mor flush fit.

Well done! Hopefully you get your approval soon!

Maybe I applied it too thick, not used to model painting. On the next attempt I'm using a metal primer first, then regular acrylic paint.

Thanks for the offer Chris. I will contact spalding first to see if they have other shipping options. If not, then it would be nice if I you could help out with shipping them. I haven't found any alternatives yet, or I have to order large quantities. Did you paint the rivets with Humbrol gloss white? It wasn't a succes for me. The paint remains soft even after almost a week. If I press with a finger on the paint there will be a fingerprint in the paint.

Thanks for the info Chris. I went to the site to order the screws, but only UPS shipping is offered when I check out which is going to cost £51 . So I have to keep searching for them. Or I can try to contact them to see if they will ship them with Royal Mail.

Thanks for the pictures Kalani. Since then I bought two latex hand guards sets from Joseph, so I don't think the abs hand guards will be used anymore. I have two latex sets, one for rubber gloves and one for nomex ones.

Chris, where did you buy those M3.5 screws? I'm looking for those but they are not so easy to find, at least not in stores. M3 and M4 are easy, but not M3.5. Are you using the humbrol thinners to strip the grey paint?

Fortunately it's all quiet in the gluing room

Yes, it's probably safest not to use the paint killer again. I was going to use it to strip the grey paint of the frown, but I will look for something else. Thinner? The ab plate now has the most damage. I will start with the abs backing. Hopefully I can create a nice new edge with abs paste. My cordless drill also started smoking when drilling a test hole in abs, so it's been a great day .

Today I wanted to attach the already painted split rivets to the ab and kidney plates. It seemed like an easy job but things went bad very quickly. First the paint on the rivets turned out to be still soft, so when hammering in the rivets the paint was damaged. I painted them with humbrol gloss white and they had almost a week to dry. Apparently it doesn't apply well to aluminum. When I was done placing the rivets I wanted to strip the paint of the rivets, so I could paint them again. I used Carson Paint killer It should be save to use on plastics. I already used it when I repainted the ab plate buttons and nothing happened to the ABS. I was scrubbing the paint off with a q-tip when I suddenly saw cracks around the rivet. I decided to remove the rivet so I could look at the damage. The ABS around the hole was cracking off. I removed the snap plate near the hole and reinforced the area with a piece of scrap ABS. I used a hot water bath to shape the piece to the kidney plate. After drying I will need to fill the damaged area with ABS paste. I'm not sure what caused the damage. The paintkiller itself doesn't seem to effect the ABS. I drilled a hole in a scrap piece and applied the paintkiller but nothing happens. Maybe there where micro cracks in the ABS that got visibile when the paintkiller was applied. The cracks could have been caused by hammering in the split rivet. If the rivert head didn't get proper support from the surface it was on, the ABS might have been stressed too much. I continued working on the right thigh, mounting the ammo boxes with rivets. Afterwards the paint on one of those rivets was also damaged. So I applied the paintkiller again and the same thing happened. So another repair. There are even cracks in the return edge on the thigh around the hole I drilled. It seems unlikely that could be caused by the paintkiller. After the paint issues I decided to buy a metal primer and repaint all rivet heads. So I used the paintkiller again on the ab plate rivets, then this happened: So I'm getting ready for some ABS paste experience. It wasn't easy to get aceton. After visiting several stores I found some small 100 ml bottles. Larger volumes are not readily available over here. I also have to get new split rivets. Maybe I'm not going the try hammering them in, but glue them instead. Since I use snaps they are not functional anyway, except on the thigh ammo boxes. The rest of the day I continued working on the snap plates for the arm parts and thigh. At least some progress made.

I just glued the outer strips. Shins are in the same order as in the picture with the inner strips. Left shin left, right shin on the right. The shoulder straps and button plates are the last ABS parts I have to glue. Almost there!

The strips you see in the pictures on the shins are inner strips made from scrap ABS. I still have to glue the 25 mm outer cover strips. They will be glued to the opposite side of the inner strips. I did this to have more space for velcro on the inside. The velcro is 20 mm wide, and with a 25 mm cover strip I would only have 12.5 mm of space for the hook part of the velcro on the inside. Hope I made clear what I meant.<br><br> But thanks for giving the advice!

Tonight I glued the last cover strip to the left thigh. I also glued some inner strips to the shins. They will provide some more width for the velcro. I think the sniper plate came out nicely after gluing the front and the outer side. It's slightly tilted to the inner side, but I didn't expect to get it this straight. I had to keep adjusting it until I found an acceptable position. So I continued gluing the inner side.I cut a bit from the sniper plate inner side to match it with the outer. I have also been painting the split rivets. Gluing is almost done, so I can continue on getting the parts connected together with snaps and elastic.

Well I guess I cheered a bit too early. The back of the shin lines up nicely, but now the front of the shin is twisted at the bottom. This looks worse than the back did. It looks better if I line up the halves at the bottom of the shin. So it's "Return of the Mummy". I repeated the same procedure. This time the painters tape came off easily. The shin has been restored to the previous state. At least I gained some cooking experience . I probably will be cutting the back of the knees so that will also take care of the top not lining up.

The thermal detonator is also finished. The Anovos brackets work fine with the new belt so I drilled the holes for them. At work I found some nice pan head style screws. I think the head is a bit bigger than the originals, but they fit nicely with the large holes in the Anovos brackets. I painted them black with Hammerite metal paint. I also glued the brackets with E6000 for extra strength. I didn't bother to glue the end caps. It's pretty hard to remove them so I don't think they will come off. The shins are almost done. Today I tried to attach the sniper plate. I'm going with the Troopermaster shin configuration (longer parts on the inside) which looks fine, but it doesn't play nice with the sniper plate. I choose a layout that I think works best and glued the front and outer side to the shin. I also did some ABS cooking. First issue was my butt plate. It was really flaring out on the sides, especially my left. There was a gap of 3 - 4 cm on the left, and 2 cm on the right. I put the plate in boiling water for about 10 seconds then I bent it and held it in place for some time. Since the left side had to be bent quite a bit, the return edge is now a bit waved due to the excess material that has to go somewhere. When connected it is hardly visible and it will also behind the holster. So again, the belt hides everything . The right shin also had an issue. There was a height difference of 10 mm between both sides. In this picture featuring "The Mummy" you can see the difference at the bottom, which was located at the top before taping them. I aligned the shin properly and rolled it in painters tape. I don't have a large pan for the shin, so I used a plastic bucket instead. I used two large pans to cook water and an electric water kettle to boil some more. I filled the bucket and helt the shin in the water for approx 1 minute. First the upper half for 40 seconds, then the bottom half for 20 seconds, then the upper for another 20 seconds. Then I put it in cold water. Some of the painters tape really stuck to the ABS, so I had to do some cleaning up with warm water and But the shin came out nicely! I just have to trim the bottom edge so both sides match. Next will be the velcro attachment. I'm trying to create some more inner cover strips to have more material for the velcro. I will use 20 mm velcro. The Anovos supplied velcro doesn't feel strong so I bough some new.

This weekend I spent a lot of time on my project. First I sanded the last rough parts: left thigh, sniper plate, ammo box and the shoulder straps. I also used my dremel to remove the epoxy glue from the belt rivet covers. Then I started working on the new TKittel belt. I determined the middle of the new belt and copied the locations of the snaps from the Anovos belt. My new Prym snaps have a short post which is fine for the nylon snap plates, but it was to short for the snaps on the belt. So I used the round Tandy button for attaching the Prym female snap part to the belt. I don't like mixing different types of snaps so this was a nice work around. I also didn't have pop rivets that are long enough to go through the canvas belt and ammo belt. Once again I used a Tandy snap in combination with a washer to attach the ammo belt. The elastic of the drop boxes fit the new belt nicely so I didn't have to modify them. I glued the elastic to the belt with some E6000. On the Anovos belt the distance between the holster and the ammo belt was 55 mm. According to a diagram I found here this distance should be approx. 20 mm. Personally I prefer the holster to be a bit more in the back of my leg and 20 mm looks really close to me. So I decided to split the difference and attach the holster at 37,5 mm from the ammo belt. The chicago screws are attached 15 mm from the edge of the belt. I didn't want to cut the excess leather of the holster, so I glued them with some E6000 instead. The belt also needs to be connected to the ab plate, so I drilled the holes for the ab snaps. There I made my first mistake. On both sides I measured the same distance from the bottom edge, but on one side the edge is lower. When I connected the belt I noticed it was skewed. The snap had to be 10 mm higher. Since the snap is covered by the belt I decided to drill a new hole and place a new snap. I glued a small ABS piece behind the hole and I probably will fill it with some ABS paste at a later time. Later that day I made another error: one of the snaps that was already glued with a nylon snap plate was rattling. For some reason I had the great idea to use the Prym pliers to tighten the snap. Well it certainly did, but the pressure also left a mark of the snap in the ABS. It's close to the faulty hole so it will be hidden by the belt too, but I wasn't happy about it. Two mistakes in a row. This weekend I spent time on gluing the nylon snap plates and creating elastic connections with snaps. I also continued gluing the thighs. The right one is now done, and I'm still working on the left one. Tomorrow I have to glue the last cover strip. The thighs need some serious clamping to close both halves and attach the cover strips.

Last two weekends I didn't have much time to work on my project, but this week I have been able to do some small stuff. After sizing and cutting the shins I worked on the thighs. I took a few fitting sessions to determine how much I was going to cut from the thigh. I haven't cut anything length wise yet. I think it's best to do that when the rest of the armor is finished and connected with snaps together. I think I might only have to cut the back of the knees to improve mobility. Currently I'm gluing the shins and the right thigh. I didn't have enough clamps and magnets for the left one, so it have to do that one later. Like the forearms I am using inner cover strips to reinforce the legs and make it easier to glue both halves together. This will take several nights but I think it is safer to do it this way. Tonight I have attached to cover strips on the front of the shins and thigh. Then I have to close the thigh on the back and attach the rear cover strip. So that will take probably to more nights. Since the leg parts need drying I did some pre-work on snap plates. I bought Tandy Line 24 snaps from the USA and some snap setting tools from China. After several attempts I couldn't get a single snap closed properly. I don't know if it is because I don't have the correct tools or if it's because of the longer post of the Tandy snaps. I read in other threads about Prym snaps that also offer a pliers setting tool. I decided to buy them and it was so easy with these! They also have a smaller post which is fine when using nylon snap plates. I haven't set a faulty Prym snap yet. So if anyone needs Tandy snaps, I still have 90 of them . Also did some work on the torso parts. Drilling holes for the split rivets and snaps. I mostly used uskwrath's measurements for these. With the butt plate I made a small error drilling the two snap holes. The top one wasn't aligned properly. So I widened the hole using a drill. If will be covered by the snap, so no big issue. The Prym snaps that I use are larger then the ones ukswrath uses in his build thread. So I had to use different measurements for drilling the holes. I think I used 15 and 35 mm from the edge. I already glued some snap plates to the torso parts. I read about E6000 and metal snaps melting the ABS. I didn't seem likely to me so I just glued the metal snaps without covering them with tape. After drying I didn't notice anything other then the snap is now glued to the ABS. Myth busted? And I started working on the thermal detonator. At work a colleague helped cutting 7-8 mm from the grey tube. With the end caps the total length is now 7.5". I already glued the control panel to it. Before I mount the metal brackets I want to finish my new belt first, so I can try them first and see how they fit the belt.

Thanks for the advice. I'll test the hot water method with some scrap abs first. Ukswrath has posted his ammo pack installation. He has it close to the cover strip. I think I would prefer that too.

Nice modding! Makes a huge difference. How long do you put it in the hot water before bending it? I think I have to mod my butt plate too, it's a bit wide for me.