MissingNo

I think I finally learned my lesson on that after having to peel e6000 off my fingers for the next hour after that thigh

Thanks for the heads up, yeah, that one got a little bit away from me. Is that something that might affect my chances at Centurion?

Thats great to hear! Its really surprising how much leeway there was in the original armor.

So it's been a long few weeks, but I've made a lot of progress on my costume so far that I wanted to share / ask a few questions. I've gotten all the arm pieces glued together and relatively ready, perhaps with a bit of cleanup needed. I've gotten the front half of the thighs done (with a touch of extra glue that I will need to remove at a later date). I used an inner cover strip first for these and let it dry before applying the outer one. As it is now, I've trimmed down the backs of the thighs and they fit pretty well with no support. If I walk around they will slowly fall off my legs. I have a garter belt system so I assume once I hook that up it will help keep those in place. My only issue now is that I've begun to start thinking about the whole process of strapping and bracketing, which is surprising for me because when I started I never even believed I would get to this point! My issue is that I had already trimmed the top return edge of the posterior piece, and I might have trimmed it a bit too small. I have the brackets already, but I'm a little worried that I won't be able to put them in given the small return edge I left on the posterior. Was looking for some advice on the above pictures. If it looks like I won't be able to use brackets for this part, or if I should be okay drilling the 7/64th hole needed. Been a lot of fun working on my costume so far, looking forward to continuing it.

Just wanted to say thank you for this thread. I've been starting on my first build ever, went with ATA armor, and its so useful to see all of this laid out for me. I'm hoping that I'll be able to reach Centurion too.

Hey yall, so today is the second day of my first ever build and I figured it was time I put up a build thread so that I could share my (minimal) progress as well as get advice and tips from the community as I go along. I'm super excited now that I've started working, and even though the progress is slow, I'm really looking forward to reaching the end goal. I've never really done anything like this before. I'm a computer programmer so these sort of "handy" tasks are things I've avoided most of my life. I live in an apartment, so my workshop is a rather makeshift creation of a vinyl tablecloth over my dining room table. I've assembled all the tools I will need (I think), but don't have access to some things of convenience like a belt sander and such. Even so I've been excited to get started. I've been working off of various ATA build threads here on the forums, primarily Rullsellr2d2's build, as well as ukwrath's and a youtube tutorial series by TK 1636. I received by big brown box two weeks ago, and rushed to tear it open and carefully assemble the pieces on my dining room table. It was only then that I realized that I had no idea what I was doing and that armor sat laid out on my table for two weeks while I tried to figure it out. Finally, I decided to take the plunge and start cutting my first pieces. Like many others, I'm working on the smaller biceps and forearms first. After a day of cutting, trimming, and sanding--I've got one forearm taped and fitted just about ready to be glued, and the other arm pieces ready to be trimmed to fit. I did want to ask though, I'm not sure how correct I've done the fitting. I brought in the return edges to 10mm on each side, which is a little more than needed but I wanted to be sure. The right forearm seems a bit large, still, but I've also heard thats just part of the ATA. In any case, I'll be trimming down the rest of my arm pieces and hopefully getting cover strips on all of them by the end of today.

Just wanted to say thanks for posting so much information as you build, I've been following along with your build since I've just started working on my own set of ATA armor (computer programmer as well so no sense of crafting)

After over a year on the ATA waiting list, I'll finally be getting my stuff in the next few days. I'm super excited, but also incredibly nervous considering I've never really tackled a project like putting this all together before. Wanted to say thanks to everyone on these forums because the community seems super reassuring and the guides look like they will be a big help. Any general advice for a first timer? Oh, and a question I had about 501st acceptance--Is the holster still required if one intends to use a DLT-19?