TK-4935

Looking fantastic there Steve. Can I ask what rivets you used to attach the holster to the belt with? I obviously want to get it super bang on too.

I can't even bend like that with my civvies on LOL

I attached my snaps to white heavy duty nylon webbing and then glued the webbing to the armour with generous dollops of E6000. Never had a failure.

The belt is SOOOOO worth the wait!! As they've outsourced it it does take a bit of time and yes, a response wouldn't go amiss but communication aside, the RS boys really have been an absolute pleasure to do business with. I think they need to employ a secretary though or someone to man the enquiries/helpdesk

I would adjust the bottom so the raised edge lines up as near as dammit. This will result in two things. 1) You will have to then trim a section of the return edge off to match the very bottom edge. That's not a problem. You can reinstate the return edge with a modelling iron or a normal iron if needs be. 2) The top will now be slightly out. Again, not a real problem as the cover strip can mask this. It's only a matter of mm's after all. All in all, that's a very neat trim job.

I held the thighs on to my legs to get the right fit and got a friend to tape them and then draw a line right down the middle (and then a line showing where it had overlapped) Basically, what you have already done but don't cut along the pencil line that you've drawn on the underlapped half. Draw a centre line on the overlap half. That's your cut line. I then removed, re-taped and cut through both pieces at the same time following the line down the middle. This gave me a perfect butt joint. edit: Dont worry about matching the bottom raised edges. The AP thighs simply don't match up.

I did it by hand in small increments.

That's all the fiddly bits sorted then. Great job. I see you're shins at the back are still quite open. Are you planning on heating them up to close them a touch? I find the elastic/hook ensemble doesn't really have the pulling power to close the gap so I decided to use heat to close the gap as much as possible so the elastic and hook just holds them closed.

Nice job on the thighs and shins so far. You did an awesome job of matching up each part.

Just my tuppence worth but what makes your scratches look odd is that there are no signs of scratching and scarring anywhere else on the armour. Rather than toning them down on the painted areas you might like to blend in some topical scarring and damage on the white parts as well. See below my old 501st clone. Different armour but similar paint scheme. There is actually more weathering on the white parts than the blue and I tried to match the scratches on the blue to carbon scoring on the white. It definitely helps to keep the direction of the scratches as random as possible. Give each scratch a reason. For example, bottom of the chest piece had paint rubbed off due to contact with something so the non painted part got a contact mark along the raised edge as well. The shoulder bell took and deflected a laser blast so there is a main contact point and a spray effect. There is some black carbon scorching at the point of contact. You get the idea.

Sorry to butt into the thread.... My mannequin has a 34" waist and 40" chest. The belt measures 46". I would imagine you could go up to 38-40" inch waist without shimming. As for the chest and ab connection Longer brackets on the chest and longer pieces of elastic basically.

My belt arrived yesterday. It is absolutely awesome!! I'll slam some pics up on my thread later.

The box of awesomeness. Plenty of regular updates please

Same thing happened to me. Got the kit and was in the process of degreasing when I realised the mag piece was missing. I emailed them through ebay and got a response the next day. They had employed a trainee that had made a balls up with the orders. Got my mag through pretty quick. I met the Sci-fire boys in LA a few years back (C3 I think) and was invited to view their hotel room closet that was being used as a gun cabinet at the time LOL. I so wished I'd been in a better financial position to purchase one of their E-11's then as not only do they not ship outside the U.S. but since then the U.K. is now subject to the VCR bill which prohibits the importing of realistic looking replica firearms so no hope of getting one now. I'm actually really happy with the doopydo blaster. The detail is awesome and building it was great fun. I just hope my display mannequin is strong enough to hold it up 24/7 365 cos if it drops it's gonna be smasheroo!!

It's just one of those things with the AP. There isn't any return edge at all on the butt plate so it will ride up and over the bottom of the kidney plate. It happens on mine too.

The cap measures around 14mm so might be a bit large. I've just applied mine and had been scratching my head as to how to attach them. Through lateral thinking and tools at hand I came to a solution. I have a tool to apply snaps. There are various size snaps and various size bits. Utilising all the various bits I managed to instal the rivets with very little bother. The tool Stage one stage two stage three Simples! Edit - (Bugger, sorry about the pic size. Photobucket editing sucks)

I managed to cram all my armour into a soft black hold-all, strapped it to my back and rode my pushbike to a local troop. The rest of the guys couldnt quite believe it till I pulled everything out.

With AP, if you go with the overlap method you will end up with very wide parts. Most notably the right thigh, both forearms and the biceps. To really get the ANH sizing of all limb parts it's worthwhile going for cover strips and adapt to your own frame. The thigh pieces are just as bonkers as the originals and each half wont line up top and bottom. With some trimming and cunning cover strip placement you'll get it right. It's worth looking at as much reference material as possible. Plenty of it here in my current build thread ------------- I can't comment on ATA kits but AP is pretty solid stuff.

I'm a few cm short of 6 foot and have an AP kit, an SDS kit and now a RSProps kit. Both the AP and SDS kits have a gap of about half an inch between back plate and kidney plate and then the same again between kidney and butt plate. The elastic stretches a little further depending on body movement and the butt plate is right up in there LOL. My actual buttocks hang out the bottom edge of the butt plate. The RSProps actually sits perfectly with no buttock spillage I think you can afford to loosen things up a little between each piece.

With the AP kit you will notice the two halves of the thighs don't really line up very well top and bottom. More so on the right. Make sure you line up the top as the bottom will be obscured by the 'power cell' strip at the bottom. For ease? Use the overlap but make sure the overlap on top is at least 20mm wide. The back may need a butt and cover strip as using the overlap will result in a very wide thigh piece. If you want to go accurate then trim the overlap strip of each half to 10mm width but remember that its a curved piece so you might be wise to lay a strip of masking tape along the overlap as a trim guide to match the contour. Once you've glued and cured the front of each thigh piece you should put them on and have a friend or spouse help you to tape them together according to your own leg size. Remove them (still securely taped) and draw a line straight down the middle. This will be your cut line and as you're cutting the excess from both pieces at the same time they should match a treat. Glue a cover strip and hey presto. Thats how I do it and so far more than 4 suits in I've had no beef. I also glue some reinforcing tabs on the top and bottom inside to add strength.

Thanks again. I'm sure I can knock something up myself. Got a lovely box of plastic awesomeness coming soon and it would be a shame to go anything less than full on accurate considering the lineage

Thanks for the reply Dennis. Loving the armour by the way.

Wow, s'been a long time. Sorry for resurrecting an older post but I've been searching high and low on the forum for info on those little bars that elastic strapping is sewn on to. Can anyone tell me what they are, where one can get some or if they are scratch built? Mark (FBJ), Pete (stukatrooper), havent you fellas used these on your set-ups? Cheers Si

nice one geezer

Han also looks to have a different chest piece on for the sitting down scene. Theres no return edge on it. I would assume this was to allow the chest to bend easier. In the compacter photo his chest piece has the return edge.