Cricket

Holy cow, are we mid-way through April already?! Progress on this kit has been slower than I'd like it to be. I take full responsibility for it, though! I have a serious case of "Ooh-look-a-project-itis" lately. I'm still not done with my Hero TK build (although it's coming along, I haven't documented it, though!), and my T-21 foam build is still mid-way through, and I still have to convert my stunt TK to a TD (and build the backpack for it), and then there's this TK I'm working on... and most recently I got the itch to start looking into 3D printing a shoretrooper. Oh boy. Since my last post, I was able to acquire some TK Boots for my hubby (thanks to @Commander Gree!). And today I finally made some flippin' progress on this kit, which has me thrilled! I present to you... LEGS! Trimming for width is always the most challenging part for me. Not only do you have to trim to make the parts fit properly, but you have to make sure that the front and back seams line up. Which is no easy task with the RS shins! One half of the shins (the left halves, the RS kit comes with two identical shins) has a lot less material at the bottom of it than the other. This isn't an issue if you plan on shrinking the shins down a lot (as I've had to do to my own shins in the past). However, I hardly have to trim anything off the backs of the RS shins on my hubby, so I don't have much room to adjust for wonkiness. In the pic below, you can see how the shins line up in the back. There is barely 1cm of material overlapping at the top, and nothing at the bottom. (This was taken before I finished trimming right thigh for size, so please ignore that!) The shins fit my husband perfectly as taped, so I'm going to have to do some serious coverstrip magic to straighten things out. *For the record ALL RS shins are made like this; it isn't some lame overtrimming from the studio.* I will be assembling his shins with magnetic closures (like I've done with my other 3 sets of shins), and all the hardware for that part of the project has already been created and acquired (I really am not a fan of making magnetic buttons out of ABS. I had the foresight to create those last October- yay!). The other bit of progress made has been with the torso (no pics for this part). I've reinforced all the returns and installed the brackets for strapping the torso parts together. I've also been successful with installing the split rivets and strapping on the right side kidney/ab, and installing the Han snap. These are all little things that seem to take a lot of time to get done for me. But when it's done- WHEW! I'm off to get stuff glued now.

Thanks for those, Fabio! Boy, you're quick! Before we can get things rolling, we also need one more updated photo: Hovi Mic tips with more accurate mesh. It should be fairly easy to pop out the fine mesh screen and put in something that resembles the mesh in the green circles as shown below. Once we have these new photos, we should be able to get started on your review. Thank you!

WTG, Lorelei! Congrats, trooper!

Ciao, Fabio! Thank you for taking the time to submit your armor for Expert Infantry! We will be with you shortly. Also, thank you for submitting those additional photos so quickly. You're really on top of things! Before we can proceed with the review, we will need a detail shot of your right side with your arms raised. Much appreciated!

A Hasbro can be approved for EI (Level 2), and you're correct... not Centurion (Level 3). I had the same dilemma as you. I wanted pewpewpew, but I wanted Centurion as well. I ended up buying a Hyperfirm to satisfy the Centurion requirements. I've never trooped with it, actually. My Hasbro is lighter and (IMO) much more fun to troop with. I don't think Hyperfirm produces blasters anymore. Praetorian Blasters seems to be the new go-to for rubber Centurion-qualified weaponry (and since their blasters are all rubber, they are super con-friendly). I had heard great things about them, and they had some e-11 blasters recently available, so I snagged one. Holy cow, it is epic. The Praetorian e-11 is a huge upgrade over my Hyperfirm with regards to detail. It's a little pricey, but you really do get what you pay for. It is gorgeous! (I ended up giving my Hyperfirm to my hubby because he needs one for his upcoming TK.) You can find more info and pics of Praetorian Blasters here. Send them a PM, and they will hook you up.

Greetings Lou and welcome back! Thank you for your Centurion application. You’ve worked really hard on this kit, and I know you were very patient during your EIB process, so let’s get to it! CRL and Centurion Application Requirements: All required photos have been submitted. Thank you for taking new pics for us so quickly and updating the few items mentioned during your EIB approval. Your photos are most impressive! Your armor contains all necessary elements to qualify you for Centurion. The entire DO Team would like to congratulate and welcome you to Centurion. Congrats, trooper! Really beautiful job on your build. Other-Armor Fit/Assembly: We have nothing to mention here except for get out there, blast some rebel scum, and make Lord Vader proud!

Perfect! Thank you for such expeditious photography. This is exactly what we were looking for. Processing will take place shortly.

Hi Lou, and thanks for your Centurion submission! Please note that before we can get started that we will need a few updated pics of your belt while you are wearing it; we're needing to verify the drop box alignment on the left and right sides. In your EIB application, your drop boxes lined up nicely with the belt while it was laying flat, but not in the photos of you wearing it. I'm sure just a dab of e6000 on the inside elastics will easily get those boxes in line. Thanks!

Hello Lou! Thank you for your Centurion application. It is currently under review and we will be back with you shortly!

Looks good so far! I think @fragarock is in your Garrison if I'm not mistaken? Who's your armor maker? Looking forward to watching your progress!

I know I should be focusing on completing my TK, but I'm having so much fun making progress on the T-21 this weekend! I needed to find a cup or something to create the taper from the 3" to the 2.5" barrel. I don't have anything here at home for it, so I made a trip to Target to see what I could find there. Happily, I found some kids party cups that were a pretty good shape and size. And on clearance for just $0.50 each, too! Oh, and they're Star Wars themed. Perfect. I picked up two in case I mucked one up. Once home, I cut out the bottom and top parts of the cup off to create approximately 2 3/8" length of the taper. Here's a test fit. Hello, Poe. And the small barrel, taper, and large barrel test fit together. In order to secure the smaller barrel securely in the middle of the taper cup, I decided to craft a gasket of sorts inside the cup. I made cuts of two pieces of EVA foam (1cm x 6mm, and 1cm x 1cm). I wrapped the 6mm piece snugly around the inside of the taper cup and made my cut so the ends met together. Using hot glue, I secured the ends. Then I hot glued the ring inside the taper cup and fit the smaller barrel inside. It is a really snug fit and will not be going anywhere soon. Next I attached the larger strip of foam to the small barrel with hot glue. I stretched this piece a bit as I glued it on. Then I fit the small barrel into the larger barrel. It's another very tight fit here. I had to coax the foam to cooperate. And everything fits really well! Oh, hai Rey! I put the whole thing together to see how it looks. I put a little blue tape on the end of the small barrel so you can see it more easily in the pic. Once I verified that everything test fitted well, I added some construction adhesive inside the gaskets to permanently secure them to the barrels. I weighed everything so far as it is, including the feed plate thingy (not shown in the pic above). It all weighs... 1lb, 12oz! It's a little heavier in the front, but the overall balance of the blaster isn't bad at all because the PVC barrels are thin-walled. I know the weight will increase a bit as I add greeblies and bondo, but I'm really happy that it's so light at this stage.

I re-cut a lot of my plastic bits for the feeder plate because I wanted the pieces to have a beefier look to them. I snagged a sheet of 1/8" white ABS off of Amazon, which is more than enough for my needs. It took using a cutting wheel to initially cut them because the ABS is so thick. A sanding drum and some hand sanding later, and the parts were done. I glued it all together today. I don't think it looks all that bad. After that, I chose to work on getting the stock together. I needed to sandwich the support in a channel between the two halves. I traced the outline of the support piece on each half. Don't worry if you think I carved a channel into both halves like this! I flipped one half over and re-traced things before beginning. If you plan on doing this as well, remember to wear a decent respirator! Or else all this powdery nastiness will go into your lungs. An hour later, and the channels were carved out! Each channel is approximately as deep as one layer of EVA foam (6mm). I simply sanded with a large sanding drum until I began to see the second layer appear. Then I applied a liberal coat of contact cement all over each half, carefully lined things up, and.... Taaa daaa! Here you can see how thick this blaster is. Let me tell you that this stock is super- and I mean super- lightweight. With the support firmly in place inside the foam, it feels really strong and stable. And it may not look like much now, but I can assure you that it will begin to look more like a real T-21 very soon!

And if you want to take the scope of your blaster a little further, the resin is really easy to bore out with a Dremel. I made a deep hole in the sight end (the end with the larger lens hole), put a circle piece of and old CD in there, put a layer of red acetate over that (upon which I had drawn a crude crosshair), and then put the big lens on top to close up the end. I can't tell you how many times other TKs have asked me if my scope is real. Building your own blaster is so much fun!!!

I found a wooden dowel yesterday when I was helping my son build a balloon-powered car, which gave me an idea: the dowel was the perfect diameter to put perpendicularly into my aluminum tube. I got a general idea of where I wanted to insert the dowel and marked the spot on the tube. I drilled the hole with a Dremel, then I needed to figure out how to secure the dowel inside the aluminum tube. Quick ideas that came to mind were e6000 and hot glue. But I wanted a less messy and more robust way to glue things together. Then I remembered that I had a few packs of Sugru hanging out in my craft chest! I kneaded it into two parts. One was a smaller bit that I inserted directly into the hole of the tube. Then I pushed the wooden dowel inside. From there, I simply molded the second half of Sugru into a shape that surrounded and supported the dowel against the aluminum tube. Have you tried Sugru yet? The stuff is awesome (expensive, though!). It dries into a super strong rubber in 24 hours, and it bonds to everything. I fixed a stress crack on a shelf inside our refrigerator door with Sugru two years ago, and it's still holding firm! Attaching the wooden dowel to the aluminum tube might be over engineering things a bit, but at least I have peace of mind that the grip will not be an area of weakness in this blaster.

Hey JC, Have you considered converting a Hasbro e-11? It's not that difficult to do. I picked up a used Hasbro on eBay and a Doopydoos e-11 Hasbro resin conversion kit for mine. At the time, I had zero experience with building a blaster. I also picked up a Hyperdyne labs electronics upgrade and swapped out the guts. That was super easy to do (also, I had no electronics experience at the time, either!). The Hyperdyne labs doesn't have a blingy counter like in the video you're referencing, but it does have some really nice haptic feedback on trigger pull and great light/sound. My Hasbro e-11 conversion is always a conversation piece among troopers and kids alike! Pew! Pew! Pew!

Thanks for that, Lou! Building the little bits and pieces out of plastic and foam isn't all that difficult, actually. (Besides, I don't know how I feel about making casts of things that I didn't build myself.) A little more progress has been made today! I'm so excited about this! Or maybe it's just the fumes from the contact cement that is making me so ecstatic... This is the foundation for the stock part of the T-21. I was going to tackle this using my 1" thick sheet of EVA foam, but I realized that I couldn't slice it in half. I need to put some sort of stabilizing material along the middle inside of the foam. I brainstormed that it would be possible to stack up thinner layers of EVA foam instead. I really like how dense the 8x10 sheets of 6mm craft foam are (found in 10 packs over at Amazon), so I decided to stack layers of that together to make my stock. Each half is built of 8 sheets: four across, with two layers. The sheets are glued together with contact cement in a staggered tile-pattern for extra strength. The contact surfaces and adjoining edges are coated with contact cement. See the pole in the pic below? That's an old super-light aluminum golf club handle that will run inside the length of the stock. Next you can see how the first half is complete. I placed the 1:1 template on top for scale. There will be a channel carved out of the middle of the EVA stock to allow the aluminum pole to sit flush inside between the two layers. This pole gives incredible strength to the foam and keeps the stock super lightweight. Second half coated with contact cement! And done with the second half. Considering how much stress that will be on the handle of the blaster, I will probably add an additional piece of pipe or something to the handle area behind the trigger. I could cut another small section of aluminum pole from another old golf club, drill a hole in the main aluminum tube, and insert the small piece there- like in a T formation. That should work, but if anyone out there has a better suggestion, please chime in! I'm not concerned with the seams at all. I know how to hide them, but they really won't be visible anyhow with all the greeblies that will be attached to this blaster. The next step will involve rough cutting the blaster shape, carving the channel for the aluminum pole, then gluing both halves together with the pole inside. Stay tuned!

Huge congrats, Lou! Onward to Centurion, trooper!

Yes, you do look badass! The "relaxed carry" pose is always awesome. My problem would be carrying the thing to the event. Between the backpack and blaster, I doubt I'd have the strength to troop (I think I'm half your size!). I am about to begin a P90X program, so maybe I'll be strong enough to carry a fully weighted blaster in a few months.... haha....

I'm embarrassed to say that building this first component was super easy. Jax Malachor over at the MEPD has made the PDF template I'm using freely available, so I don't think it'll be a problem if I share it here: https://drive.google.com/file/d/13cphyKPV-5goejKg3ZWhrNauOcwtVgAh/view?usp=sharing Cut the "wood" parts out of high-density foam. Cut the "plastic" stuff out of plastic. BTW, my resin parts from spOOL68 arrived today, and they are awesome. But sooooo heavy! I'm going to continue with my foam building and see how far I can take things.

I've recently been diving headlong into a T-21 build, and it occurred to me that I've been neglecting to finish this kit. I am super close to finishing, and I suddenly realized that I have been actively avoiding working on it. Which got me thinking, "WHY???". It's been a dream of mine to have a Hero Luke suit, so what was going on?? I am sure that at least one of you out there knows the feeling when you feel that you just can't do something without screwing it up. And looking back at my progress, I see what caused me to stop dead in my tracks and make all sorts of excuses for why I didn't have time wasn't making this a priority. It was the grappling hook box. I had no idea as to how I was going to make it work on my kit. I was terrified that I was going to screw up a $300 prop (yes, I paid a little over that much for the box...). So with that, I just decided not to work. Period. I'm crediting my husband for reminding me about my kit-in-progress. Actually, it was a comment he made last night as he looked at the floor of my nerd-room, which was covered with a 1:1 scale printout of a T-21, a large log of EVA foam, and various cutouts of styrene and PVC piping. Photo taken while the floor was still in its "clean" state... "So how are you able to get to work on your stormtrooper with the floor covered in all this?" A nice reality check for sure. As I sat on the floor and looked around, I realized that there was nowhere to walk on the floor. I had (intentionally?) built an actual barrier to my TK with another project. And that's how projects never get finished! Sooooo, today I decided to put away all the T-21 stuff and get back to work on my Hero build. And I'm committed to stay focused until I'm done! I pulled out the grappling hook box and decided that the safest way to bend the side tabs would be with boiling water. I pulled out a heavy duty roasting pan and filled it with water. The extra large surface area allowed me to submerge the tabs and still give me lots of room left to work. Here you can see how straight things were before the hot water treatment: I had to remove the round hook holster and left side belt clip, but this was an easy task- they were fixed on with e6000 (yay!). I used large paint stir sticks to help keep the tabs flat because I only wanted the bends to occur near the box, not on the tabs themselves. It took me about 30 minutes, but it worked! My grappling hook box now fits nicely along the kidney. Some before and after pics: I still have to glue the left side belt hook and grappling hook circle back on. I'm going to give the whole thing a few days to dry out before I tackle that part. But at least this hurdle has been cleared, and I can now confidently wear the grappling hook box without it looking 'off'. I'm excited to finish this build now. Whew! Oh, and my new Praetorian Blaster E-11 arrived in the mail a few days ago, and it is gorgeous! (I will probably do a little weathering to it to make it look a bit more battle-worn, but it's still beautiful.) The detail in that spring element alone is stunning! I gave my Hyperfirm E-11 to my husband for his RS TK... which caused him to revert instantly back to a 10 year-old boy, running around the house with it, yelling, "Pew! Pew! Pew!". He can't wait to be a TK.

So it's starting to look like a thing! I was just test fitting the white plastic styrene bits, so those aren't glued down just yet. The EVA foam is all adhered together with contact cement. I'm fairly happy with this so far. It's incredibly light! Once everything is permanently attached, I'll hit the whole thing with a good coat or two of PlastiDip. Not only does the PlastiDip protect the plastic, but it also seals the foam to give it some serious protection. PlastiDip also smooths out the edges, so everything on the sides will look more like one piece.

And with that, the EVA foam T-21 build begins. First thing was to print out Pandatrooper's full size template, and tape it all together so I know what I'm getting into. You can see one of the rolled up sheets of EVA foam along with the schedule 30 PVC pipe there on the right. I've got more than enough material to make at least three T-21 blasters! Then I made a few print outs of Jax's (over at the MEPD) Parts Breakdown template and cut out the pattern pieces. Instead of making my parts out of wood, I'll cut them out of EVA foam in 3/8" and 1/4" thicknesses. I am super excited to get this build going. Fingers crossed that I can maintain momentum as I divvy up time between this and my TK builds!

All really good points, Ben. So this got me thinking about the PVC barrel. In some of the T-21 builds I've read, I've seen people mention that if they could find a lighter PVC barrel component, they would take it. The off-the-shelf stuff (schedule 40) is heavy. Mainly I'm talking about the 3" and 2.5" pipes. If I could find lighter sections of PVC, then a foam stock built from high-density EVA foam should work balance-wise. Let it be known that in my area, the only PVC pipe I can find nearby in stores is schedule 40. A little driving out of my area, and I found schedule 40 cell core PVC pipe at Lowes. This is lighter than solid schedule 40, but I thought I could do better. Some calling around to local hardware stores, and I found an Ace Hardware (about 20 minutes away) that was happy to special order a 10' length of 3" schedule 30 pipe for me. At just $6 (including tax, free ship to store), it was worth buying if only to look at it. And whaddya know... the 3" schedule 30 pipe is super light- much lighter than the cell core PVC of the same diameter! And it's the perfect size! Next I decided to do some online searching for 2.5" schedule 30 pipe. This is an odd size that I can't seem to find locally, either. Lucky for me though, I located a length of 2.5" schedule 30 pipe online via Home Depot. I should have that here in a few days. I've got a spOOL68 resin kit for the T-21 on the way, but I might make some effort to build the detail stuff in EVA foam as well if I muster up the courage (and time!). I could always build two blasters- one from foam, and one from wood, and see which one I prefer. (I wouldn't need two T-21's, so I could always sell the other. ) And with that, look for the EVA foam T-21 build thread to begin soon.

Hey Troopers, I'm in the process of prepping my T-21 build. I see a big consideration for this BFG is weight. I've been trying to brainstorm what might be good ways to lighten the load of the blaster. The lighter it is, the more likely I'll bring it out trooping. Last year I scored some 4x8 sheets of high density EVA foam in various thicknesses from 1cm to 5cm thick. I've been following Kamui Cosplay for a while now, and I've been (kind of) hoarding gathering foam for various costume projects. I'm thinking that it would be quite possible to create the stock of the T-21 out of EVA foam instead of wood. I could reinforce the center of it with a piece of aluminum tube (repurposed from a set of old golf clubs). Last year I made a very strong sword with EVA foam and aluminum tube in the middle, and it can take (and give) quite a beating! If it can be done, an EVA foam stock would make the BFG a lot lighter, methinks. I'm wondering if anyone has attempted this yet. I've searched here and over at the MEPD, and I've found nada. Can anyone chime in if this idea could work?