Cricket

For everyone following this thread, Eric was working so hard that he was the very LAST person there cutting and trimming like a banshee. His was the very last work table to be put away by the other people at the party. If we'd left him there, he would have worked well into the following morning! This trooper is dedicated!!! Sorry I couldn't help you more on your kit, Eric. You're making really good progress on your own so far! Can't wait til you get your big pot and magnets so I can see how those shins develop!

WOW!!!! Those look amazing! I'd buy those even if I didn't know it was you. Nice!!!

You did an amazing job on getting those shins to line up. Great work!!! You also did well with those magnet buttons, too. Something I noticed (and I don't know how much it'll matter or not when assembled) is that you've made most of your buttons square. You will want a fair amount of surface for the glue to adhere onto the shins. With a rectangle shape, you'll have lots of area for the glue to adhere on the long part of the shin. With a square shape, you'll have less. Again, I don't know if it will make much of a difference with regards to the strength of your closures, but I thought I'd point it out. Here's what mine looked like before assembly into the shin:

So it's done! Now time for her to submit photos for basic acceptance. I am so excited for her to be an official TK! Here's her big reveal at our armor party yesterday. All 4'11" of her! Thanks for following on this TK build. The adventure will continue on my next RS TK Hero build after DragonCon. Cheers, troopers!

I've trooped in 85 degree temps on a sunny day in 80% humidity (trooper life in Georgia) and my hands never felt sweaty. My liners were damp when removing my gloves, but my hands still felt dry.

Daniel is correct on this! Rubber gloves with silk liners are the only gloves I troop in. They are incredibly comfortable.

I used the same paint on a pair of boots recently. I think I applied more than 5 thin coats and I was still getting uneven coverage. It was making me insane. I finally picked up some 2 Thin Acrylic Thinner so I could use the stuff in my airbrush. What a difference! First pic: 5 coats by hand- patchy, uneven (gah!). Second pic: Two coats of airbrushing (perfection! and yes, I should have taped off the soles...). So if you have access to an airbrush (or a friend nearby who has one), airbrushing will do the trick nicely for you in short order.

It doesn't look terrible, but I would make some adjustments to that attachment, especially for Centurion. The ab is shifting down from your kidney, and ideally, those should line up at the top like in the photo below: Do you have a tab system installed in the ab/kidney? If not, it's a wonderful way to keep the kidney and ab lined up. Here is a pic of a tab I installed in a kit I built for a garrison friend. It's a thin sheet of black styrene glued to the kidney with e6000. Attached to the ab are two 1" squares of scrap ABS, with a rectangle piece of ABS attached on top of them. This makes a tab slot. The black sheet slides into the slot and keeps the kidney and ab locked into place.

Some cracking and flaking of the paint on the flexible handguards is completely normal and accurate. I think your handguards would be fine for Centurion. But I'm concerned about (what looks to me) as how brittle the paint is. The paint you used isn't designed to be all that flexible, and I imagine that it's going to give you some grief sooner rather than later. If you decide to strip that paint off at some point, I highly recommend using a screen printing ink for your handguards. I found Speedball screen printing ink over on Amazon works really well. Here's what my flexible handguards look like after a year and a half of trooping... There is some flaking/peeling at the wrists, but that's common. I don't have any cracking or peeling anywhere else on the handguards. Application is super easy. Clean the handguards with alcohol and let dry. Apply a light coat of paint to the handguards. Bake your painted handguards in a 250 degree oven for about 8 minutes. Let cool. Apply another thin coat of paint and repeat the baking process. Do this process until you have the coverage you like. I applied three coats to mine. Hope this helps!

Congrats on your RS purchase! The team at RS Props has incredible customer service. You won't regret this purchase for sure. You will love this suit. I'm in the process of starting my second RS TK build. Like you, I began my journey as just wanting to look cool as a stormtrooper. Then I discovered how amazing the 501st Legion is as an organization. And then I found out how supportive everyone here at the FISD is. And then I began trooping and met everyone in my garrison... and so on, and so on... It's a rabbit hole of costuming, Star Wars, family, and community. You will have a blast on this journey!!! Kudos for aiming for Centurion right from the start. It isn't all that difficult to build to Centurion specs, and you will end up looking your best in your armor. We're all here to help you get there! Looking forward to watching your build.

You've got a great eye for detail, Luc! But... haha... no, not pull tabs. The pics aren't in the best resolution, sorry for that. Those boots are painted white. So what you're seeing is the paint rubbed off, showing the black underneath there. I'll have to airbrush that as a touch up before handoff. Thanks for the feedback!!!

Last fitting!!! Everything was trimmed up and ready for my garrison friend to try everything on for the very first time. This was so exciting to be a part of! The only thing I hadn't secured at this point was the elastics on the thighs. I wasn't 100% certain how they would sit on her once she was completely suited up, and I didn't want to secure them too low. So in these pics, I used gaffer's tape to secure the elastics to the inner thighs. It isn't a perfect option, but held up well enough to get an idea of how everything was fitting. The thighs still sit a little low on her and was adjusted later. That notwithstanding, I'm pretty happy with the results! (Ignore the black cod strap hanging down there. We hadn't quite adjusted that yet! And we still had to glue the handguards on.) Yeah! Bada$$ TK! To quote her, "I look buff!" Again, thighs were dropping due to the gaffer's tape not being super secure in there. After we made some additional adjustments (cutting some of the back plate to allow for shoulder bell clearance, adding padding at the left shin to pop out the sniper knee plate, and trying to resecure the gaffer's tape on the thighs), this is where we ended up... I know the right thigh is slipping down, and that was fixed after I took the photos. Her booty was causing the thigh to shift down, so I had to trim a bit more off the top of the back of that thigh for clearance. The black around the shoulder bells is from her full-bib neck seal popping out a bit around the edges. And I know that I still need to get some white paint on the ab/kidney split rivets as well as adding the 1/8" white elastic for the ends of the shoulder bridges. We're still waiting on the clips for her thermal detonator. She was able to navigate stairs (a challenge, but she succeeded!), she can get her helmet on and off by herself, and she can drink from a bottle of water in kit. She is having a tough time with getting the blaster in and out of the holster while suited up, but I told her that she can always find a handler to assist for this. When she walks around, there is only the normal sound of minimal white plastic clicking together. The suit moves well on her and she reports that it's comfortable. Woo! So now I need your help, fellow TKs of the FISD. Please please please tell me if there is anything that looks "off" to you, no matter how small it may be. I am hoping that she submits for EIB, then Centurion, and I want to help her get there. I won't be passing the kit off to her posession until Saturday, so if there are any fixes that are needed, now would be a really good time for me to know about it. Be critical! I can take it! Thank you, troopers!

Hey Ryan, Kudos to you for helping your wife with her TK! Tell her that she needs to keep you. About the ab/kidney reshaping, I posted some info here about how I reshaped my WTF pieces in hot water. You will need a 12 quart pot for the task (the big kind for steaming tamales). I would hold off on trimming any of the edges of the kidney/ab (where they meet) until you've properly shaped the pieces first. The kidney/ab should meet together without anything having to force them into position or hold them in place. Keep up the good work!

More work was done last week, and progress is being made! First, I got those thighs assembled and they were tried on along with the torso. Here's what we ended up with before trimming. BTW, these are the short WTF thighs. Who knew that WTF made a short thigh? I sure didn't! Okay, so even though the thighs are 'short', they still need to be moved up. The thing that was keeping us from moving the thighs higher was her booty. So I marked and trimmed several times on the backs of the thighs for booty clearance, and a little bit on the inner thighs for comfort. Note that I did not trim any of the outer edge of the thighs! Here's what we ended up with: We were happy with the lengths of the thighs now. I still had to do some post-fitting shaping of the tops of these thighs. They were somewhat angular at the outer top edges, and it really bugged me. You can kind of see it on her right thigh, and even how it pushes the holster outwards on her left thigh. I fixed that with a hot water bath (you'll see those pics after our next fitting!). So, next was to get the boots and shins on to see what else needed to be trimmed next. Please pardon the low thigh on her left... it wasn't well-secured in there and kept slipping down! (I'm just going to add here that I am still super happy with how the back of her torso fits together!!!!) It's kind of deceptive in these pics, but her entire kneecaps are below the ridge of the shins. She could walk around, but more like a robot than a trooper. And stairs... haha... she made it up two, then gave up. I think part of the issue is the shin length, so I've since trimmed 1cm from the bottoms in order to bring down the tops of those shins a bit. And I trimmed out the half-moons on the backs of the thighs for better mobility. That should help her as well. Pics of those mods will be posted after the next fitting. We were running out of time, but I had to have her try on the arms all together. I used gaffer's tape to secure the shoulder bells to her shirt. From what I could tell, the forearms needed to have at least 1cm removed. I marked where I could feel where her wrists were from under the plastic. You can kind of see the pencil marks on them. We will be gluing the white rubber handguards to the rubber gloves at the next fitting, so I''ll be able to get a better idea of how much more material (if any) to remove from the forearms. We are in the final stages of this build!!! The next fitting will be for final adjustments. I am so excited for my friend to be a TK!

Wondering why you would need to either fill the notch or cutt the butt plate? Nothing needs to line up at the bottom of the ab/kidney and butt plates because they are covered by the belt. Nothing lines up at all on my kit when I'm moving around. But like Tony said, notch is optional for L3 now. Yay! I think that's normal for the most part. You will get used to it! haha... My comments in the quote below are in bold and purple.... Hang in there! You look great, and congrats on your first troop!

Congrat on getting your son into the Galactic Academy! I just enrolled my 10-year-old daughter as Rey. Now I can troop with both of my kiddos! And yep, the RS kit arrived, but I've been too busy to get the pics uploaded! My office space/nerd room is such a mess right now that I can barely walk in it. I need to get things cleaned up before doing too much more online Star Warsing.

Welcome Taylor! Good to see another Vertically Challenged build underway! And remember, short troopers make Vader look epic. Will be following!

Definitely better! My friend is a lot shorter than you, so we're having to make mods to her suit that may not necessarily apply to your build. I don't mind if you use my pics for comparison, but always use screen references first because your kit will ultimately be compared to the TKs we all know and love in ANH. I like this screen grab of the Hero TK because it shows the whole smaller suit nicely. The chest plate is cut short, but it totally works. That belt is slipping, Luke! And this one, too. Short TK Luke on the far right. To me, your chest still looks a little too large. If the center line on the breast plate is where you want it (maybe move it up a smidge?), then you might want to begin trimming from the bottom. Take a look at how much of the vertical center ridge you can see on these full-sized troopers (it's just above the ab button box). That's what you want to emulate, even when you're Vertically Challenged. It's details like that that make a sized-down suit look its best (IMO, of course). Okay, a little off topic, but I just noticed the pinch in your kidney... I know you're on the smaller side, but I'm a little concerned about this. The WTF kit is really, really small. You probably won't need to cut the butt plate at all. I have not had to make any huge alterations to the kit for my 5'4", 110lb frame (which was pleasantly unexpected!). I trimmed less than a centimeter off of the sides of the kidney and ab plates, and that was just to remove the ugly parts around the edges. If this kind of detail was located at the bottom of the kidney, it wouldn't be a big deal at all because you're going to need to cut the kidney from the bottom to size it down for length. I don't know how much space you have in there, so you might be able to cut all of it off. Still, it's better to have more space inside (and add padding) than to have the suit fit you snug. I strongly recommend that you shape your ab and kidney to fit via hot water bath first before making any additional cuts. Here's my WTF kit before and after shaping in hot water. (FYI, I spent most of my efforts on shaping both sides of the kidney, and a little bit on the right side of the ab. The left side of the ab didn't need any fixing.) After shaping, try everything on again (just the ab and kidney together, not the chest) and you'll get a much better idea of how much you may need to take in around the waist area. For me, I didn't have to remove any extra plastic. If you don't need to take extra plastic off, then you have two options: 1. figure out how to flatten out that crimp (a heat sealing iron would do the job quite well, actually), or 2. send Walt a message with pics of the crimp, tell him that you can't cut off that area of the kidney due to sizing, and ask for a replacement. He's really great to work with on things like this!

Any chance of taking a look on the inside of the ab plate to see how your cod is fixed in there? Your cod looks super small in relation to your ab and chest plates; the proportion looks a little off to me. It looks like the ab and chest haven't been trimmed at all, and they need to be for your height. I suggest bringing the cod down a bit. As things are now, when you get the belt on, you're going to be all ab and no cod. Does that make sense? Your ab button box should be centered somewhere just below your sternum. Keep that in mind as a guide for your "center point" for sizing on the ab. The horizontal lines on the chest plate should sit right at a horizontal lines along the middle of your chest. Once you've identified where your center points are for the chest and ab, it becomes much clearer where you will need to trim. If the chest covers the ab box too much, then trim the chest at the neck first. If that trim starts to bring the horizontal chest line up too high, then you will need to trim at the bottom of the chest as well. Do the best you can to keep your center points in their places. Now, back to that cod.... Here's a pic of me (and my cosplay-addicted son) so you can see how much cod there is on my kit. The size of the cod is in proportion with the ab and chest plates. I trimmed the cod (from both the top of the cod as well as the sides), the chest (from all sides, including recreating new returns on the bottom and sides), and ab (trimming from the top and recreating new returns at the top for brackets) to get here. And here is a pic from a WTF kit I'm currently working on for a friend in my Garrison. She is 4'9". Even though she is quite Vertically Challenged, her armor looks proportionally appropriate on her. The chest line is centered on her breast midline, and the ab button box is just below her sternum. I don't have a return on the bottom of the chest plate intentionally. It's not required for higher level awards. Mark Hamill never had a bottom chest return on his Hero TK. And a screen reference shot: I would tackle these issues first before moving on to your kidney. The kidney will be fitting with the ab, and until you get the ab placement correct (which also means locking in your chest and cod for size first), you will be setting yourself up for frustration. Good luck! You can do it!

I allowed for 2 fingers width inside the upper and lower parts of the thigh, and I am hesitant about getting it much more snug on her at this stage. Her thighs are more... well... female shaped. She is pulling the thigh up and outwards to keep it in position, so it also looks like more space is in there than there actually is. I will probably need to bring the thighs up as we adjust for length. If they are smaller around the lower thigh at this length, then once they're brought up, it'll be even more narrow around the lower thigh. I don't want that. Once things have been adjusted for length, if still I need to taper things in near the knee, it'll be a super easy alteration because I haven't put the outer cover strips on yet. Once the boots are on, they bring up the shin quite a bit. When she tried on the shins with the boots at the last session, the shins completely covered her knees. Remember that she is 4'9". I am 5'4", and these shins still needed to be trimmed down a little for my height (or lack thereof). I never got around to trimming the shins down to fit me because I sold the kit before getting to that part of the build. I would have been wasting my time to trim for my height, only to have to trim again for her height. I have to say, it's really fun (and much easier!) to assemble a TK on someone else rather than on myself. I need to clone myself for my next build so I can have something to build on that I can see from other angles! A mannequin doesn't cut it.

I am 5'4", so you are taller than I am! Never too short to be a TK! The WTF kit is a good choice for the Vertically Challenged. I think you'll be happy with it. They have great customer service and it's super easy to quickly get replacement parts from them. I'm glad that you're finding my build to be helpful! I hope that you will post your own build thread when your BBB day comes so we can watch (and learn from) your build as well.

I will most likely remove some material from the tops as well to keep the bicep visually balanced.

The short build continued yesterday. And I took more pics as promised... We spent about 2.5 hours on fitting thighs and biceps. I focused just on getting the pieces trimmed to fit for width at this point. All parts are glued with an inner cover strip in the front. I will wait to put on the outer cover strip until we have cleared the hurdle of trimming for length. First up, left arm. I trimmed the biceps to fit and taped them together so she could try biceps and forearms on at the same time. Clearly this arm as it's fitting now is too long. I will most likely remove material from the bottom of the bicep and bottom of the forearm to adjust for length. The good news is that the seams are lining up in the front and back. Yay! Next, right arm. All looks good here, so now moving along to legs... (I only took pics of the left leg.) Both legs ended up looking good. Seams line up straight in front and in back, and the thighs aren't too loose or too tight on her. Even though these are the "short" thigh parts from WTF, the thighs will still require trimming at the tops. But all of that will have to wait until after we get the torso fitted. Oh! Wait! Torso is fitted! I had adjusted the glued elastic straps in the chest and back after our last fitting session, and I was hopeful that everything would line up nicely. I also moved the shoulder bridge straps down further on the chest and bent them to curve nicely along the shoulders. Note that the bridges end in the "sweet spot" on the back plate- not too close, and not too far from the OII box. And I am particularly happy with how the back plate finally fits. See the before and after: We ran out of time to make any further progress in the session. I want to make small adjustments here and there still, and we have plans to meet again next week for more fitting. We should be able to focus on getting the limbs sized down for length next time. Stay tuned!

Congrats! Nice job!