Cricket

Yeah, I was mortified. I ended up using my 'damaged' arm to do HUGE waves at the crowds every time I felt the arm slipping!

I had an inexperienced handler help me with attaching my arm right before marching in my very first parade. They had so much trouble with it, that they ended up pulling out most of the thead to the snap... I didn't notice this until right before parade start when my entire arm started to fall off. I ended up with handlers following me during the entire parade who kept taping my arm up with duct tape (it kept falling off!). I've been quite cautious with newbie handlers ever since!

Hey, thanks! I"m really glad that my fails helped you! haha.... Yep, they will help a lot. Even if you can get your shins strapped into submission, you may still want to consider taking some off of the back. Having a bit out of the back adds comfort and is also screen accurate (bonus!). Some trim as 'rounded scoops', others as more 'rectangular scoops'. The shape is ultimately up to you! I seem to remember reading somewhere around here that your arm mobility goals should include: 1. Getting your bucket on and off by yourself. 2. Being able to drink a bottle of water in kit (bucket off, of course). 3. Holster and unholster your blaster unassisted with bucket on. Goals #1 and #2 are fairly easy to accomplish based on how the arms are trimmed. Goal #3 is about half mobility, and half holster quality. A 4oz holster for me was too thin to be able to easily holster and unholster my blaster, even after I'd shaped it to fit. I upgraded to an 8oz holster, and have never looked back. I try to find a handler to help strap on my opposite arm whenever possible. However (more often than not!), many handlers have a difficult time locating the inside #10 snap on the white shoulder elastic (I don't know why!). I've always had enough mobility to attach both arms without much trouble, though. For me, the key is more about dexterity to locate the snap than anything else. I slip on my entire arm as a sleeve (gloves included) after putting on silk hand liners first. In case you didn't see this pic: Wearing rubber gloves allows me to still retain a good sense of touch- I couldn't accomplish this if I wear Nomex gloves. But I digress a bit here. Bottom line is, yes, it is totally realistic for you to expect to be able to reach all the way over to do up that shoulder strap/bell snap when you've got your arms on. Hope this helps!

You look amazing, Jen! Great work getting that kit sized down. Way to go! I noticed that your shins twisted a bit on you in one of the pics. Do you have stirrups installed on them yet? This isn't something that will affect approval, it's more for your own comfort while trooping. It will keep the shins from rotating around on your legs, as well as keep them pulled down snugly over your boots. I don't know how someone could troop comfortably without them! Once again, fabulous job.

Oh, wow, that totally sucks!!! I know things happen with vendors and all, but still. So sorry, Daniel!

I had the same issue with my belt when I submitted for EIB. Tony mentioned it to me as this: Here are my belt pics from before I corrected the issue: And he suggested that this is how it should be: I was able to separate the cloth and plastic parts and make trims to the ends to correct the overtrimmed corners for my Centurion application. Bottom line, the corner issue you have on your belt won't stop you from basic approval, though!

Yep, top pic is fine. Don't worry about lining up the bottoms. As long as the tops are lined up, you're good.

Hey Jenny! Don't panic! The tops should line up. The bottoms don't have to. They'll be covered by the belt and won't affect higher level awards. Keep calm and carry on, trooper!

Good work so far! It looks like you could bring the sniper plate to be a bit more in line with the shin, though. I've stolen these images from Tony's outstanding build thread so you can see what I mean. https://www.whitearmor.net/forum/topic/31920-ukswraths-am-10-build/?do=findComment&comment=412503

Good to know that the hooks aren't a requirement. I'm having issues with my bicep hook placement on this kit. Off they go!

I'd just call it battle damage. The match will be close enough that very few- if any- people would notice when you're out trooping.

Looks much better! WTG!

You should be able to get that plate smaller. I was able to get all of it off on mine. You want some of that ridge detail below the button plate on the Ab to also be visible. My WTF buttons on the left, my RS buttons on the right. The WTF buttons are quite a bit larger than the RS, but can still work. I could still probably take even more off the sides of my WTF button plate, actually.

Could I add a suggestion to your great info piece? When making magnet sachets, it's a really good idea to make sure that you've got polarity-correct pairs. An easy way to help identify magnet pairs is to assemble them using fabric with high-contrast colors. Kind of like this:

Additional thoughts on this. I'm guessing that on a movie set, they wouldn't have the time to do these crazy mods to the armor like I have. Like creating new returns on the kidney, or cutting down the cod piece. Things would be altered on a "quick and dirty" type basis I assume. The only places I see big cuts on the armor are the bottom of the back and bottom of the chest. So maybe I've been approaching this all wrong. Maybe I should not have altered the cod or kidney in any way at all, but instead, made all of my cuts to the back and chest alone. Hm. I think I know what I need to do now. I'll report more once I'm done.

Hey Frank! Good to see you are still around. Thanks for the feedback on my build. The movement on the arms at the elbow is surprisingly good. I cut deeper into the inner forearms in order to accomodate better movement and prevent armor bites. I'm actually going for a tighter fitting connection at the elbow because I'm trying to emulate the Luke Hero suit. You can see in some of these screen shots how close the forearm and bicep are together when Mark's arms are relaxed. His biceps tend to ride low on him, too. I still have to install the left forearm on the right arm (I am wearing the right forearm in the photos), but it will be similar to how it is in the pics. The Luke suit also has overlap on the left arm between the forearm and bicep- I don't know if I want to go that far with this, though. It doesn't look comfortable at all, and I don't think it'll pass at the higher level awards here. That said, there is nothing in the CRL about overlapping biceps/forearms. Hm. It's not a huge deal, but I suppose I should probably ask Tony about this! At any rate, I won't be able to do a Luke suit as well as I had hoped with this kit, no matter what mods I make to it. The proportions seem 'off' on some things, and I can't compensate for that. For example, the back plate. And me: Even if I cut more off the bottom and sides of the back plate, it still won't look like what's on screen in ANH. Here you can see the difference between my RS (left) and WTF (right) back plates. The RS OII box is more rectangular in shape and is larger overall (RS box is 20 x 15.5cm, WTF is 19 x 15cm). The OII shapes themselves are different, too. These are really small things overall, but things I wish I could change. Will I eventually work with another RS kit again to get exactly the Luke suit I want? Heck yeah! Will these things prevent me from trying to do the best Luke suit I can with what I've got? Not at all! I'm done with my griping... it's time to get this kit finished!

Discovered today that gaffer's tape holds much better than blue tape for temporary strapping when fitting! Yeah, it's more expensive than blue tape, but you don't use nearly as much gaffer's tape, and it can be re-used much of the time. I was able to use it to secure my shoulder elastics and shoulder bell elastics in these test fitting shots today. I'm still building and adjusting things- please disregard the missing items on the armor! Left side rivets all lined up. Ab/kidney meets level at the top. Right side kidney/ab connection is only secured with the Han snap elastic here. I'm working on the belt, so I don't have it on in these shots. Remember, the belt isn't necessarily there to pull things together; the armor should come together pretty well without it! I'll need my belt to snug up how the kidney/ab open up a little bit near the bottom of the connection when I move my arm like in the photo, but it's no biggie. It is ridiculously difficult to get a rear selfie shot in a mirror! My back plate looks like it's overlapping the kidney, but it's not. It's sitting right on top of the kidney due to a bit of foam that I have inside the back plate. Maybe I'll take a little off of the foam to keep it a bit closer to me. I still have to adjust the chest. I don't like how it's sitting a little lower on the left hand side, so I'll need to fix that. Shoulders seem like they're tight to the chest (minimal gaps) when my arms are relaxed, but I can still easily move them around. I'm happy with this. If anyone sees anything glaring about how things look, please let me know. The interesting thing about this kit is that I have not trimmed any of the length on the arms yet, and they seem to fit pretty well. I took about 1.25" off the bottom of the chest, and removed about 1.25" off the cod/ab connection. I trimmed about 5mm off of the sides of the chest where it meets the ab, but I've not removed anything on the chest around the arms. I don't think I'll need to remove much off of the thighs at all. (I'll be getting to the thighs next.) Overall, there has been much, much less to size down on this kit compared to the RS Props kit.

In addition, the WTF ab button plates are very, very deep. On the ANH suits, the ab button plate is pretty shallow- and the four-button strip is flat. So if you're trying to emulate the ANH suit, you'll need to remove a lot off of them in order to flatten them out.

Oh, wow!!! You've already got a legendary trooper story, and you don't even have a TK id yet. Congrats! Make yourself some stirrups for the shins. They will teach those shins who's boss! Another thing I noticed has to do with your gloves popping out of the forearms. This is common, but can be dealt with easily! Attach a few strips of velcro to the outside ends of the gloves, with corresponding strips on the inside of the forearms. This not only helps to keep the gloves from popping out/sliding down, but makes it super easy to put on the arms in one fell swoop! I've trooped with this setup many, many times, and they have never failed.

Thank you! I hope it's able to help you! Yes, I chose to do a magnet-to-magnet closure rather than a magnet-to-steel closure simply because the magnet-to-magnet connection is much stronger. I don't know if all that strength is necessary, but it works perfectly for me. I couldn't find a metal strip that had the same 'grab strength' as a magnet-to-magnet connection. Hm. I'm not entirely sure! Just a guess, but I don't think I would use a thinner magnet because the 3mm magnets seem to be the perfect thickness for the ABS on the shins. I am fairly sure that you need the magnets to be the same thickness as the ABS you're working with. On my RS and WTF shins, the ABS was 3mm thick on the cover strips. Also, if you are using thinner magnets, they may end up being a little more fragile. And I'm totally guessing here, but thinner magnets might not be as strong? Ah, the thigh-fit question! I had the same questions, too. Some troopers prefer them to fit more like board shorts, kind of loose around the legs. I've heard everything from leaving 3" of space to leaving about an 1" of space around. Me, I prefer my thigh armor to fit well on my legs. I don't like them rattling around on me. I don't have a lot of space in mine. They're not super tight, but they certainly don't rattle around. Mine fit me like a pair of comfy jeans around my thighs- not too loose, but not too tight, either. They are tapered, meaning that they are larger at the top, and smaller at the bottom. (me, short trooper in my RS Props kit) Hope that helps!

Thanks! It has been very interesting discovering how different- yet similar- the different kits are. The whole ab plate thing isn't a huge deal, really. Having those extra little edges to the ab plate isn't something that is scrutinized over, but I wanted them on mine. It's likely that no one but me will notice that kind of detail. It's so easy to get buried in the minutiae of this kind of project, isn't it? Then when you're actually out in the world trooping and making kids smile, none of the detail stuff seems to matter anymore. Although I will say that sometimes details do get noticed, but it's by other troopers. For example, I spent hours drilling out my resin scope on my Hasbro e-11, adding a reflector disc and red film (with hand-drawn crosshairs) waaaaay back inside, then adding a lens to finish it. It made me happy to upgrade the standard resin scope into something with more bling, which is why I did it. After I was done with painting and weathering, I kind of forgot about it. But when out trooping and holding my blaster, I've been asked multiple times by other troopers if my scope is real, and they ask to take a closer look at it. It usually takes me by surprise because I don't even think about the scope on the blaster now. I suppose that as long as building details are reasonably accurate and make you happy, then do it!

That Ab button plate does not have much of a lip on it at all. I added a backing plate to mine. https://www.whitearmor.net/forum/topic/41502-crickets-wtf-hero-build-even-more-tk-for-the-vertically-challenged/?do=findComment&comment=595624

I used a cheap lobster pot picked up at my local grocery store. I think it's 12 quarts? I could fit about 2/3 of the untrimmed WTF shin in the pot. You put as much of the shin that will fit in the water for several seconds, then flip it, putting the other end in the boiling water. The ABS out stays hot enough to work with long enough to shape it. When molding the hot plastic, be sure to put it under running cold water to help 'lock' the new shape. You repeat this process until you get the shape you want. It's a gentle, gradual process.

I was too paranoid to use a heat gun on my shins. I had great results using a hot water bath to get my shins to meet cleanly in the back.

They are 12mm x 3mm n50 magnets. You'll need a total of 20 magnets for the shins (10 on each shin). I strongly suggest buying more than 20, though. I've found that they can easily break, and you'll want backups on hand! You can find them in bulk- and cheap!- on eBay. The cheapest I've seen over there recently is about $3.50 for 20, including shipping. Most of the time they ship from China, so be prepared to wait a few weeks. Totally worth the cost savings, though!