Cricket

Nice work on the paint job! How cute that your magnets came in little cases. I ordered mine in bulk on eBay, and they arrived in one big lump inside some bubble wrap like homeless magnets.

Following up about that S trim I picked up from yoycart.com: DO NOT BUY THIS!!!! After a few months, the S trim began to eat my helmet! Yep, you read that right. While the S trim looks amazing, it melts the ABS plastic wherever it makes continued contact with it. I have no idea why it is doing this. I noticed a little "etching" in the plastic where the trim met the helmet at first. I cleaned the S trim several times in hopes to remove whatever residue was causing the etching to occur, but it didn't work. I added a protective varnish around the contact area, which seemed to slow down the progress. But even that didn't totally work. I noticed this weekend that along the inner edges of my lid that it's a gooey mess in places, and there are deeper ridge lines at the outer edges of the S trim. This damage occurred on both my RS Props lid and my ATA lid. I now have to do some serious ABS paste repair work to fix the damage. GAH!!!! I've procured some new S trim from the great guys over at RS Props to replace it, so it's not a total loss. I know their S trim won't eat my helmet.

Woo hoo!!!! You're gonna have a blast (even if you can't hit much with that blaster...). Looking forward to reading your troop log!

Tiny progress is progress! Yeah, sounds like your iron was too hot. Try using the lowest setting on your iron with a piece of scrap ABS and see where that takes you. My heat sealing iron has a non-stick coating on it, so that also may be a factor if your iron doesn't have that coating on it.

Trimming begins today. Ugh. I forgot how much trimming needs to be done. That kind of thing is easy to forget about once you finish your first kit. Seems like a really long time ago that I was doing this. So, let's get to it. Yep. Untrimmed chest. I'll be removing the bottom return entirely (yay- one less return to rebuild!) for this build since I'm going for a Luke look. And this is my challenge piece. The kidney/butt all-in-one. I want to keep a return on the top of the butt plate. I'm not concerned about the bottom of the kidney because I'll be trimming about an inch or so off of that to shorten it for my size. So I really had to think about how to dissect these. My solution was to cut a bit above the ridge between the two parts. This would leave some extra ABS on the butt plate where I can create a new return using my handy-dandy heat gun, wood jiggy-ma-jig, and wood stir-stick-flattening-thingy. It's all very scientific, you know. Which leaves my butt plate edge looking like this: Once I heat that edge, I'll simply fold it over, flatten it out, and voila... new return. Shouldn't be too bad. And since I haven't trimmed this kit to my size yet, I thought a comparison should be in order. The untrimmed WTF is on the left in the first photo, and on the right in the second photo. My RS Props kit is next to it so you can see how much I had to modify things. And I'm stopping there for today because my hand hurts from all the trimming. And I've only just started.

The heat sealing iron is good because it is small and light. I suppose that you could use a regular iron, but your wrist/arm might get tired pretty quickly.

I've been there many times with things like this, Stephen. Nice recovery! Glad to see that you were able to repair it. "Learning experiences" like this will help you become a more skilled armor-builder. Keep up the good work.

Done!

Looks good, Carl! Nice work! The only thing that you might want to fix is the paint on the frown. Typically on the ANH helmet, you will see paint on the teeth, but not around the frown itself. I've attached some pics showing examples of screen-used lids for reference. It's a pretty easy fix if you are looking to go for further screen-accuracy.

My troop logs can be found here.

Hey Troopers, Been busy lately with out of town family staying with us and all. Oh, and I've got two- yes TWO- troops under my ammo belt now. I'll be posting pics of those events in a separate log here in the FISD soon. Trooping. So. Much. FUN! In the meantime, this arrived for me in the mail today, and it's worth mentioning because it kind of caps off this build. Behold! My official 501st name badges!

Looks much better, great job! Just be sure you get those shins on the correct legs before submitting.

Okay, Todd, here are some pics just so you can see what I mean. Also found a few other things that you might want to adjust. All easy fixes.

Bumpy ridges are okay. You've got that correct. It's the raised ridge detail along the cover strips that I'm talking about. It's an easy fix. Just swap the arms and rotate them 180 degrees. I'll get a proper pic posted when I get to my main computer. Can't do it from my phone.

I think your forearms are on the wrong arms. The ridge detail along the cover strips should be showing on top. As they look in the pics, the ridge sides seem to be facing underneath. Also, you might want to reposition the outside rivet on the thighs ammo pack. It should be closer to the corner edge. Everything else looks sharp! Good luck!

Yay, Frank! WTG!

Oh! Yes, the famous ANH left thigh notch. Although it's not there with the WTF armor as it is now, it will be after my build is complete. Oh, it will be.

This. I use an Anker Astro 6700, and it works flawlessly with both fans running for hours.

Oh, hi there, me again. I began my white armor journey intending on building a Hero TK- namely a Luke suit. Along the way, things happened, things didn't happen, and over one year later, I ended up building a Stunt TK. Still, I never gave up on my dream to build a proper Hero Luke suit. Below are shortcuts to my build, and if you want to see the unboxing, just keep scrolling down. Thanks for stopping by! ***************************************************************************************************** Thread Shortcuts for The Chronically Impatient or Short of Time Trim Guide for Short TKs Making Initial Cuts Cover Strippin' Shins Shin Assembly Magnetic Shins Part 1: Building Buttons Magnetic Shins Part 2: Shaping the Shins (with Bonus Small Person Thigh Sizing!) Magnetic Shins Part 3: Making ABS Hole Strips and Installation Magnetic Shins Part 4: Making Holes in the Shins, Prepping Magnet Buttons, and Cover Strip Installation Magnetic Shins Part 5: Gluing Magnets on the Inside of the Cover Strip Magnetic Shins Part 6: Attaching the Magnet Buttons DIY Shin Stirrups (such easy, much awesome, wow) Torso Bits and Pieces Trimming Ammo Pack, Ab Buttons, and Drop Boxes Further Mods to the Ab Button Plates Slice the Cod! Shaping Shoulder Straps and Biceps Resizing the Chest Like TK Luke Making a Return for the WTF Butt Plate Cutting Down the Kidney and Rebuilding the Return First Torso Fitting: Back Plate Sizing, Kidney and Ab Shaping in Hot Water Bath Flattening and Reinforcing Returns on the Kidney and Butt Plate Trimming and Hot Water Bath for the Butt Plate Butt Plate and Kidney Bracket Installation Ab/Kidney Split Rivet Connections and Ab/Kidney Tab Hot Water Bath and Heat Sealing Iron to Improve Kidney Return Reducing Kidney Width, New Kidney Notch Curving the Belt and Ammo Pack Ab and Kidney 2.0- Hot Water to Shape Things Up (let's do this again, shall we?) Sizing the Kit Down for an Even Smaller TK Smaller TK Initial Fitting (Look at that Back Plate!) *NEW!* Second Fitting for Smaller TK (Fine Tuning Limbs to Torso) Arms! Forearm Sizing for Smaller TKs Shaping Shoulder Straps and Biceps Increasing the Size of the Biceps Making Reinforced Shoulder Straps How To Make ABS Reinforced Snaps for Elastic Strapping Display Your TK! DIY PVC Mannequin Frame (Parts List Included!) ***************************************************************************************************** Well, today my dream becomes a reality! After almost 12 weeks of waiting, my WTF Hero TK kit arrived in the mail today. Horray! BBB #2! The opening... Checking that everything is in there... I have to say, I'm a big fan of the S trim included with this kit. And the Hero face. Yay, I don't have to modify the teeth!!! Included with the kit were an extra pair of shoulder straps, two extra sets of Hero ears, and lots of extra ABS for outer cover strips. Sweet! A Hero build is a little different than a Stunt build, with the differences mostly with the helmet (three-bar ears, six teeth), and with the number of rivets on the holster (4 instead of 2). I'm planning on taking this kit to Centurion, then modifying it after to a proper Luke suit. The difference between a Hero and a Luke Hero is in little things that most people won't notice or care about, but can't be cleared for Centurion. So what does a Luke suit have that a Hero doesn't? (Upper level guidelines don't recognize individual characters here, or so I've been told!) A Luke suit has: two left forearms two left shoulder bells grappling hook and comlink shortened back no return on bottom of the back no return at the bottom of the chest some inner bracket strapping, some glued elastic strapping I'm sure I'm forgetting some additional things (it's been a while since I started doing research on this, and I can't remember every detail at the moment), but that's the gist of it. The only things that won't take the Luke to Centurion are the two left forearms, I think. I made sure that a right forearm was included with my kit, though. My biggest challenge that I can see so far with this kit is with the kidney/butt plate. I wasn't expecting it to be all in one piece, and I'll have to cut them apart. Cutting them isn't the problem. It's that I'm going to have to rebuild the return at the top of the butt plate in order to accommodate the wire bracket strapping. There will be almost no return on those areas once they've been separated. *sigh* I'm going to have to cut a few inches from the bottom of the kidney and rebuild that return anyhow, so I expected that. Just not the butt plate return. Oh well, what's one more return when I have to make so many new ones anyways? haha... I promise that I won't post nearly as much as I did with my RS build, because lots of it will be redundant. I will be sure to include lots of the Hero-applicable stuff, though. So... are you still with me? On to the build!!!

Looking good there, Stephen! Nice progress so far. I trimmed out some extra of the scoop area of the inner forearm as well. It made the forearms much more comfortable.

Sounds like something that could be used to build a Death Trooper!

Thanks for that Joseph. However my question was about the returns, not the brackets themselves. Darren makes awesome bracket kits. I have a feeling that the returns will need to get beefed up on the WTF armor at the kidney/butt plate connections in order to accommodate the brackets. I'm not a fan of the screw heads showing on the outside of the armor. Guess I'll need to break out my wood jig and heat gun again!

Hey Troopers, Just received my WTF armor today for my Hero TK build. I didn't expect that the kidney/butt plates would arrive attached. Detaching them won't be a problem, but I wanted to go with the bracket/elastics strapping system because I really like how it works on my Stunt TK. Once I detach the kidney/butt plate, the return on the bottom of the kidney/top of the butt plate is tiny. So if I want to use brackets, is the only solution to rebuild the returns? I was really hoping to avoid this kind of thing out of the box. Any tips are appreciated. Thanks, troopers!