Cricket

You'll need to bring up the belt a bit. It should rest just at the bottom of the button box, or just touch the bottom button. See the two troopers in the front on the far right. Your kidney/ab rivets should be more evenly spaced. Check out this post for details on what you should be aiming for. Your right bicep seems to have escaped from inside the shoulder bell. Keep it up! You're doing a great job!

Okay troopers, feedback is requested on the thighs! I got everything fitted and tried them on with my torso and shin pieces today. I have not trimmed ANYTHING off the tops (nothing off the bottom for that matter, either). Look at how they fit! I must have abnormally long thighs for my 5'4" height. I even made it up stairs with them on, although I had to wobble and tiptoe to make it (thanks to Addertime for the stairs tip!). So while I thought I would have to remove a lot off of these, it seems like I won't have to remove much at all. I think I'll remove a bit from the returns first and see how that changes how they feel. I may end up adding a little bit of padding in the sniper knee because I saw it try to tuck itself into the thigh, but it was unsuccessful. Actually, the only times I saw that happen was when my thighs became detached from the temporary velcro I have on the garters right now. I still haven't added the cover strips to the exterior seams yet. I have kept the blue tape on the backs for extra security. All of it will come off once I'm done with fitting. I have a question about the drop boxes. Mine are secured in place as per Centurion requirements, but they seem to pop out at the sides because of the thigh armor. Is this typical, or do I need to adjust something? Guidance would be most appreciated! Another look at the "before" on the left (with the thighs that were cut too short), and the "after" on the right (new thighs not trimmed at all). Do the new thighs look like they need any adjustments to you? Feedback always appreciated. Thanks, troopers!

Haha... I'm already following your thread. You haven't posted any updates lately!

Here ya go! The ruler in the front is 18 inches/455mm for scale. The jig on the left is the one I used for the chest/ab/butt/back plate returns. The one on the right is the one I used for the thighs.

Thanks! The "jig/heat gun/piece of wood paint stirrer" is my single favorite tool combo from this build. It has allowed me to easily make mods that I never thought could be done. Cutting things down doesn't terrify me anymore. The curve on the jig was pretty much based on the natural curve of the chest plate. I made a rough sketch of the chest curve on the wood, and cut using a jigsaw. Once I had the piece cut out, I sanded it down a bit more to get the shape that allowed the chest to rest comfortably on it. In hindsight, I could have made even more of a curve of that wood, and it would have worked fine. I would probably had made it less wide as well. That extra width sometimes got in the way for me, but I was able to work around it with some patience. Congrats on your RS kit! I hope you make a build thread for it. I'll be watching!

Today I gave the thighs a good hot water bath to get them into more of a rounded shape. Afterwords, I reduced the width of the return at the knee area by cutting out about 3mm of plastic all around. While I had the hot water out, I also curved up the thigh ammo pack. I was going to begin trimming the tops of the thighs today, but I realized that I needed to get the ammo pack installed at the bottom of the right knee first. The ammo pack adds a little length to the thigh. There'd be no point in trimming the thighs until that ammo pack was added! Hands up for who struggles with getting the ammo pack lined up! Using my magnets, I got the ammo pack centered on the front of the thigh. I don't know why it never occurred to me before to use magnets for this. D'oh! Since nothing is symmetrical on this, I realized that in order for the installed ammo pack to look balanced when seen from the back, I needed to trim a little more from the inside end of the ammo pack. I measured a gazillion times just to make sure I had the correct measurements before I trimmed. (I'm too close to finishing, and I do not want to have to do this over due to a measurement error!) It felt weird to make a cut to only one side. But it worked! Due to my small size, the ammo pack has to make more of a tight curve around the thigh. This results in a little bit of flaring out at the bottom edges. No worries, though. Some e6000, clamps, and a few days to cure, and it should look straight when I'm done. Once it's all glued securely, I will get the tops of these thighs trimmed to fit. Almost there!!!!!

Looks amazing! Great work, Jon! It could be the pic, but have you lined up your drop boxes to the edges of the belt? In this pic, it looks like the drop box is positioned inside of the belt a bit. Maybe it's just how the photo was taken....

Looks good! You may want to rotate that left thigh a bit. The seam should line up over the front seam of the shin. As you've got it, the seam on the thigh is facing out to the left and your sniper knee is tucked in there. I had no luck with hard hat liners as well. I've ended up using a combination of helmet lining, tactical pads, and door weather strip tape (1" x 5/16") to customize the fit inside my helmets.

Hey Heather! You can totally do this. Don't let your fear stop you from embarking on this amazing adventure! Post your progress, share your pics, and ask lots of questions. We're all here to help.

Home stretch. Fitting the left thigh. As I mentioned before, this one has been giving me attitude. But I finally taped it into submission. Taped together to my size, you can see how much I needed to remove. I made an estimate of the back center seam line by making a pencil mark on the back of the shins that looked like it was opposite the front shin seam. I trimmed a little off of each side- maybe about 5mm at a time- until I was able to get a better taped fit of the thigh onto me. There's a lot of extra plastic to deal with when trimming these, and the excess makes the fit always seem a little more snug as it is being taped together. I finally got things into a final 'workable' fit, and marked off my final cut. I measured each side along the bottom ridge line to the first corner to verify some degree of symmetry. Each side measured 45mm, so the bottoms were good and didn't need further trimming. I wanted the seam to be straight, so I needed to make a final wedge-shaped cut as I adjusted the final fit. Sounds weird to cut at an angle in order to achieve a straight line, but it works for this part. Score. Snap. Wedge removed. I then taped the pieces together on the outside to make sure things fit together well. Straight on the inside, too. I used a piece of extra ABS that was cut from the same thigh as a reinforcement strip. Good thing about being small and building a TK is that you always end up with extra scraps that can be used for other things. Glued the strip inside, clamped it down. Now the long wait for the e6000 to cure. Sigh. I also have been padding my helmets to see what works best for me. Small head and all, I need lots more padding than I expected. Feeling a bit like Goldilocks with this. The tactical pads are too hard, and not thick enough. I can't double them up because that ends up too thick. I've got bicycle helmet pads, and I can stack those on top of the tactical pads, but they're also really hard and still not padding my head enough. I have had some success on the RS helmet with using a Stanley knee pad (cut up), and covering the pads all around the lid with foam door strips. I picked up an extra small helmet liner from an online motorcycle store for $5 (clearance, yay!), and that option is the most comfy for me. I added a small wedge (from the bicycle helmet set) to the front above my eyes and one on each side of the head just under the liner, and it's a winner for my ATA lid. Anyone have other suggestions for comfortable padding for the helmet? I tried hard hat liners as well, not only were they too big for me, but I just didn't have the patience to rig them to my lids.

https://youtu.be/26dKVC1hnp8?t=1m46s

While I was waiting for the glue on my new thighs to dry, I started working on fixing other little things that have been bugging me about my kit. Part of reducing the size of my kit has involved a lot of rebuilding new returns on many of the torso parts. As a result, even with careful use of the heat gun, sometimes the edges get a little warpy. On the lower right of my back plate, the return was angled at close to a 45 degree angle. It was the most apparent when I raised up my arm. The whole corner of the back plate was angled too high. A little time spent with the problem area, the heat gun, and getting jiggy with my wood jiggy-ma-jig, problem solved. Still needs to be sanded a little, but it's heaps better I think. While I was looking at that area, I noticed another heat-caused injury to my armor. After extending the ab height for improved joining at the kidney, I ended up slightly warping the edge at the corner. Previously, the edges met flush with each other. You can see in the pic below where they don't meet anymore. This kind of thing makes me CRAZY. Even though most people would never notice it, I KNOW it's there in all its tiny warpiness. Enter ABS paste. Let's rebuild a little edge, shall we? I applied two layers of ABS paste and allowed it to dry for a few days. Sanded it down. Here's a before and after so you can see the difference. I still need to polish it up, but I'm much happier with it now. Yaaaas! The only thing that I need to complete now are the thighs. The right thigh has been fitted all around. I'm getting to fitting the left thigh today (that one is giving me headaches). I won't be trimming any off the top until both thighs are glued together and I can try them on with the shins and armor on. I will NOT be overtrimming this time! I am actually surprised about how little it seems that I will need to remove from the top of the thighs. And when I do, I think I should easily be able to rebuild the returns on the tops of those thighs. I have been practicing making new returns on my old, shorter thighs. I built another wood jig just for them. It's smaller and more curved than the one I've used for all my torso parts. For this, I used a heat sealing iron, the wood jig above, and my favorite little piece of wood stir stick (it's about 2 inches long) to smooth out the edges as they cool. It took me about 30 minutes, but I think I've got the hang of making new returns on the thighs. Of course, there is always sanding of the inner edges to even things up on the inside to be done, but it looks much better than having flat, straight edges along the top.

This thread is getting a little long. For those of you who don't want to wade through all 16 pages of this build, here's the overview of topics so far: Some Things to Know Before You Go Making ABS Paste ABS Paste for Small Repairs, Heat Ironing New Thigh Returns ABS Paste for BIG Repairs (not for the Faint of Heart, Short of Time, or Chronically Impatient) Cover Strip Sizes Belt Corners and Ammo Pack Measurements Sizing Down the Chest Rebuilding a Return on the Bottom of the Chest (MUCH easier than using ABS paste, believe me) Recap of Where I Trimmed the Kit on the Torso Reinforcing Shoulder Bridges and Jig for Making New Returns Shoulders Shoulder Bell Trimming Shoulder Bell Fitting Shoulder Trim Points for Short Troopers Reinforcing Shoulder Bridges and Jig for Making New Returns Discussion of Shoulder Bell Shape Garter Belt, Shoulder Snaps Biceps Biceps Making Bicep Hooks Arm Strapping Abdominal Mods Painting Ab Buttons Reducing the Height of the Ab Cutting the Cod! Installing Inner Strapping Brackets Recap of Where I Trimmed the Kit on the Torso Shrinking the Kidney to Fun Size Shorten the Kidney (always remove from the BOTTOM ONLY!) and Rebuilding Returns Kidney/Ab Rivet Placement Kidney/Ab Rivet Placement Continued... More Kidney/Ab Rivet Stuff, Building the Belt, and Countersinking Screws Troubleshooting Kidney/Ab Not Lining Up on the Right Side- GAH! Fixing the Kidney/Ab Misalignment Issue Even More Fixing the Kidney/Ab Misalignment Issue…(The Sequel) Getting the Kidney/Ab Misalignment Thing in Order (The Final Battle) PlastiDipping the Helmet and Kidney/Ab Bracket Creation Kidney/Ab Bracket with Styrene Tab Installed, Discussion of Shoulder Bell Shape ABS Paste for Small Repairs, Heat Ironing New Thigh Returns Shin Stuff Shin Fitting Shin Trimming for Shorties (Magic) Magnetic Shin Closures Part 1 (initial installation) (Magic) Magnetic Shin Closures Part 2 (magnetic closure improved) (Magic) Magnetic Shin Closures in Action (video!) Sniper Knee Giddy Up! Home Grown Stirrups (not a tutorial) Thighs for the Vertically Challenged Leg Adjustments Leg Adjustments Continued... Assembling the (New) Thighs and Heat-Bending the Belt Sizing the New Thighs and Padding the Lid Installing the Ammo Pack ABS Paste for Small Repairs, Heat Ironing New Thigh Returns Fine Tuning the New Thighs Initial Left Thigh Trimming (not yet there, but dang close) Reworking the Back of the Left Thigh Final Left Thigh Trimming and Spiffy New Returns Using a Heat Iron Handy Gloves Getting a Curve on Latex Handguards Love to the Lid Ditch the Brush! Sponge On the Tube Stripes! DIY Fan Bracket (not a tutorial) Sizing the Thighs and Padding the Lid All Together Now Test Fitting It All! And Feedback Is A Good Thing (time to fine tune it all…) Whew!

Hey Troopers! Nothing too major going on lately because I've had a slew of family events as well as family staying with us from out of town. Guests are now gone, so now I can get back to Star Warsing. First, huge thanks out to Zv288bot (aka Jorge) for helping to troubleshoot some issues I had with the fan switches. Thanks to his help, each of my fans in my bucket now operates on its own switch. Woo! Jorge, you're the BEST! I received my replacement thighs from RS Props a few weeks ago, so now I'm finally getting started on the very last part of my vertically challenged build. Time to build myself some new thighs! I don't think I documented the thigh build very well in this thread anyhow, so I'll get to that now. The RS Props right thigh is odd. The halves don't line up at all. It took me a bit of research to find out some things about how to line up the halves. Yay for the FISD, because I found a thread from 2012 from the RS Props team that discussed how to put the right thigh together. Here is the right thigh as the halves should be lined up. The top is off. Which is normal. And so is the bottom. Also normal. This will be hidden by the ammo pack. For me, the most helpful part of that thread is the measurement they noted about the discrepancy at the bottom of the halves meeting; there should be about 8mm difference between the inner and outer halves. Here's the new right thigh next to the old right thigh that I cut too short. I reinforce all my parts by gluing inner cover strips on first. While inner cover strips are not necessary, I like how they give the inside of the armor a clean, finished look. Once I'm done fitting the thighs to my size, the very last thing I will do is attach the outer cover strips. Also I'm doing some other little things to my kit. Like adding the elastics to the shoulder straps. Don't worry about them being tied backwards for now. I couldn't get the kit off my dressform because glue was drying on the other side. And I'm pretty proud of the fact that the shoulder straps aren't touching the OII box. It seems that many Shortroopers end up with shoulder straps that look too long in the back. I was able to get around this by moving the shoulder straps forward more on the chest and by adding a metal strip inside the shoulder strap. The metal strip allows me to give the strap a bit of a bend at the top, which reduces the overall length at the back. Here you can see where the bridge is secured to the chest. There are no requirements for 'bar placement' on the chest. On the left shoulder bridge, I've attached seven bars to the chest. Even though that sounds like a lot, it looks proportional to the chest. Keep in mind that I cut a lot away from the chest on all sides, including a lot from the neck, and I created new returns on the sides and bottom. I had to cut so much into the chest plate that I had to create new shoulder areas on the chest. I've bent my belt a bit more using Pandatrooper's bending method. It curves nicely now on my armor. And I had to relocate my belt up a bit. In the pic above, I like where it's sitting. In order for it to do that, I had to add some velcro to the ab to keep it in place. This also meant that I had to relocate the snaps on my ab to accommodate the new position of the belt. No worries, ABS paste fixes everything! Will be sanding, polishing, and installing new snaps for the ab today while I wait for the E6000 to cure on the thighs. Oh! One more thing! As I'm modifying my armor, I'm figuring out that it would probably have been better for me to have waited to paint my ab buttons until last. With all the fine-tuning I'm doing, they're getting all chipped up, and they will need to be repainted before submission. It won't take long, but still. Ah well!

Kind of. Everyone has their own method, but here is what I did: http://www.whitearmor.net/forum/topic/38416-crickets-rs-stunt-build-for-the-vertically-challenged/?p=523187 Later I decided to ditch using the "steel strip-magnet" combo and use a magnet-to-magnet combo instead. Magnet-to-magnet closures work amazingly well. Very strong. http://www.whitearmor.net/forum/topic/38416-crickets-rs-stunt-build-for-the-vertically-challenged/?p=528732 I made a short video showing how they close and lock. http://www.whitearmor.net/forum/topic/38416-crickets-rs-stunt-build-for-the-vertically-challenged/?p=531871

Or if you're brave, you could go with magnets to close your shins. They're like magic to close, and they stay locked. Easy to take off, too.

You should be good with velcro to hold up the belt to the ab. I've met troopers who use only industrial strength velcro to connect the belt to the ab. That stuff is awesome.

Is there any way to update the Search feature on this board? As the search function is now, any words that are three letters or less are excluded from searching. This has given me lots of headaches during my research on the boards. For example, if I do a search of "RS Props", the search function tosses out the RS portion because it's less than three letters, even if I have it in quotes. So all results contain the word "props", but not necessarily RS. Or a search for "ATA", looking for info regarding ATA armor is impossible because it's just three letters. If I do a search of "ab trimming", I only get results for "trimming". Can't successfully search for how to modify the cod because "cod" is three letters. Or is there a super secret trick for getting the search feature to include words that are three letters or less? Help, please!

I'll get suited up and take pics soon. I got wrapped up in helmet mods today. Namely installing a fan bracket and fans. I've ordered a few plastic brackets that are en route, but I wanted to try out making my own metal one. I cut my bracket using a template that fit in my helmet. I cut it out from a piece of sheet of metal that has black on one side so I don't have to paint it. I should have used my jigsaw to cut it because I spent about 20 minutes using tin snips to cut the bracket, and it was a major PITA. I ended up having to sand the edges smooth. I used my drill press to make holes for the wires and switches. I've also applied some thick neoprene to the back of the metal to cushion it. The metal edges scraped off some of the PlastiDip coating. I'll have to repaint those areas. Here's a pic of the bracket initially fitted into my bucket. The blue looking stuff is protective film that was removed after cutting. Then I removed the film and installed the switches. Attached the fans with some velcro, soldiered the wires, and popped the bracket back in the lid. I'm just waiting on some small USB cables to finish it up, which is why the wires aren't yet finished in the back. I'll be using a portable battery pack to power the fans. Can't wait to get it up and running!

Looking great! The only things that stood out to me- and these aren't EIB or Centurion requirements- are the lengths of the cover strips. You may want to trim them up for your own comfort. And I saw that ammo pack slip, but it's only in that one pic. Dab o' E6000, and you'll be good on that.

Wondering something here: if you lengthen the white elastic at the shoulder connections, would that lower your chest plate enough so that it will cover your ab plate better (and so that it's not cutting into your neck)? I had to trim around the cod, too. It's amazing how much better it fits when this is done! Biceps seem okay to me. I'd like to see how they look from the back as well just to be sure. I don't think your shoulder bells look too wide from these pics. I'm jealous that you have a gap between your bells and the chest plate when your arms are relaxed! I have no space there at all. I would wait to trim those just yet. Especially since you're still adjusting the ab/chest areas. I would really hate to see you over trim the shoulder bells. They way they're fitting you now, you won't need to take much- if any- off at all. You're filling out your kit much better than I do mine. About that shoulder bell rotation... maybe bring the connector snap on the white shoulder elastic forward (towards the chest) a little? If you can get an assistant, I would kit up, but unsnap the shoulder bell. Standing in front of a mirror, I would have the assistant move your elastic bell connector to where you see your shoulder bell looks well-placed. Mark that spot and sew the new snap there. I ended up doing most of my shoulder bell fittings using my duct tape dummy. Is your mannequin sized in such a way that you can do the adjustments while the kit is dressed on the mannequin? The rubber gloves love to slide down, even when they're fitting well. I think it's the extra weight from the rubber hand guards. I read a tutorial about gluing a bit of hook velcro to the upper wrist part of the glove, and adhering some loop velcro to the inside of the forearm (I can't find the dang tutorial!!!). When you put your gloves on, you press the velcro pieces together, effectively attaching the rubber gloves to the forearms. No sliding! Also, just found this brilliant setup as demonstrated by Pandatrooper. The ABS handguards are attached to the forearm with elastic, and you slide your glove into the handguard. Check the video. I think I'm going to do this with my ABS handguards because my gloves slide down, too, even though they fit me well.

Those ear screws are nekked?

Nice recovery! Looks great!

Ah, yes, Paul makes gorgeous armor. Not trimming anything today, just adding padding in the helmet. I have a small head, which means I need lots of padding in there. I realized something today about my kit. While I can size down the armor to fit me well, I can't size down the lid. I tried on the RS helmet and ATA helmets for my family today, and the verdict was unanimous: I look like a bobble head with the RS helmet on. So my plan is this: once I get this armor approved to the higher levels, I'll be converting it to a TD. I'll be ordering a full armor/helmet kit from ATA for my Hero build. I'll be taking the Stunt helmet from my new kit and using that one for the TD. The RS and ATA colors don't match, but it won't matter once they're dirty. For me what's important is that the helmet looks good with the armor proportionally. I'll probably end up selling my RS lid because I won't need it now. Bobble head is not a good look on me.

I'm going to take a look through Centurion posts and see what others have done with their bells. I have a feeling that I'm going to end up tapering mine in a bit. Oh! Also, hope your little one feels better soon!