Cricket

Yep, and did you know that Luke wears two left forearms and two left shoulder bells? I'm going for that look on my Hero kit (next build). Both shoulder bells are also kind of pinched (as you mentioned), but my issue isn't so much the bells squeezing inwards. It's more a matter of needing the edges to gently curve inward on the vertical edge. As they are right now, the edges are very flat. Still, it seems like the shoulder bells should closely follow the line of the chest plate. As mine are now, they're straight. There needs to be some curve in the edge somehow. Action shoulders below. Dig the flexy chest plate on the trooper on the far right! haha... And at attention. My shoulder bells are completely overlapped by my chest plate when standing in this position. The tops of the bells touch my shoulder straps, but the bells seem too large still. Gah. I need a break. ***Edit*** Found this pic of a screen used shoulder bell (the one on the left). It's got a curved cut along the edge. And the right:

Yeah, it's definitely not the bicep hooks. Actually, my right bicep hook seems to like hooking onto my back plate if I move my arm backwards in just the right way. In the front, it's just the chest plate. Agreed. I took off an additional 10mm, and it seems a tiny bit better. Still, not as short as I would like them to be. Ah well, perils of being vertically challenged and trying to fit into armor much bigger than I am. I could also try it with a hot water bath. Less risk there. Haha... that padding! I would really look more like MoSc0ut's Space Marine if I plump my bells out to clear the chest plate. Trying to steer away from that look. I might be able to reshape the edges of the bells in a hot water bath so that they curve more inward. I'll try this before doing any curvy trimming to the edges of the shoulder bells. Seems like it might work. I don't want to shape the bells via scissors unless I absolutely see no other option.

Dang it, French idioms have never been my strong suit. I lived a year in La Rochelle, and two years in Paris, and I still can't get them right! Gah! I finally wrapped up the "Jorge-inspired" tab stabilization system on my kidney/ab. Glue was still curing on the bracket, which is why you still see the blue tape in there. The black ABS is flexible enough to curve easily on the ab plate. Here's what it looks like from the outside when closed up with the inner tab fastened on the inside snaps: Best part is that it doesn't shift up and down. So I tried it on to make sure it actually works. Yup. It works great. Now, back to shoulder bells. After trimming them, they're better, but I'm still not completely happy with how they are fitting me. They catch on my chest plate in a quite annoying manner when I move my arms forward. I reviewed the Planning the Escape clip again so I could see how Luke's and Han's shoulders looked. My shoulders look nothing like theirs. Their shoulder bells are slightly rounded and tapered as they get near the chest so they don't really rub that much on the chest plate. Mine aren't like that right now. Mine are straight. Completely straight. See? I have to hang my arm out at an angle for the shoulder bell to clear the chest plate without serious interference. I expect some knocking around of armor, but my shoulders are doing waaaaay too much banging on the chest plate right now. They're just not fitting correctly. I have made a pencil line following the curve of the chest plate along the shoulder bells to see what needs to be removed. It's not much, but I think that it will make my armor fit better overall. Thankfully, nothing needs to be altered in the back. I wish there was something that I could do about the overall length of the shoulder bells (they're a little long). I mean, I could cut the bottoms to shorten them and recreate the returns, but I would end up losing detail on the outer spine (don't want that). At least I can get them fitting better along the chest plate, so that's something. If anyone has suggestions about methods to shorten the shoulder bells, please chime in!

I know that the snaps are over engineering things a bit. I think I'm addicted to making snaps right now, so it's a healthy outlet. Snaps on both ends gave me the most control of adjusting the elbow gap in the shortest amount of time<br> I don't have much space to store my kit, so snaps (on at least one end) give me the best ability to nest everything together when stored. Forearms inside biceps, biceps inside bells, bells inside shins, shins inside thighs. In short (like me), all the arms and legs get stored inside the thighs. <br> I tossed out inside strapping accuracy a long time ago. Magnetic shins? Nuff said. As long as everything outside is up to Centurion regs, I'm a happy trooper.<br><br> An honest opinion and critical eye are ALWAYS appreciated from you guys. So THANK YOU for the feedback my brothers and sisters in white!

T'as un très bon cerveau, toi! Yep, the smaller ATA looks proportionally better with my reduced-sized armor. Okay, so I've made inserting the snaps as one of the last things on my kit. And that's because, honestly, the placement of the snaps was really intimidating. How would I get them in the right space? Where would they go, exactly? Happily, Bill Hag made this handy chart: Now, the next part was making me crazy, especially for the forearm to bicep connection. I found Ukswrath's measurements for the size of the space between the bicep and forearm. Essentially, they should almost touch when the arms are straight. So using his tips as a guide, here's what I did to secure elastics on the forearm and bicep: First, when making my snap elastics, I strongly suggest to add a little piece of thin ABS in between the fabric and snap. It strengthens the snap and makes it very easy to pop off the snap when you need to take it off (one finger!). I used 2" elastic for the forearms. Some use smaller elastic. I like how the 2" elastic hangs better than the 1.5" stuff. Alright, so here's the forearm. I measured from the middle of the glued snap to the edge of my forearm. It was about 25mm. Here's the bicep. I measured from the center of the snap to the edge of the bicep. This was about 50mm. Cripes, that is some serious shade of messy in there. Gotta clean that up before submission. Okay, so numbers... You'll want to add the two sets of measurements now: 25mm plus 50mm equals 75mm. Tony suggested to add 5mm, but I actually added only 4mm because I wanted a slightly narrower gap. So for me, the total is 79mm. Using this method, you'll end up with the distance needed between snaps on the elastic in order for you to get a small gap between the forearm and bicep. I measured from the center of one set female snap to 79mm. Make your holes for your snap, set the snap, and you're set! On my right arm, the forearm/bicep connection just touches in the back, but has a small gap in the front. I don't think that the armor that touches in the back can be adjusted that much, aside from trimming a bit off of the top of the forearm back there. Seems like a natural quirk of the armor itself. I'll leave it for now. And on the left arm. In a nutshell, if B is bicep measurements from male snap to bottom edge, F is forearm measurements from male snap to top edge, and G is gap size you want, the formula looks like this: B+F+G= good lookin' arm. My list of things to finish on this kit is getting smaller. Yay!

Wow! Thanks for showing me how flexy ABS can be. I went back and viewed that scene, and it looks as if Han's chest is already bit more 'puffed out' even before he sits down, like it was kind of pre-bent outwards along the pectoral region (I see a small crease in right side return of Han's chest @ 2:13). Maybe they did that to make him look more "Hero"? Either way, it's all great stuff to learn! Very cool. Got my order in for replacement thighs today, so I'm really in the home stretch. Yes, this build actually has a finish line, and it's within sight! Lots of little detail stuff going on now. Like replacing all the industrial velcro in my arms with proper snap plates. I installed velcro in there initially so that I could see how things were fitting until I was happy with how it all was trimmed up. Everything is trimmed and sized to my liking, so to snaps I go now. Woo! Doing the same kind of thing to my thigh garters, too. Initially, I put velcro on the ends. But now I am ready to make things more stable on them. This was an easy mod. Just trimmed out some ABS, riveted it to the garters, added snaps. Made some snap plates to fit. Those will go on the new thighs once they arrive. Just about done with my lid. I need to still clean up some of the vocoder edges and install the S trim. Minor stuff, though. I'll soon be installing my fans and fan bracket. At the beginning of this thread, I had compared my ATA Hero helmet (bubble lenses removed for cleaning) to this RS Stunt one. Out of the box, the RS looked larger to me. I figured that it was because the RS was unfinished. But now comparing both of them finished, I can say that the RS lid is a little larger than the ATA. At least mine is. I'm happy to have both, though!

The shins are identical. So it won't matter which half goes with which half. You'll want to remove all the return off the bottom of the shins. A wiser trooper than me, MoSc0ut, said this about the top of the shin returns: "1/4" is way too much return edge. Mine is somewhere between 3mm - 5mm, which is close to 1/4" but not quite, mine are closer to 3mm. Just enough to give the armor the "appearance" of thickness. If you leave 1/4" you will regret it after your first troop!" There was a good discussion about shin trimming over at EmlanThane's (Emma) build.

Do you have your boots? You may not want to trim your shins until you have fitted them with your under suit and boots on.

A little off topic question... Looking through reference pics today. Saw the pic below for the gazillionth time. Noticed something new in it that's puzzling. Ever notice Han's chest? Okay, whose chest can flex THAT much?! It's bending. Like super bendy. Like it's rubber. I couldn't imagine my ABS chest plate doing that without choking me unconscious. So for you ANH history buffs, is Han's chest made of rubber? Or what? I've looked through the threads to find info on this, no luck.

Feedback requested, troopers! So I trimmed the shoulder bells about 1cm on each side. Does this look better? I don't feel like as much of a linebacker now, but would like to get another set of eyes on them to be sure they're okay. Before on the left, after on the right. And while I'm on shoulders, I have a question about the back plate. I've had to trim the shoulder strap areas on the back plate in order to accommodate my smaller size. On the right shoulder where the shoulder bell meets the back plate, it's fine. See pic below. But on the left side, there is some overlap of the back plate and the shoulder bell. Should I just trim the extra part of the back plate to remove that overlap? That's what I would like to do, but would like to hear some feedback first. I don't want to move that shoulder bell out because it'll leave a gap between it and the shoulder bridge, especially as seen from the front. I like the shoulder bell position as it is right now. ***Edit*** I screen grabbed this scene of Luke getting into an elevator. It shows how his armor was altered in the same area that I'm having questions about. I'll probably take a little off the top of the area where the back/shoulder bends. But it seems like the shoulder bell/back plate overlap is to be expected.

Yep, you're probably going to want to carve out more of the neck area if you want to breathe comfortably. Keep watch on the shoulders when making the neck area deeper, because you may end up needing to trim the shoulders. I had to cut off a lot of my shoulders on the chest and back (but not the shoulder bridges) because I ended up making my neckline a lot deeper. Sorry about the snug crotch, though! Hey, didn't you say that you shortened the chest elastics? Maybe add that length back? That might help to ease things up. My two credits: I wouldn't do that just yet. Don't worry about the kidney/ab bottom alignment. It's not important for EIB/Centurion. What's important is how your kit fits you at the back. I left my kidney a bit longer initially because that seemed like it fit me well at that time. (I did most of my fitting via a duct tape dummy since I don't really have anyone to help me alter the kit in person). The pic on the left is before shortening the kidney. Pic on the right is after shortening the kidney. The tops of the kidney and ab always are aligned. Bottoms, not at all. I shortened the kidney only later while I was in the initial stages of fine tuning the kit and I had fit most of the kit to my own body. I didn't like how the butt plate kept popping out when fastened at the crotch. I discovered that by shortening the kidney up a little bit more, it resolved the worst of the butt plate bulge for me. Remember that when you shorten the kidney, you'll also bring up the butt plate. So unless you need to bring up your booty, I would leave it alone. Again, just my two credits.

I'm sorry you're having troubles with this! We'll be able to help you figure this out for sure. The ab/kidney fitting was a major PITA for me, too. The top corners of the ab/kidney should be fairly well aligned at the top. That's about the only rule for the higher level awards. The bottoms are hidden by the belt and do not have any specific requirement regarding alignment. Here's the link to Diana's Centurion post where the kidney/ab issue is addressed. She corrected the misalignment of the ab/kidney at the top and earned Centurion. What specific areas are giving you problems with fitting? If you can share pics that could help. Another thing to note is that a return edge on the ab is not required for the higher level awards. I saw in Diana's build thread that she had no return at all at the top of the ab plate, but still had the brackets in there. Found the pic!

BTW, that graphic that shows the different Centurion ab/kidney notches is to illustrate just the correct size of the kidney notches when dealing with shimming the kidney outwards. It's not to show examples of exactly how the ab/kidney alignment should be. I'm wondering if this is what you may be referring to?

If you're worrying about EIB/Centurion, I am fairly certain that they don't care about how the kidney lines up with the ab at the bottom. How the top lines up is what they look at. Maybe someone else can chime in here. I will pull up Diana's Centurion application post later to show you where it was discussed.<br><br> Unless it's a fitting/comfort issue for you. Then just ignore me.

What happened to your rivet placement? Something looked a little 'off' to me in your pics, but I couldn't tell what it was exactly. I'm very curious now!<br><br> Removing the split rivets isn't all that difficult. It just seems scary at first. I use a pair of small needle nose pliers (the kind to fix necklaces) and a small flat head screwdriver. <br><br> The screwdriver is used to pry up one flat tab of the rivet. The pliers grab the opposite tab to keep the rivet from moving around. Once you get the tabs lifted enough, you then use the pliers to squeeze the tabs back together. You should then easily be able to push the rivet back through the hole.<br><br> You're doing great so far. Hang in there!

Christina, don't apologize for that. You said exactly what I was thinking but was afraid to openly admit.

Yep, looks much better!

Good work so far! If it were me, I'd would go thinner on the black borders, though. See this screen-used lid for reference:

Ah, it's not the end of the world if you've already riveted things together. You can still spray it all in there, it just takes a little more work. A few posts ago, I promised some spongy tubes. This method works great if you want to paint your lid, but are too afraid to pick up a paint brush. Get your handy tube stripe template and stick it to the tubes of the helmet. The stripes need to be about a pencil's width away from the face. Apply the templates on little by little, starting at the ear, and smoothing each section on as you work toward the front. If you try to just slap it on, you'll end up with wrinkling and creases in the template- this is because the template is flat, the tube is not. Next, mask off the templates so you don't have to do a ton of cleanup. I cut a piece of cosmetic wedge down to a workable size as my sponge. This kind of sponge leaves a smooth finish. Apply paint to the sponge. You can either dab it on from a flat surface or apply it using a brush. Don't oversaturate the sponge or else you'll end up with bubbles in your paint. Less is more for this. Go gently and lightly along the template. Dab evenly all over the template. If your sponge starts to get 'sticky' or dry, just apply a little more paint to the sponge. Avoid going over the same area too much, because the paint will lift off onto the sponge, and the paint will be uneven on the tube. The pic below is after the first coat of paint. Don't expect uniform coverage on the first coat. I allowed about 10 minutes for the paint to dry between coats, applying three coats of sponged-on paint. After the third coat of sponged-on paint, remove the template. You want to remove the template while the paint is still fairly wet so that the paint doesn't pull up when you remove the template. Here's the result: There is just a little bit of cleanup necessary in the pic above, but it won't be much trouble at all. All you need is a fine brush, a little paint thinner, and an old rag to clean your brush on in order to erase any paint bleed. The same method works wonderfully for other stripe templates as well. Sponge on, troopers!

That's my goal. New thighs will be the only way I can fix this. I want my thigh armor to fit like how I've altered the right thigh in the pic below. If only it was as easy to alter ABS as it is to alter a pic in Photoshop.

So just when I'm thinking about the whole thigh gap thing, I found this... See the arrow? Hey, my thigh gap is screen authentic! Seriously though, I really prefer the look of the longer thigh armor. I'll take some pics soon and look at where the adjustments get me. Thanks for the feedback, troopers!

I prefer it blacked-out inside, too. It adds a little bit of heft to the lid, so it feels more substantial once it's all together. I think it makes the helmet look more "done" on the inside. The PlastiDip also makes it more difficult to see inside the helmet from the outside (if you were looking from a kid-sized angle up). I don't think it does anything to dissipate heat or enhance visibility. I used the spray can version of PlastiDip, but there are some that use the paint-on version of it, too. I've seen tutorials of helmets that use several alternating coats of hand-painted PlastiDip and cheesecloth on the inside to make it even more substantial in weight.

Alright, so now I wait to hear back from RS about those thighs. I'm pretty much at a standstill with being able to finish the armor at this point. I only have enough cover strip material for two front thighs, and two back thighs. If I finish off the cover strips now on my current thighs, I won't have anything to put on the replacement thighs because the new ones will be longer. RS seems incredibly busy assembling commissions right now, so I have a feeling that it's going to be a while until I can complete my TK. But, in the immortal words of the philosophers Plant and Page, "Nobody's fault but mine." So in the meantime, I'm working on getting the helmet together. I've already trimmed and shaped everything for the most part, including the ears. I have already built a helmet, so I wasn't up for taking pics of it all. Everything fits well, so I jumped ahead to coating the interior with PlastiDip. Lesson learned from my first helmet build is to not rivet the halves together until all the inside painting, lenses, and frown mesh have been installed. It's a pain to try to make inside mods when the halves are permanently stuck together! I masked off this little detail that was placed on the inside of the back piece at the bottom of the lid... It will probably get covered up by electronics (it's just 1cm x 1cm), but I like knowing it's there. Kind of like a Hidden Mickey. I am building one of these kidney-tab thingies to help keep my ab/kidney in line. I saw this over at Jorge's build, and I think it's a perfect solution for dealing with vertical shifting on the 'free' side of the ab/kidney connection. The only difference between his and mine is that I'm using a piece of flexible black styrene as the tab instead of white. That way I don't have to worry about painting the tab (or eventually paint wearing off of it). Up next: sponging on those tubes! Stay tuned!

Yep, agreed. Your ears are good to go! (The ears are my least favorite part of building the lid.)

Gorgeous job on that weathering. Really nice!