Cricket

Good work, Frank! Go go go! It might be the angle of the pics, but are there still returns on the sides of your kidney? From everything I've read, you only want to keep the returns on the top and bottom of the kidney, and ditch the returns on the side. See here and here.

Hey, you'll make Centurion if you want it. I've read about many other TKs who've sliced and diced their way to EIB and Centurion. You're on the right track! <br><br> The belt is helpful for seeing how everything pulls together. You'll start getting a feel of what needs to be altered once it's on. If you've got strapping/brackets done on the torso then the belt would be my next choice to work on. <br><br> Unless you're getting frustrated with the torso. If so, step away from it and work on the arms instead.

For the forearm/bicep connection see Ukswrath's excellent tutorial here. You want just a little bit of space between the bicep and the forearm, but not so close that you get armor bite. I attached mine initially with industrial velcro at both ends so I could adjust things as I went. I'll be installing snaps to replace the velcro very soon (now that I'm satisfied with how my arms fit with my gloves). I don't know if you're building for EIB/Centurion, but you may want to adjust your thermal detonator clips so that they're closer to the end caps. According to the CRL, "Thermal detonator belt clips are positioned with little to no gap between the clips and the end caps." Like this (not my pic, but it's from an RS Props Centurion approved application): The gray of the tube is correct, so you don't need to paint it. I sanded off the lettering on mine and polished it up. It won't matter if you leave the lettering on, though. You wrote: "The butt piece sticks out a bit behind the kidney plate. I'm presuming this won't be an issue once I get the belt on. Also the left and right ends of the butt plate flare out a bit past the kidney plate above. Again figuring the belt will fix this. Or do I need to bend those ends a bit more?" My butt plate sticks out a little behind my kidney plate as well, even though they're fairly well aligned. I have seen this in other TK builds as well, so I'm guessing that it's a common thing. The butt plate still might flare out even with the belt on. I gave my butt plate a hot water bath to make it more curvy to my shape, so it doesn't flare at the sides anymore. Are you waiting on your belt still? I wouldn't make any further adjustments until your belt has arrived. My belt likes to slide up the kidney away from the butt plate, so don't expect the belt to keep the butt in check. I might add some velcro back there to keep the belt from sliding around on the kidney.

Agreed, Christina! I didn't trim the shins any shorter, but I did even up the thighs. I may just get a new pair to fix this. I don't like how short they are. It's going to bug me, even if I can get it to look 'okay'. :/ I worked on gluing my latex handguards to my rubber gloves today. I glued these onto an old pair of rubber gloves, and I really didn't like how flat they sit on the glove. I found a way to give the handguards a little bit of natural curve that I thought I'd share. I'm sure all you old-timers know this trick already. I can't remember where I saw this originally (sorry for not being able to properly credit the OP). Stick a small towel and bottle of Novus (or similar sized/shaped bottle) into your glove and glue the handguard in place. It puffs the glove up like a hand inside might be there. Apply your glue, and you're set. It will give the handguard a slight curve that sits on the glove much better than the flat handguard does. Below, they're fully glued on. Ooh! Slightly curvy! Aaah! Another benefit to gluing the handguards on this way is that it makes for easier placement of the handguard on the glove when gluing. Okay, I'm getting back to fine-tuning my kit. Stay tuned!

I've made some adjustments to the thigh positions as well as the thigh ammo pack. Does this look better? Should I adjust more? I flipped the images so it doesn't look like I've got the legs on the wrong sides. Before and after:

Hahahaaa Jim!!!!! At least my shins aren't sized like your Space Marine, right? Seriously, my shoulders bumped into the door jamb when walking into the guest room to take pics yesterday. That should have been a big clue to me that they needed to be taken down a bit. Hey, where is your Space Marine's blaster??? He's holding air.

Hey Vincent, Another shortie here, being 5'4", and almost done with my build. When I make my next kit, I will be trimming and fitting my thighs as the very last thing. For me, the thighs were the most challenging to fit because they're sandwiched between the shins and cod/butt plate. You'll see how/where to trim your thighs once you get your shins, ab/cod, and back/butt plate strapped on. It was easy to start on the shins as one of the first pieces (just make sure you're wearing your boots when fitting and making your trim lines) because they're one 'end' of the kit. All the arm parts are an other 'end' of the kit. You can pretty much size them independently of other pieces of the armor. Initially I wanted to put my thighs together first as well. As I built, I had to make mods to reduce the sizes of the chest, butt, back, ab, and cod for my height. I trimmed one of my thighs before the chest/ab/cod were properly sized down, and ended up trimming a little too much off for my preference. Just my 2 credits.

Thanks, Jorge! Yes, agreed about the thighs needing to come down a bit. In retrospect, I may have trimmed a little too much off the tops of these. I'll be trimming a little more off the top of the right thigh just so the two are the same size. I still think I'll be able to make adjustments so it'll work out. The shins can still come up a bit, and I can move the thighs down a little as well. I've been looking at other Centurion approval posts, and I'm seeing varying degrees of space between the thighs and shins. Still, I think it's best to try to get them closer together. It's very difficult to be able to visualize how everything will fit together until... it's fitting together. Gah! Yep, readjusting the knee ammo pack already. It's re-glued and clamped, and I think it will look better in the new position. And those shoulder bells... what, you don't like Linebacker Trooper? Yeah, they do look like I'm channeling the Big 80's. I'll shave some off and see where that gets me. This kit will be a Stunt build. Once approved, I'll be converting it to a Sandy. I haven't built the helmet for this yet, but that won't take me long at all. I'm wearing my Hero lid in the pics just to complete the look. I was told to expect my ATA kit to ship at the end of this month (fingers crossed!). The ATA will be a Hero build. Thanks for your feedback, troopers!!!

Guys, guys, guys, guys, guyzzzzzzzzz!!! It's all happening!!!! OMG!!!! Now, I'm still working on finalizing things (thighs and forearms still need cover strips, thighs at the top need additional trimming/shaping, drop boxes/holster need to be reattached), but I am sososoclosetofinishing!!!! #socloseitskillingme Tried on everything today for the first time. Check out the 5'4", 108lb trooper! (remember that all the pics are taken in the MIRROR so it will all look BACKWARDS) And from the back... The back plate looks like it's overlapping, but it's not. I've got to trim a little off of the front of the right thigh to bring it up a tad in the back. Again, still need to fine tune the right thigh as seen below. I'm really happy with the following pic because I don't have any strapping inside of the kit where the ab and kidney meet, and this is how things are lining up naturally. Once I add the strapping, it should all come together nicely. Big pic so you can see my snazzy magnetic shin closures. Can you see them? I can't either. I was even able to remove the shins and put them back on while I had the entire kit on. This is because the magnets do an auto-lock thing that works like magic. Maaaagicccc I say! Okay, so now it's time for me to get over my initial excitement and hunker down to finishing this kit. That said, I would like some serious feedback with regards to adjustments that you see that could be made. Already I'm thinking that I might want to bring up my shins a little and bring down the thighs a bit as well in order to reduce the gap at the knees. I'm also having a little trouble with the ammo pack at the knee because it doesn't want to sit straight. I've seen other troopers with the angled ammo pack, but would like to know if I should bring it down a bit. Be as brutally honest as you wanna be because I can take it. I want to make this kit as good as I possibly can. Thank you!!!!!!

And you look MAAAA-VEL-OUS!!!!! Haha.... Yep, I think I get it. The same thing is true for high heels. No comfort at all there. Very good tip! Thanks for that one!!!! This had me laughing so hard!!!! And I thought of this video I saw recently (even though it's a year old)... was this your garrison's troopers?

Quick question, troopers: where should the top of the thigh armor be? I don't want to cut it too short, but I'm not sure how much movement I need to have with them. Should I be able to raise my thigh up so that it's parallel to the floor without the armor cutting into my hip, or is that too much to ask for? Or should I be able to just raise it lower, at say, a 45 degree angle? I don't expect to do Rockette-style kicks in this, but would like to know the extent of movement I should expect while wearing the thighs. Oh, and a little more progress today. Mostly reattaching brackets, touching up ab button paint, and reattaching the shoulder bridges. I had to remove the bridges because I didn't like how they sat on the back plate (too close in on the shoulders- I'm aiming for keeping the bridges centered on each shoulder). I made some stirrups yesterday, and they so totally rock. This kind of stirrup allows you to put on your boot first and adjust how snug you want the stirrup to be. It prevents twisting and lifting of the shin over the boot. This didn't take me more than 30 minutes to sew together, and it's very easy to do. I followed the tutorial here. No more fussing with shin creep, yay!

Haha! I totally understand. I hated this part, and I've sewn my fair share of costumes over the years. Those snaps were tedious! All right, I've got momentum on this build, so let's keep it going now, shall we? I was able to successfully reshape my kidney via the hot water method! And it now fits even better, so, yay! Now I have to wait for the elastics to dry out before I reassemble everything again. I only removed half of the split rivets- the ones on the kidney side. I did a little bit of reshaping the ab as well since I had the boiling water out. I had left the elastics/split rivets installed on that side, and I reshaped a bit of that. While I wait for things to dry, there are always other things to work on, right? But, as with sizing down the plastic, you'll end up with some wrinkling along the returns. No worries for me, though. Using my wood jiggy-thing and heat gun, I was able to iron out those bumps with ease. Before bumpy and smoothed after ironing: Other side of the kidney, before and after: Aaaand since I was heating things up, I remembered that I had trimmed down the butt plate a tad. This left my butt plate looking a little... er... flat around the edges. I wanted to get those returns back to plump my posterior armor parts (not like I need the help, haha...). So I pulled out my heat sealing iron and got to work. I tested it out on a piece of scrap ABS first, just to make sure I wouldn't screw things up. Once I felt comfortable with the process, I took my butt plate, held my breath, and... Taaa daaaa! New returns on the edges of my butt plate. This was much easier than I expected it to be. Once I get my thighs trimmed down to fit me, I will absolutely be rebuilding the returns on those as well. ***Edit*** I forgot to include the awesome tutorial (from Pandatrooper) that shows exactly how to create the new return edge using a heat sealing iron.

Dammit. It's just not good enough. Those are my thoughts when I put on my kit yesterday when looking at where the kidney and ab meet on the right side. The top of the kidney keeps wanting to droop down below the ab, even though everything is the same size along the edges. WTF?! So this morning, I took another look at things and pulled out my measuring tape. There's got to be some adjustment I'm missing to get this fitting better. Across the ab, the measurement is 12.5". And across the kidney, the measurement is 13.5" at roughly the same line. And the kidney flares out at the bottom, making it even wider there. I made the two halves meet without any flexing, and discovered that the problem is with the kidney. It's just too 'flat'. If I can alter the kidney to more of a rounded curve (bringing it in about an inch), it meets the ab perfectly. So. Only one thing to do. Which means good news and bad news. The bad news is that the split rivets and brackets had to be removed (again!!! Gah!!!! I think this is the fifth time I've removed the split rivets, and I've stopped counting how many times I've removed the brackets now...) so I can give my kidney some extra spa time to shape it up. Good news is that I've now got killer skills with removing split rivets and brackets. So at least there's that.

Oh, look, a bit more progress! So this happened today. DIY garter belt for my armor thighs. I still giggle when I think of big ol' stormtrooper guys wearing these.... And I sewed my shoulder snaps on! (finally) I don't know why, but sewing on the snaps on the white elastic side seemed to take me forever to complete. All I kept thinking was, "Boy, you gotta really want to be a stormtrooper to put up with this part of the build." It felt great to be done with it and to snap my shoulders on to my kit. I'll have to get hubby to get pics of me tomorrow, because there was no way I could get a good angle for a selfie yet!

Thanks for the encouragement, troopers. Much appreciated when I feel like tossing my kit out the window at times like these... Anyhow, the fix wasn't as bad as I had anticipated. It just involved more time (which I don't seem to have much of lately)- removing more brackets, taking out that snap, and prepping for the new return. Feels like 3 steps forward, and 5 steps back sometimes. The heat gun and I have resolved our differences, and we now have a much more cordial relationship now. I can almost say that we're friends. Almost. We get along so well now that I didn't even have to cut the return while I was making the new one. Check it out... the pic below is where I began. You can see there are two pencil marks on the edge above the hole where the snap was removed. I chose to go with the top pencil line- better to bend less than too much, right? That is the line where I intend for my new return to be. Next you can see the piece of wood I use to smooth out the return once I get it warm. The nice thing about making returns like this is that you don't need to get the ABS super hot and melty in order to shape it. There's less chance of over warping the plastic this way. You warm up the plastic just enough that it's plyable, but not super soft (you need to practice to know when the right amount is). Then you rub the wood piece back and forth over the heated area (think of polishing it), smoothing it out as you go. And next you can see how I finally worked things so that the new return is where the top pencil mark is. I didn't trim any of this, even though I thought I would. Just heating the area that hung over the wood edge softened things up so that I just needed to iron out the old return in order to make the new one. In the pic below, you can see the bracket holes. The bracket hole on the right was previously right at the edge of the return. After making the new return, it's a few millimeters further in the return now. Please ignore the messy ABS repair! I have already moved this bracket once. I didn't need to make it pretty because it's hidden under the chest. Below you can see how sharp the new return is. Waiting for more ABS paste to cook so I can patch that hole. Today I'll focus on sewing garters and shoulder bell snaps.

AAAAAAgh! Okay, so I finally get a few hours to work on my kit. "Home stretch," I think to myself. "Just some minor adjustments, trimming, strapping, and it's submission time!" Nope. I tried it all on, and I kept noticing that when I belted everything up, the kidney on the right side (opposite where the riveted side is) seemed to want to stay lower than where I wanted it to be. I kept having to pull it up in order for the top of the kidney to meet the top of the ab. I spent about 30 minutes looking, tugging, adjusting, tugging at the two pieces over and over again. I thought that I might need to hot water bath or heat gun the kidney to twist it into position. I took it all off and closed up the halves to see how things naturally wanted to meet. Sure enough when closed without me inside of it all, where the ab and kidney meet, there was about 5 mm difference. To be certain, I pulled out my measuring tape and measured both sides of the ab, as well as both sides of the kidney. The kidney sides were the same height. The ab sides were not. The right side of the ab was about 5 mm longer than the left. Dang it. You can see the pencil mark where the edge of the ab should be. Only one solution to this now. I need to trim and create a new return on the right side of the ab. Which means I'll also have to remove that snap and do some ABS repair to the hole. Gah! So much for being in the home stretch. So, lesson to all you short troopers out there: when trimming your ab, be sure to measure that the edges are exactly the same length before creating your new returns. Hopefully I'll get some time this weekend free from the kids so I can work on this repair.

Hey Jill, you still out there? Haven't seen an update from you in a while. Hope things are okay!

Looking good, Frank! Slicing and dicing all around! I'm glad you posted the pic of your ab/cod before cutting. Just for fun, I checked how long mine is now that I've cut mine up; it's 16". Yours looks like it's about 18.5". I can't believe that I cut off about 2.5" of just my ab/cod. Hey, something you may want to consider about when you bend your pieces to fit... when you bend things, you'll end up crimping the returns in some way or another. You might want to consider shaping things around you first before trying to finalize your returns. I noticed on your back piece that the brackets on the returns are visible now after shaping it. Don't be afraid to try some spa time for your armor instead of the heat gun. A quick dip of those back piece corners into some boiling water will soften them up just enough to get the shape you want. You may even be able to flatten out those returns just with some boiling water (dip the corners, then gently push the returns on the counter so they flatten out). You may need a few consecutive tries of dip/shape/dip/shape, but you'll get there! Great progress so far. Keep up the good work!

I ordered my bracket system from Mr. No Stripes. The elastics I received are all the same size. They'd be easy to make! They're all 1 inch wide elastic. The overall length of the elastic is 2.5", folded in half to make a loop of 1.25" each. You should need nine in all. Good luck, and have fun!

Yep, you're going to have to trim off the top of the ab if you want to use the brackets. You'll be a lot more comfortable that way, too! My ab was much too tall for me. It was more like a chest plate. You may also need to consider cutting your cod down so you don't cut off too much ab detail. Here are some before and after pics of my resizing once I trimmed the ab and the cod down: The return on the top of the ab wasn't created in this pic yet. I took care of that later with a wood jig and a heat gun!

Glad to help! Yes, I chopped off the top of the ab as well as the bottom of the chest piece and the top of the cod. Whew! I can't remember exactly how much I cut off the top of the ab... maybe about 1 1/4"? Don't go exactly on my measurements, though, because these work for my body type. Could be different for you if your torso is longer or shorter than mine. Here's a reference shot with a tape measure so you can see how short my ab is now: Here's how it looks all strapped together in the front: And strapping. Forgive the blurry pics... I'm recovering from the flu and my eyes aren't focusing like they should! I never measured how these would fit together before I cut, and in hindsight, I probably should have! I got lucky with how it all turned out. Measuring now, the tallest brackets on the chest just line up with the return edge of the ab. So when I do this again (and I will be for my ATA kit), I will do it in the following order: size down the chest piece make new returns on the bottom of the chest for brackets install chest brackets line up chest where it should be positioned over the ab transfer marks of the tops of the chest bracket edges to the ab add 8-10mm to those marks to allow for new returns on the ab (you'll be trimming the returns down once your brackets are installed) cut the ab and make your new returns Remember to always trim conservatively. Hope this helps clear things for you. Let me know if you have other questions. I'll be resuming my build once my kids are back in school next week (yay!). Hope you are having a great holiday season!

Hey Scott, To add a signature, you need to do the following: Click on your profile name at the top right of the page. That should pull up your profile. On the Viewing Profile Page, you should see a large, gray rectangular button on the upper right of the page that says, "EDIT MY PROFILE". Click on that. You should now be on the My Settings page. There is a menu on the left of the page that looks kind of like this: Profile Settings Email & Password Display Name Signature 'Ignore' Preferences Manage Attachments Notification Options My Notifications See where it says "Signature"? Click on that when in your profile page, and you should be good to go.

You guys look great!!! How fun it must be to have a TK hubby to troop with. If I am to venture a guess about which one you are, I would guess that you're the one on the right. I think that hubby would want to troop with the larger weapon. And that you would be gracious enough to let him do so.

Okay, that's all the confirmation I needed. Thanks Jorge and Marc for chiming in. I disassembled my ab from my kidney (the third time now...). My measurements to shorten the kidney were going to originate from the top edge. I cut off the return at the bottom and left the overall height of the kidney to just a little over 155mm. I measured 145mm as the height I wanted the kidney to be with the return. I allowed about 10mm to mount the returns for my brackets with a little extra return to spare. I marked up the inside with a pencil. Then I flipped it over and made marks for 145mm on the outside of the kidney, measuring approximately from where the return edge at the top began. This was a little tricky because the top return isn't exactly perfectly straight. Oh well, let's do this! Then I pulled out my wood jig, heat gun, gloves, and a little piece of wood paint stir stick, and got to work. The little wood stir stick is what I use to make the initial bends in the ABS once it's warm. It does a much more even and consistent job than my gloved fingers do! This is just after the first bend. It looks scary, but this is just the first step in making my return. I make another pass over just the folded edge with the heat gun after my initial bend has been made. Once it's reheated, I use my little wood stick to press and smooth out the bumps in the edges, working a small section at a time, making sure I stay away from the bent edge itself. Here is a pic of after the second pass has been completed. I'll be trimming off a few mm of the inside return after I've installed the brackets, so I'm not being picky about a little leftover ripples in the edges. Here's the 'new' kidney, at 145mm in height. This new return is much better than the return I had made on it before, so I'm really glad that I did this. The kidney looks in better proportion to the rest of the back now. Can't wait to get it all strapped back together and take pics!

Thanks, Michael and Jorge for the input. I think I'm going to digest this one for a bit to figure out which method will work best for my frame size. To be continued for sure. I'm now at the point where I feel like I'm assembling nothing but straps and snaps. For me, this is the most boring part of the whole build. Lots of little work, very little to show for it. It's not like when you assemble an entire arm- now THAT feels like progress! But inside strapping? Meh. As I've been trying on my kit, I'm suddenly realizing that I think I need to remove even more from back of my armor. Why? It still seems too long overall on me in the back. I have removed about an inch off the bottom of the back plate already. I don't want to take off any more there because it'll start to look 'off'. I have not taken anything off of the butt plate, aside from trimming around the edges. However, I don't want to mess with rebuilding returns with this piece- so I don't think I will take any off of there. Which leaves my kidney. I've removed about 1.25 inches from the bottom of the kidney so far. I think I could easily remove another inch from the bottom. Remember that I'm just 5'4", and the kidney should accommodate someone at least 5'10". Cutting down the kidney even more should bring everything into better alignment with the front. It'll also look proportionally better as well. If I remove an extra inch or so from the bottom, my kidney will line up with my ab as shown in example A above. Currently, the kidney is much longer, and the kidney notch is lower. See? If you can imagine the kidney having one inch less at the bottom (in the pic above), you can see how the butt plate will fit better. I have Jorge to thank for planting the seed for this idea into my brain. Now that my kit is coming together, I see it's something that needs to be done. Gah... more trimming and new returns! Fun!