kman

I love the clean white look of the snaps built into ABS plates, but for all the reasons cited above, I decided to go with webbing for my snap plates. Flexible, cheap, easy, readily available, no need to take special steps to get the snaps flush mounted (countersunk) into the plastic, and I like how E6000 soaks in for a super good bond. Simple to remove, as well, since you can peel it off with less force. I used the humble hot nail trick to poke holes in the webbing, which seals the edges at the same time. (Only because I have yet to buy a soldering iron specifically for melting holes, and I refuse to coat my good soldering tools with melted plastic!)

Boiling water isn't hot enough to bend the hooks? I would think it would be, since it's used to reshape so many other parts. No new tools needed. (unless you don't have a pot to boil water in)

Interesting idea, splitting the kidney side and moving the notches like that! You've done a very nice job, too, very clean. (so far ) The only issue I'd note is they are now considering changing the CRLs to specifically allow the type of shims I did, essentially updating the specifics of where the kidney notch needs to be and allowing it to stay in the original location. I don't think the final ruling is in, but it should be any time now. http://www.whitearmor.net/forum/topic/36618-crl-change-discussion-kindey-notches-for-all-tk-costumes/ If they make the change, I think it's likely you'd be grandfathered in, but I would check to be sure, personally, before you go farther.

I can't quite tell if the forearms are too long, but I can definitely see that the biceps are WAY too low. I think simply pulling them up higher will pull the forearms up more and you may not need to trim anything off.

Only the OP can update the original post, or perhaps a mod. That said, the change to French Blue is literally discussed on the second page of the thread, so if you had read a little farther, you'd have seen the discussion. There is an updated chart on page 3 (post 48), and post 74 on page 4 has the most current chart. I guess you've had a learning experience: Before depending on 7 year old threads, at the very least, read the most recent couple of pages of comments to make sure nothing has changed in the intervening years. Advice applicable to all threads, not just this one. On the bright side, a minute with a cotton ball and acetone/paint thinner and the wrong color should come right off, so it could be a lot worse!

Just a thought: For the switches, you might want to find a small piece of scrap plastic (not Anovos plastic, just pretty much some trash plastic the right size and strength) and make a little 90 degree "L" bracket with a proper mounting hole for you to actually mount the switch into, then you'll have a much larger (and flat) surface area you can E6000 the switch (or rivet if you're feeling confident) to the larger bracket. It'll just be a lot more secure than a dab of glue like that. Just a thought I had while looking at it. I mounted my switch directly into the main bracket, but yours is too deep to do that, I think. An L-bracket would let you mount that switch as it's intended to be mounted, though.

Standard advice applies: See if you can bring in the shoulder caps a little more, so they stay rotated forward. It's perfect in the first pic, but the last pic they've shifted back, exposing a lot more black. Other than that, I see one area that you may be called on to fix, and one item you may want to fix but probably won't affect acceptance: The easy (and optional) one: I suggest adding a little foam (thin stuff, like 1/2") to the inside of your armor in a few places: (1) Outside edge of your left thigh. (the leg with the sniper knee) That will push it out and center the armor a little better on your knee, as it's currently cocked slightly inward, which makes troopers look a bit knock-kneed. Similarly, you MAY want to add a little foam to the back of that same leg, which will pull the front in, and away from potential entanglements with the sniper knee plate. And finally, a little foam in the front of that same leg, at the top of the shin plate, will push the sniper knee out a bit, and help prevent it from tangling with the thigh plate. The more important fix is your arms: They're hanging a bit too low, which is why your left arm is sliding over the hand plate. That should be fixed, and may actually be an issue with basic approval until it's fixed. If your arms are too short, and even after moving the biceps up the forearms are still too long, you may need to shorten the forearms but cutting them off one "bump" up along the arms, from the wrist side. That MAY require you to disassemble the arms to trim them down a little further so they're not too large at the wrist, so definitely try to move both pieces of the arms up, first. Finally, strictly from a comfort standpoint, it looks like the back of the thighs are digging into your rear a bit? I had the same issue. You might want to SLIGHTLY smooth out that peak a little, so it's not digging in as much. If it bothers you, at least. I don't think it'll be an issue for acceptance.

Thanks! Progress is on hold due to a crazy busy weekend, plus I've decided to go with Ukswrath's hovi mic tips instead of proceeding any further with the Anovos tips. (A crack in the plastic tips helped me reach the decision, but it's nothing that can't be easily repaired with CA glue and I was on the fence anyway) Soon as I get the mic tips (and iComm system!) I should be back on track. If I have time early this week, I'll get back to the shoulder straps, too. I think that's all I need to wrap up to take some EIB photos, at least.

Mouse droid FTW!

Running 2 fans off a 9 volt battery, you're going to suck the batteries dry very quickly.

What's the mAh rating of your battery? That plus the specs from the fans and you can probably get a decent estimate. I have 2 batteries that look similar (3000 mAh rating each), pushing only one fan, and I got a ~9.5 hour runtime. If your battery is similar, and fans have similar specs, pushing two fans with one battery pack should get you a good 4 hours of runtime, I'd think.

Interesting idea, painting the inside of the hovi tubes. I think you're right and they are supposed to be white, actually. I might paint mine, too, we'll have to see. I really don't want to order another bottle paint just for this, though. I wonder how well Liquid Paper would work? It's fairly matte, IIRC. Probably moreso than the Humbrol #22 paint I have, at least. If you don't have any scrap foam laying around that you can steal, you might also be able to make do with a small piece of cloth, at least as a temporary measure. Do you have a rag you can snip a couple of pieces from?

I ended up going out to the pub last night, so didn't get to much. I dabbled with the Hovi tips, but I'm not happy with how they turned out so I'll probably redo them. I picked up a cheap strainer from the 99 cent store. It works, but not as well as I'd like. The mesh wire seems a little too fine, and it torques out of position (giving you an angled grid instead of a straight one) very easily. I can confirm that the Chapstick method is indeed the PERFECT size to shape your mesh around, though. LOL The original mesh came out easily enough (small screw driver to push an edge away from the side, then pluck out with needlenose pliers and a twisting motion to pull it free), but I couldn't separate the two pieces of the mic tips, using my bare hands. (I was in a hurry so I didn't want to force it, and didn't have time to properly tape up a wrench to prevent damage.) So I just sort of stuffed the mesh in from the top, with less-than perfect results. It worked, but I want better. It's not glued in, so no harm done in this little experiment. I'll swing by Home Depot on my way home and see if I can find some better mesh to try out, and tape up my wrench so I can separate the halves. (That way I can push the mesh into place from the back) I'm using the general techniques discussed in WelshChris' tutorial to do this, btw: http://www.whitearmor.net/forum/topic/36456-anovos-hovi-mic-tip-mod/ So here they are at the moment, but tonight, once I get the halves separated so I can insert it from the back (and perhaps some better mesh), I should be able to make it nicer looking, and more tidy and crisp in appearance.

Yeah, the T-Tracks don't look quite right. Glad you're replacing them, because this build is SICK, otherwise! I LOVE the real Sterling builds. One other minor thing that might look cool, maybe steal a lens from a cheap Amazon toy and install it into the scope? They did some cool things with that in this thread, and I think it would be easy and take your E11 one step further to perfection. http://www.whitearmor.net/forum/topic/35879-hyperfirm-e11-scope-lens/

The sides can be trimmed so they don't stick out, like Ukswrath did.

True. I'm leaving them out for a bit at first, to let the paint dry more, and just in case I need to pull them out again (hearing assist, etc). Don't want to stretch the plastic any more than necessary.

That's really strange, I'm not sure what the issue is. As I said, I have size 10 TK Boots (from tkboots.com, purchased just a couple of months ago) and no such issues getting my shins to fit around them. They look normal when wearing them.

Great job sizing it all down! Especially the thighs... beautiful job there. The one thing I'd question is the sniper knee... looks like it's sticking out quite a bit. It couldn't be attached more flush?

FWIW, I also have TK Boots, size 10, and everything seems fine on the shins (ankle area, specifically). I didn't trim very much from the back of the shins, and definitely not until I had the shoes in hand to be sure of the final size. If one shin is dramatically different from the other, you may not have them assembled correctly, in light of Anovos' mislabeling of the parts.

Time for some updates, FINALLY! I did some serious work on the helmet last night, and some minor work on the TD. I sort of did these tasks simultaneously (to avoid too much work while handling a freshly-painted bucket), but I’m separating the descriptions here for simplicity. First, the painting: I removed the Anovos-painted frown from the helmet. I used rubbing alcohol and 3-4 cotton balls. I understand the 90% rubbing alcohol works a little faster than the 70% I had on hand, but that’s fine, the only difference is a little extra time. You don't have to rub hard, but it does take some time to get it done. I spent 2+ hours in front of the TV while cleaning it up, until it reached a point where I was happy enough with it. Clearly I didn't bother trying to remove every single bit from every nook and cranny, since I was about to re-paint it with nearly the same color, but the vast majority was removed, and all overspray, of course.. Then, pulling out my trusty tin of Humbrol #5, I carefully repainted the frown. Note: I actually used a decent real hair brush on this, which made controlling the paint MUCH easier than the crappy Harbor Freight plastic brushes I used when painting my ab buttons. I used photos from Gazmosis’ Anovos Helmet Rebuild thread as a reference, and carefully added the triangles at the end, matching his as well as my limited skills could do. Frown complete! Next, I tackled the screws. Two issues with screws: First, the ear screws Anovos used are not correct matches to the screen-used helmets. Second, the wood screws Anovos provided for the Thermal Detonator are not accurate. (And while the ones I found locally are close, since they are combo heads instead of slotted heads, they’re not quite right either.) Interestingly, it turns out the “incorrect” ear screws Anovos used are actually nearly dead on accurate screws for the TD: So out they came! I had purchased #6-32 slotted machine screws, normally used for electric junction boxes, which have been determined to be nearly identical to the screen-used screws. (technically, I believe they're an obscure British size in BRASS that's hard to find now, even over there, but these are nearly identical, as I said, and the metal won't matter once they're painted) Home Depot only had 1.5" long screws, while the originals were a little under an inch. So the first order of business was to hack the new screws in half. Five minutes with a bench vise and a hacksaw, and the screws were the correct length. (Close enough for me, at least) I had some #6 locknuts on hand, so that’s what I used to secure them in the helmet. Here they are installed: And a touch of white paint later, that’s done! Moving on to my TD, I used some Acetone to strip the white paint off the old helmet screw heads (came off easily wiping it with a cotton ball), and stripped apart the TD, removing the the caps and screws that I had originally used. I put the new screws on the TD (loosely). Leaving them sticking out about 1/8", I painted the heads black (I used my Humbrol #85 that I had purchased for the Vocoder) and let them dry. Later, I tightened them up from the inside (with pliers), so as to not chip the new black paint from the screw heads. Done! Funny, from more than 4 feet away, you'd never be able to tell the difference between the screws I had before and the ones I have now (in both the helmet and the TD, actually). But I'm very happy I did the mods, because *I* know they're more accurate now. I wanted to replace the mesh in my Hovi Mic tips, so I removed them from the helmet. Unfortunately, the 99 cent store sieve I had thought to scavenge the mesh from was not quite right, once I really looked closely, so that’ll have to wait for another evening. Once that’s done, I’ll get back to upgrading the shoulder cap to bicep connections with snaps, and perhaps convert the shoulder straps from Anovos Velcro to snaps as well, and then I should be ready for EIB.

Congrats!

Yes, you can velcro the armor directly to the gloves if you want to dedicate the gloves to this setup, or some people just add a second elastic loop in front, to the existing setup, to keep things centered better. Bear in mind if you sew velcro to the glove you'll probably pad out the velcro in the hand place, somehow, to bring it lower, since it's at a higher level than the glove and won't reach. It's best to keep the handplate removable, however you go about it. If you switch to the more-accurate latex handplates, you can just glue them directly to the glove, since they flex (and the plastic doesn't).

As to screws, fortunately for us, others have already done the legwork. The correct screw types are A and E, on this little chart: Here's the simplest way to handle the screw changes needed: 1) Take the flat slotted panhead screws out of your helmet, and paint the heads black. They're practically a perfect match for the screws that SHOULD be used on the TD. (There has been some speculation about that, actually) Use them instead of the asinine wood screws Anovos provided for the TD. DONE! (sort of like this, but slotted instead of Phillips, and with a flatter top like the first graphic showed): https://www.boltdepot.com/Machine_screws_Phillips_pan_head.aspx) 2) Then, go to a Home Depot (or other hardware source) and get some #6/32 slotted flat head screws (they only carry 1.5" and 2", at my local HD, so my plan is just to cut them to length, otherwise, if you find the right ones, just buy the same length as the ones you just removed) to replace the screws you just stole from the helmet. (Note: You may need to buy the matching #6 nuts as well if you don't have any already). Paint the heads white, like the old ones were. (like this: https://www.boltdepot.com/Machine_screws_Slotted_flat_head.aspx) DONE!

I would get double that. The cost is tiny, but the hassle involved in another trip to the shop, or another order, can be considerable.

You'll need a suit that can height adjusted from stock, and shims will need to be built into the sides to accommodate your girth. (I had to, also, and I weigh a little less) The stock suit definitely will not fit you well. It CAN fit you well, but not without modifications.