kman

Oh, that makes more sense. I leave mine assembled. I only hand-tighten the screws, though, so they still come out easily when needed.

My personal recommendation is to have the pice fully built before cutting pieces off. Once it's solid you can use a Dremel or file or whatever to reduce and smooth that elbow-side return edge until it fits you correctly. If you remove the edge first, unless it's precisely the same once assembled, you'll have to tweak it anyway. And sometimes things fit slightly different when glued vs taped.

Do you need to remove the holster quickly very often? Just trying to understand.

You can remove as much return edge as you need on the forearms. It looks better with some, but if you need to remove it all to fit, that's fine. (The wrist edge needs to come off entirely, of course)

What are those stickers on their left shoulder caps?

Well, you DID make the claim (in big red text) that it absolutely won't work without 1.5 amps, so I wanted to clarify that that need is only applicable to your exact combination of parts, for others who are trying something along these lines, but with some different bits, since it's definitely not the case in every setup. Two different batteries is not exhaustive testing, but it certainly does indicate something to keep an eye on. All that said, I'm a big fan of mo' power, so well done, regardless! Your install is super clean and nicely executed. And good find on the battery pack, too, those look like quality parts.

Correct, one power pack for each fan. I like redundancy. I figure I'll have airflow even if I have a catastrophic failure of one.

Hmm. I'm not certain of that. Perhaps it depends on the particular fan / battery combination? I have a similar setup to yours, but I went with two independently wired 5v fans, each pushed by a small 3000 mah LiIon USB battery pack, rated at 1 amp, and it works beautifully. Batteries were $7 each on Amazon. I'm getting over 9 hours of battery life per fan.

Nice! That's very much like what I did for fans. You can always scratch build a blaster from simple pipe. No issue with getting pieces that way. Just keep it at home and don't carry it around and I wouldn't think it would be a problem.

Congrats, Centurion!

Worst case you might extend the line to go down your neck, and put the battery in the chest or back, where there's more room.

I followed Ukswrath's measurements, too, and had the same thing happen as you. I think something might be slightly off with his measurements, or he's using smaller snaps. Fortunately, I noticed before I actually crimped them on, so I decided to move the snap closest to the front forward a bit. Just forward enough that the original hole is entirely hidden by the snap base plate (which stops them from overlapping nicely). If you think about the direction the pull will be, on these snaps, it's towards the front, so having less strength on the back of the post really shouldn't be an issue. If you decide you want to change, it shouldn't be an issue to carefully drill out the existing male snap and move yours forward, too. I personally think it looks better moved forward than overlapping. (This pic is just before I crimped it down)

Hmm. Still need help? I doubt you need my armor (and with the shims it wouldn't fit the actors anyway), but it sounds like a fun project to lend a hand on, and I don't think I have anything planned for 4/30 at the moment.

Ah, gotcha. The 1/2" rule is perfect for nearly every piece of armor, but I'm not as sure about that with respect to the shins. I've seen threads (can't recall if here on FISD or in the Anovos FB group) where people were complaining that the larger sizes of the Chelsea/Jodhpur boots, particularly for those with larger feet, are substantially wider than normal boots or shoes. The 1/2" clearance might not be adequate in those cases. I know even with my size 10s (definitely not considered especially massive), I have more than 1/2" of boot in front and behind my shins, and it would look a little pinched if I only had 1/2" there. That opening gets bigger really fast, the larger the foot size. So if the shoes are handy (or will be), probably best to use the actual shoes for sizing, to avoid that pinched look I see so often.

What's that?

Just make sure to test fit with your shoes on. The shoes are likely to be wider than your actual shins, so if you make the shins too small your shoes get pinched and look really odd.

No, the other way around. It shows the placement of the male snap plates that are glued to the armor. The female snaps are then mounted onto straps (elastic and/or webbing) and connect the paired male snaps.

Italy was incredible. . Especially since we apparently won the weather lottery! I hope we can go back again!<br><br> Of course, it'll also be nice to finally be back to work on my armor, and make the changes I want to make it less unpleasant to wear, and get ready for EIB!

It's a little late, but I wanted to point out one thing: As lucnak pointed out, there are only three snaps visible from the outside: The two on the butt plate, and the one male snap in the corner of the ab plate. For those three, I'd go to eBay or something to do whatever you can to find the "old style" Tandy snaps, which had no printing on them. You really won't want to see "TANDY" printed over those snaps, and I don't think those doing approvals would think very highly of it, either. Other than those, though, the newer Tandy snaps work perfectly for snap plates. In fact, on all interior snaps, the bottom of the male snap plate is underneath the plate, so it's the part that gets glued to your armor, making it impossible to see! So not a problem at all, to use the new style, for all interior snaps.

It's been a bit, sorry, I was on vacation and not keeping up with FISD. Here are some pics of my hand guards, showing the curves I mentioned. Let's it sit flatter on your hand, which is curved, of course: A couple comments to follow when I get a chance... Btw, love your kid's photo bomb in that one pic. LOL!

Generally the male snaps are attached to the plates that are glued to the armor, and the female snaps attach to the connecting strips. That way the flattest part (the underside of the male base) is the part glued to the armor, and the smooth caps are on the side against your body. Oops, that's what you get for opening tabs and then taking a work call before finishing reading.

Congrats on finishing! I must have missed something somewhere. Why didn't you just use Chicago screws for the holster? Seems like you did a lot of extra work. And I'd be worried about two snaps holding the weight of a relatively heavy blaster.

Looks great! AMAZING work on patching that cracking disaster. And thanks for the warning about painters tape on the latex hand guards... that probably saved mine, because I likely would have tried that, too!

Sorry, just got back from vacation and I wasn't monitoring FISD while I was away. Seems like the others have you covered, though. And no, no problems whatsoever with approval, they way I mounted my thigh pack.

Best upgrade I did for my work area (aka dining room table) for the entire build! http://www.amazon.com/Alvin-Professional-Cutting-Green-Black/dp/B0015ASN5S Spouse approved!