kman

Might want to check with Joseph to see if he has a specific paint he knows adheres well to these.

Yup! And yes, white. Nearly boiling, not actually boiling. Boil water, turn off heat, wait about a minute for temps to stabilize, then put the end in the water for 1 minute. Dry it off fast, bend it carefully, and immerse in ice water (or at least run under the cold tap) to lock the new shape in. Sometimes takes more than one application for stubborn parts, I'm not sure how stubborn this one is.

Coming along nicely! One thing you might want to do is chamfer the corners of the cover strips. Currently they're cut off square. Screen-used armor just nipped 45 degree cuts at the corners to round them off. And just for the record, while you're not there yet, eventually you're going to want to take down a LOT more of the return edge on the hand plates. About 5mm all the way around seems to be the most popular configuration. Also good to curve the front and wrist edges a bit to follow the body's natural curve.

Ouch, empty holster and that Anovos belt is still sagging fiercely. Any chance you have the sewing shops to reinforce it? Else you might think about upgrading that sooner rather than later. The butt plate is still winging out on the sides. Maybe try to give it a water bath to bend it in? Did you add foam inside? The armor looks a bit better, in the kidney/ab junction, but still overlapping a bit. The tab system Sentry71 recommended is good, but since we Anovos folks lack that kind of spare material, you may have to fabricate something from a Home Depot for sale sign, or something like that, if you want to go that route.

Congrats, Richard!!! I look forward to trooping with you soon.

Way to go Charles! Congrats!

Lucky guy. At 5'9" this should fit you nicely, vertically! I recommend burgers and beer, as a much more enjoyable way to fill out your armor.

How tall are you again? How the back plate and front plates sit are going to be determined by your height (and how much of the height is in your torso). You may just need to pull everything higher, so the backplate hits your shoulders and the ab and chest plates overlap properly. The side strapping will help a little, to pull those sides in. You MIGHT need to add some foam... definitely get the strapping done and try foam before cutting anything. You may need to heat treat the butt plate to pull it in a little, but that can wait until all other avenue are exhausted. You're also wearing jeans, essentially, not an undersuit. definitely don't make any permanent changes until you try it all on with something closer to a legit undersuit. (got any tight long underwear or sports compression tops and bottoms?)

Yes, nicely done, Chris! Now I'll have to decide between simply doing this mod and instead just buying Tony's speaker tips, LOL

Congrats, Chris!

These had barbs but they were easy to break off by twisting them (with pliers) back and forth until the metal fatigued and broke off. Back and forth twice and they came right off, very easy. In this photo, the left one still has the barbs, and the other three have been cleared off: Those lenses aren't going anywhere unless there is an impact so severe the t-nuts tear out of the E6000!

I'm not sure I follow your diagram, but I'm not going to change mine until (or if?) I go for Centurion. It's already done, after all.

And now we come to the evening's hijinks. After dinner and a visit to my favorite brewpub, it was time to take care of a few more things. The E6000 has cured, so let's hack apart a visor, shall we? Essentially, I placed the lens in place, centered over the eye holes, and used a silver sharpie to mark (VERY conservatively!) the places I could hack away, starting at the ends, and worked my way in, slice by slice, until I was confident enough of placement that I could slice it in two in the center. Gulp! The thin cutting disk of my Dremel made short work of all this. There was one close call when I slipped a bit and the spinning disk bounced off the lens, but fortunately the scratch didn't end up in a visible place (you can see it in the shot just below). Yikes! I continued working it down, and once it was small enough to be sure of the correct center screw mounting placement, I put a dot over the T-nut to mark the drilling point: I did end up using different #6 screws than I originally purchased. Home Depot only had 1/2" #6 screws (at the shortest), and the right length is more like 1/4". Fortunately I found some good ones in my random screw collection. (I think they're technically computer case screws, since I found them in a bag with a bunch of other computer-related screws for hard drives and such.) So I screwed in that middle mounting screw for the one lens, and started marking more aggressively the pieces to cut away. I wanted to do this shaping before I drilled the second hole, so the entire lens could still be re-positioned, if needed. Again, silver sharpie gave me my trim lines, and I continued cutting. Finally, after all the rough cuts were done, I used the bench sander to smooth up the curves, and only when I was reasonably satisfied did I add the second mounting screw hole. With the first lens fixed in place, I repeated the process for the other lens. Success! (sorry about the focus!) And there we are: At some point I may do some more shaping of the two lenses, just to smooth the edges further with a finer sandpaper, and to make the lens shapes more symmetrical (not that you can tell from outside), but this definitely works for now. The lens are much closer to flush than Anovos had them, but they're definitely not sealed against it, so I should still have some airflow. Finally, I decided it was time to put in at least one helmet pad, so that test fittings don't put my bald head on the surface of the dome. I'll wait until the fans are closer to finished before attaching the rest of the pads, but putting the circle pad in the top of the bucket sets the helmet at just the right height, and is a lot nicer to wear now for test fittings. Extremely easy to work with these pads, I'm very glad I got them!

Nice job, Tahitoa! Everything looks very clean. I can't believe that ab to kidney seam, how did you get that so "barely there"?!? The ONLY thing I could find to nitpick about is probably nothing. It looks like your left shin is not quite closed in the back? The biceps (and forearms, to a much lesser extent) look a little bit like they could be made a touch tighter on your arms, but I don't know if that's totally necessary. For Centurion, you might want to replace the screws on the helmet ears. I think those are the stock Anovos screws, which are panhead instead of machine screws, but I might be wrong about that, since I do see you took care to change the screws on the TD to the right sort, so perhaps I just can't tell from the angle of the shot. Also the flashing around the eyes could possibly be cleaned up a touch, but I'd let the experts decide if that's actually necessary. Also, just an idea, it looks like you're close to having the sniper knee catch on the thigh above it. A little foam inside, the top front of the shin armor, and the back lower edge of the thigh armor, would push/pull them in different directions and might help stop that from happening.

Here's the quote from Tony's thread: The issue is the "the 22mm notch is to reside closest to the ab and kidney connection" part of that. So if you shim the way that seems most obvious, by extending the kidney plate forward to meet the ab plate, you have to fill the notch and extend the whole side all the way to ab plate, and recreate the notch there. So this is wrong, by that reasoning: Am I correct in assuming Tony and Sly are pretty much the last word on the issue? Because based on his statement, I've been planning to redo my shims, at some point in the next month or two when I'm ready to go for Centurion.

Sure, unless you want to be a TR-8R! LOL I'm not sure what the actual process is, if you want to challenge a ruling on something that isn't specifically spelled out in the CRL, to get a firm precedent set going forward. (assuming that's what's going on) My understanding is CRLs are worked out by the higher ups. Not sure how much input the lower ranks have. Perhaps someone with authority can let us know the procedure? (or shut the discussion down entirely if there's literally no way to make such a change)

No promises but if I have time tonight perhaps I'll make a couple of snap plates, and shoot a quick video of setting them with the normal tools (and possibly a Philips).

I seem to recall reading in Darth Aloha's build thread (sticky in the build thread forum) that the Dritz pliers don't work with the Tandy snaps. I found it helped to take a Philips screwdriver and give a quick whack to the center post, first, which seems to help it spread out and grab easier when the usual tool is used, after. I think there was a tip about that in one of the snap making how-to threads.

Good call taping the button covers into the belt. I can't tell you how many times I lost those suckers in the time between rebuilding, LOL. I think you know my firm pro-Chicago screw stance for the attaching the ammo pack to the belt. Works brilliantly, and easy to remove anytime. Once they're on, just put a dab of E6000 on the exposed screw top, just to protect the ab plate a little from scratches. (the actual thread is a little sharper than a rivet would be, otherwise, nearly identical) (Then just peel it off if you actually need to remove the ammo pack at some point) A good grinding tip for the Dremel will make short work of the epoxy, although getting the rivet that still stuck in there out is a little trickier. (that's when I damaged one of my button covers, trying to pry it out after chipping away the epoxy)

Congrats!

Great work! I look forward to seeing the feedback when the leadership responds.

Very nice work!

If you intend to reinforce with cheesecloth, you have to use the hand brushed option. Otherwise, you can use either. The spray gives a lovely smooth finish on the interior, which I prefer, but you can't use the cheesecloth with it. Definitely want the lenses out and the frown screen out before painting. And you'll need to mask the heck out of every opening (with the spray, certainly) (and including a bag around the exterior), to avoid it getting on other parts. I masked the exposed nuts and bolts, too. Apply according to the instructions. For the spray, that means 30 minutes between coats. (weather dependent, I'd imagine) I sprayed 3 coats on mine before I was satisfied.

Wow, those are gorgeous! That would sure be a great base for a DLT19!

I've been told the Rubies blaster (painted black, obviously, and a little weathering is nice but not essential) is fine for trooping, and base level approval. Just nothing higher.