kman

I'm not really seeing how that's different from the regular Anovos rigging, except Velcro on both sides instead of the snap on top. The Velcro doesn't budge. What happens is the elastic stretches too much when I move, allowing the ab top lip to pop out from under the chest piece. What I need is something that DOESN'T stretch (be it velcro or snaps, it's gotta be a non-stretchy nylon web strap) so I can set a "stop point". That lets the elastic stretch up to a point, as needed for general movement, but stops it before it gets into the danger zone where it pop to the other side. I think if I add three narrow non-stretchy webbing straps, on either side and in the middle of the two existing straps, it would do what I need.

It's usually used for stripping off paint. (such as why it's a primary ingredient in nail polish remover) Comes standard in 1000 ml cans, or even 1 gal cans. Bizarre that it would be difficult to get. I can't imagine what your farmers must go through for fertilizer!

Yup, those issues are definitely on my list. They're already listed on the to-do list at the end of that post, in fact: "5. Strapping: Final velcro strap connection of shoulder caps to biceps. (Very simple, I didn't want to do it until I was a LOT closer to a final fitting) DONE, but now I need to make some modifications to the chest plate strapping to stop it from popping up. I'm thinking some popper straps that provide a hard stop just before it can go too far?" And now that it's been specifically pointed out by two experts, it's going to the TOP of my list, LOL. Do you think my added snap plate idea is good? I'm thinking leave the elastic but add two snaps (non stretch nylon) to stop it from going beyond the overlap point? The ab plate is as high as it's going to get unless I want to start singing in another key, and washing things far more frequently after wearing. The chest plate will get able to pull down a bit farther, however, once I get some less elasticy straps added to keep it there. My shoulders are broader than the average British extra, so the shoulder armor is never going to be quite as tight as some lucky others. I'm working on getting them in tighter, but the Anovos strapping isn't helping me much. It should definitely get better when I upgrade to snaps.

I used a hairdryer last night and I believe it actually did help a little. TK1636 mentioned needing multiple runs with the hairdryer before it's done, so I'm going to give it a few more attempts before trying the water bath route.

Not as busy as last night, but I still accomplished a fair amount. The end is near! First up, the clamshell strapping. I cut the velcro off of one of the Anovos straps (one of three) to do all three left-side straps, and cut it into 1.5" sections, per ukswrath's recommendations. Ends were melted to prevent fraying. I used a Sharpie silver pen to mark spots for the two holes, spaced 2cm apart (20mm). Since the goal is a perfectly straight line up the side, I wanted to do all three straps in one fell swoop, so I stacked all 3 together, and went with the hot nail approach. Hold the nail with pliers, and heat the nail on the stove (I suspect an electric stove won't work for this) until nearly red hot. Stick it through the stack of 3 straps, right through the sharpie spots (it goes through easier than butter, almost no resistance!), and you get 3 identically-spaced straps. Separate them as fast as possible before the liquidized nylon cools and they get welded together! At this point, it's all a matter of simply pushing a split rivet through the holes I'd drilled in the armor, threading on a strap and a washer, and using a screwdriver down the center to spread the rivet a little, the screwdriver on it's side to force the splits farther apart, and then a few taps with a hammer to flatten them. Repeat three times for the kidney plate: ...and three more times for the ab plate: That's it! Moving onto painting, at which I'm barely passable. Humbrol French Blue and Gray #5 in the appropriate spots, and boom, you have painted plates. I haven't glued them just yet, as I'm still figuring out some options for that chest/ab connection, but that's a no-brainer at this point. That leaves us to the test fitting. My wife was awake for a change, so I was actually able to put on the full kit for the first time, and have someone else to shoot it so I could wear gloves (no need to manipulate the touchscreen!). You can see the chest plate still keep popping up, so I need to pull it a smidge lower and put some sort of non-stretchy connector strap between the chest and ab, so it can't pop up anymore. I also confirmed my hatred for the Anovos thigh strapping. You either have to attach/remove the Velcro each time, guaranteeing uneven results from time to time, or set the Velcro and attach/remove the two snaps for each, which, it turns out, is really tricky to manage under the cod plate. I'll be doing that changeover sooner rather than later. So here's tonight's cross-outs: Clamshell strapping: DONE Test fit: Final test fitting (of course). Easy and fast. Pics to come tonight, I suspect. DONE Cleanup: General cleanup of excess glue, finishing edge sanding for smoothness and comfort, etc. Hopefully this won’t take a huge amount of time, but it might take more than I wish... PARTIALLY DONE? Painting: Paint the button plates and glue them to the ab plate. I hope to paint these tonight, but we'll see. Painting DONE. Still need to glue the plates but I'll wait until the chest strapping is done. I do need to paint the side rivets and thigh rivets white, however, and the TD screws black. Strapping: Final velcro strap connection of shoulder caps to biceps. (Very simple, I didn't want to do it until I was a LOT closer to a final fitting) DONE, but now I need to make some modifications to the chest plate strapping to stop it from popping up. I'm thinking some popper straps that provide a hard stop just before it can go too far? Back Plate: More heat bending of back plate shoulder straps for better fit. This shouldn't take too long, but it's tricky, so finger's crossed. Helmet: Cleanup work on the helmet eye trim/ excess flashing. Should be fairly quick work with the Dremel and a sanding drum. May or may not get to this tonight. Helmet painting: Paint the inside of the helmet with black Plasti-Dip spray. This will obviously take a fair amount of time to mask everything thoroughly for overspray (after I quickly tear everything out). Maybe I won’t be done this week after all. And of course then it'll need a couple of days to dry, and off-gas completely so it can be worn. Helmet rigging: Remove Anovos hard hat rigging (see above), install military helmet pads (can’t install these until the plasti-dip is dry). Helmet Lens: Decide whether to leave the lenses as-is (stock) for now, or consider splitting them and mounting them with standoffs. (T-nuts... but again, everything else to be finished first) Ammo pack button covers: The bane of my dang existence, these stupid things. I need to try to make one, to replace the one I mostly destroyed. If that doesn’t work out, I may try to rebuild the destroyed one with a ton of ABS paste. If THAT doesn’t work, I may need to order some new ones for another vendor, because who knows when Anovos is going to get back to me about buying replacements from them. NEW ENTRY: Finish velcro and heat treatment of right shin armor. (see prior post)

You know, I started watching those videos before I got my BBB. Got up to about video 20, then my BBB came and I was busy building. I wonder how many other questions I could have answered if I finished the damn things, LOL! I'll definitely give the hair dryer thing (or is that a heat gun?) a try. Seems like I was on the right track, thinking about using heat to get the plastic to relax into place. And no water to worry about!

Finally felt like I was making some real progress last night! I got VERY productive. I decided to start off easy, by attaching the crotch strap. I had previously drilled the hole to add the split rivet to the front cod, so I just needed the two male snaps in the butt plate. I tried following ukswrath’s measurements (1 1/8" and 5/8" in), but unfortunately that resulted in snaps that were too close together. I guess his popper snaps are a little smaller than the Tandy line 24 I’m using throughout? So I had to drill another hole, slightly closer to the front, which just clears the other snap and allows the “bad” hole to be entirely covered by the snap so you can’t see it. All the stress (if any) is pulling in the opposite direction, so this shouldn’t make any difference. I learned a lesson from others, in that there are two sizes of snaps included in the Anovos kit, so I decided to test-fit the two female snaps on the provided crotch strap to make sure they work with the Tandy male snaps. The good news is the popped on fine! The bad news is they then grabbed on and were hard to disconnect... and in fact, pulling to disconnect, the Anovos snap literally came apart! This definitely confirms my decision not to use any of Anovos’ provided snaps. They’re just terrible. So I removed the second snap (which, btw, I was able to do by just pulling it in my fingers, it was so poorly held together) and installed the two corresponding Tandy female snaps in the same holes, which work perfectly. They’re shiny silver instead of black, but I don’t see why that matters since they’re on the inside and you can’t see them anyway. Or maybe I’ll paint them black later, but I don’t think Ukswrath bothered. No tools were used in the removal of these snaps! Then I attached the split rivet to the other side, and hammered it home. Done! Next I decided to tackle the front-to-back shell attachment points. I’ve been procrastinating on this because I wasn’t sure if I wanted to use the Anovos velcro or go ahead and use the supplied nylon strapping without velcro, piercing it and using the split rivets [semi-] permanently, in a screen-accurate manner. First I drilled the 3 holes on the left side, which will be needed whichever way I go. Very easy, I just held the armor up to the 3 holes I had drilled on the ab piece, marked the 3 holes in the exact same location, and measured to make sure they were the appropriate 10mm from the edge, and drilled the 1/8" holes needed. Drilling those holes convinced me that, if I ever want to use an accurate attachment, I want some reinforcement, as the plastic of the shim is somewhat thin. So I went ahead and made yet another little shim plate, just big enough to add a second layer of plastic inside, and E6000'd it in place right on top of the new holes. Once it cures tomorrow, I’ll drill through again (right through the holes on the outside) I forgot to post these pics of my final hand plates. I have some latex ones I’ll be using for the Centurion application, but I don’t mind the plastic plates with the Nomex gloves for regular trooping. You’ll note the return edges are not even half of the massive return edges Anovos had on their cut lines, and I’ve curved the front and back return edges to lay flatter on the hand, following the natural curves there. Next, I tackled the belt, which I’ve been putting off far too long. The ABS paste had cured nicely over the past few days and is ready to sand down. I won’t need to spend a lot of time making it shiny and perfect, because it’ll be hidden behind button covers anyway. (the photo below shows the belt with NO sanding of the ABS paste, because it doesn't matter for fitting, but I'll be sanding it more before I'm done) I measured carefully and marked the centerpoint for the new fasteners (Chicago screws, stolen from the holster], and drilled holes for the bases, which insert from the front. I’ll be able to seal the bases up nicely under the button covers, and screw and unscrew the screw side from the inside of the belt, so I can remove the entire plate anytime I want. Next, I measured the belt (my TKittell belt) to carefully find the center of the belt. I punched a hole sized for the Chicago screws, and mounted the centerpoint to the belt. With the ammo pack carefully aligned, I marked through the holes in the pack onto the belt. I marked the location, and then recalled the issue I had had with the curved belt taking extra space than a flat one. I remember just in time, fortunately. I curved the belt to see how the holes shifted, and sure enough, they definitely moved enough to notice! Just a bit to the side, but that bit helps the belt curve without bunching. I punched the two side mounting holes, and installed the ammo pack to the belt. FINALLY! With the belt mounted, I could finally go forward with attaching the holster. I laid out the old belt and new belt, and using the center screw as an alignment point, it was simple to copy over the location for the new holster mounting holes. Done and done! I used the new stainless Chicago screws I had purchased, since I’d stolen the Anovos-provided aluminum ones for the ammo pack belt attachment (they’re shorter, just the right size I needed). The longer stainless ones work great for the holster, since they’re going though a thicker belt this time around. (I had been concerned I’d need to cut them lower, but they worked fine) Since it’s so easy to remove the ammo pack now, I just slid the drop boxes back into position. I left them unmolested, for now, although I’ll probably tack them into place with some E6000 at some point. Onto the shins, which I had last attached the back cover strips to the part they glue onto. Time for Velcro! I checked the left shin, measured the space for the overlap, and cut the velcro strip nearly in half (long way) to get the right size. Half of it, anyway; I’ll put the matching half on tomorrow. I started with the hook side. I debated using E6000 to give the connection extra strength, but decided to try the regular Velcro adhesive instead, and go more hardcore if it doesn’t hold. To maximize adhesion, I lightly sanded the surface, applied the strip, and clamped it (small clamps, nothing too extreme, but some pressure to help the adhesive set). Hook (scratchy) side faces out. Tomorrow, I’ll do the same for the soft (loop) side, which goes on the back of the cover strip. That should do it for the left shin, and I don’t forsee any issue there, unless the Velcro doesn’t hold. (Then E6000 get’s it’s chance... only if that fails will I try the hook method.) I’ll address the right shin in a moment, but we’re really getting to an exciting point now. Naturally there are tons of things I want to do to “perfect” the armor, but frankly, I honestly think I may be nearing the point where I can think about taking submission photos fairly soon. Here’s what’s left, I think, before I can do that: Clamshell strapping: As I wrote above, I just need to install the straps into the clamshell, to hold the front and back halves together. Once that extra reinforcement plate’s E6000 has cured, this should be quick and easy to do tonight. Test fit: Final test fitting (of course). Easy and fast. Pics to come tonight, I suspect. Cleanup: General cleanup of excess glue, finishing edge sanding for smoothness and comfort, etc. Hopefully this won’t take a huge amount of time, but it might take more than I wish... Painting: Paint the button plates and glue them to the ab plate. I hope to paint these tonight, but we'll see. Strapping: Final velcro strap connection of shoulder caps to biceps. (Very simple, I didn't want to do it until I was a LOT closer to a final fitting) Back Plate: More heat bending of back plate shoulder straps for better fit. This shouldn't take too long, but it's tricky, so finger's crossed. Helmet: Cleanup work on the helmet eye trim/ excess flashing. Should be fairly quick work with the Dremel and a sanding drum. May or may not get to this tonight. Helmet painting: Paint the inside of the helmet with black Plasti-Dip spray. This will obviously take a fair amount of time to mask everything thoroughly for overspray (after I quickly tear everything out). Maybe I won’t be done this week after all. And of course then it'll need a couple of days to dry, and off-gas completely so it can be worn. Helmet rigging: Remove Anovos hard hat rigging (see above), install military helmet pads (can’t install these until the plasti-dip is dry). Helmet Lens: Decide whether to leave the lenses as-is (stock) for now, or consider splitting them and mounting them with standoffs. (T-nuts... but again, everything else to be finished first) Ammo pack button covers: The bane of my dang existence, these stupid things. I need to try to make one, to replace the one I mostly destroyed. If that doesn’t work out, I may try to rebuild the destroyed one with a ton of ABS paste. If THAT doesn’t work, I may need to order some new ones for another vendor, because who knows when Anovos is going to get back to me about buying replacements from them. Once all of the above is done, I should ready for submission photos! It’s more than I thought, writing all of that out, but it’s still darned good progress and it should go fairly quickly, with the exception of the helmet painting. Steps that I’ll be taking after basic acceptance is done, for my own peace of mind, for a possible EIB submission, and hopefully eventually Centurion: Remove and repaint the gray frown, including the points at the ends. This should be pretty straightforward, actually. I just want to get on with the 501st admission before taking the time, and the bucket is fine as-is for that. ABS paste and sanding to conceal the seam for the kidney shim. This will be a pain. Convert Anovos Velcro strapping over to snap plates (not required for EIB but I still want to, as a priority). Need to decide if I’m using nylon strapping for “plates”, or find a source of good (thicker) ABS for plates (Anovos scrap is too thin, IMO). This will be a pain, but it can be done slowly, over time, just replacing a strap or two per night here and there. Helmet upgrades: Install fans, electronic voice changer. This should be fairly straightforward, once I get the TK Voice app working correctly on my phone... and once Echo has time to make my fan rig. Otherwise I’ll need to rig something up myself, if he takes too long. I don’t think I can wear that helmet very long without something to provide airflow! General helmet teardown, improve ear curve fitment, etc. This will complicated, of course. Convert shoulder straps to Centurion-approved white elastic with snaps. Shouldn’t be overly difficult, but has to be done in conjunction with the snap plate conversion, since it will affect the shoulder armor strapping as well. Bicep armpit “Han hooks”? (need source of thicker ABS for this, otherwise, very simple) Convert thigh Anovos snaps to 3" elastic straps looped around a belt, a vastly better system. Should be easy enough. Elastic loops to hold shoulder straps to back plate. Easy, just gotta buy the right elastic. Before I can do all of that, however, I need to resolve the quandry I’m in, with regards to the right shin: So here's the right shin. It looks fine from the front: From the back, the top edge on the right is nearly an inch lower than the top edge on the left. It tapes up into place just fine (although when you pull the right side up, the left edge juts out down below, but that’s easily ground off when I’m ready for final finishing): Two issues: One, it’s not very apparent in the top photo of the front, but you can see in this photo that the join down the front actually twists to the left: That is probably not a HUGE issue (especially compared to screen-used armor in pics, yeesh!), but it bugs me. I don’t know that there is anything I can do about it, though, even if I tear apart the leg again. If I remove the back tape and let the armor relax, it looks perfect in front (meaning, it doesn't torque to the side like it does here). But I can’t really close it in back like that, so far off in the back, because the top ridge is so mis-aligned. Here's the real issue, though, that I worry about the most: the effect on the Velcro. Will the Velcro be able to hold up to the torque the plastic puts on it (when trying to close it)? It REALLY doesn’t like to line up correctly in back. All that tape in the photo was necessary, just to keep it aligned on top for the photo. I wonder if I give the ENTIRE piece a hot water bath, would the plastic “relax” into the correct position? I’m not sure, and I’m kind of afraid to screw it up. (Also I’m not sure if the tape can hold it in position once it gets submerged in near boiling water ... maybe duct tape would hold up the to heat and wet, but that sounds like a nightmare to clean up, lots of melt duct tape adhesive all over, ugh.) Any advice on this?

I wish you were local; I'd be happy to let you borrow my paint bottles. It's silly that we have to buy a whole bottle just for these tiny spots of paint, but I guess it's not bad to have them in your kit for future touch ups!

Looks good, keep going! I hear you on the dining room. I'm still allowed, but I have to pack everything up and hide it all every 2-3 days, which is getting really old.

Hmm. Honestly, I don't think that piece was built correctly. It might be good enough to pass basic acceptance, however. But it looks to me like too much was trimmed off the interior half. The front-facing part should only have had a few mm of plastic trimmed, just to fit the return edge under the cover strip correctly. The rest of the trimming should be on the back side, where it's less visible, and cut evenly from both halves to help avoid this unevenness. I'd check with your local garrison to see what they say. Could be they're ok with it. Otherwise, you may need to do some work to rebuild some of the cut material, or even replace it.

Yes, exactly! (re thigh ammo pack) Yes, I trimmed the sniper knee a bit, mostly on the longer edge. I actually glue it in place and changed it later, too. The cut line was slightly more tilted to the back, and other pictures I saw (which I liked better) had the vertical line you see now, I just used my Dremel's cutting wheel and carefully cut it straight up from the bottom corner. Pretty simple, and you can't tell in person. (there's still plastic scrap so it looks worse than it is in the photos... I'll clean everything super well when I'm entirely done and the plastic wrap finally comes off)

One of those hands is way prettier than the other, LOL It's hard to tell from photos. What colors did you use? I doubt you would need to sand anything down, though. Probably fine to just paint right over, if you want to change colors. Else rub the spots clear with rubbing alcohol. No need to remove plastic.

Ok, it's been slow going over the past few days. Glimpses of a social life, and out of town for the weekend have definitely slowed my pace, but I haven't been entirely idle. Since I have boots, I finally have gotten around to working on the back of the shin armor, to finish that off. Step one was trying it on, to make sure I had it sized right. Turns out I full it pretty well, although I was able to take a small sliver out of the top. Here's one of the shin openings, and you can see the sliver I cut out next to it: Next I placed the the cover strips on, so I could cut the strips to size, clean up the sides and edges, chamfer the corners, etc.: Next I laid down the glue. You can see the black cut line, where I peeled back the plastic for gluing. Note I intend to cheat the cover strip over a bit, to maximize the space for Velcro and get the most hold possible. The nice thing about the cover strips is they only attach on one side, so I was free to use ALL OF THE CLAMPS and didn't need to use any magnets, so the hold should be nice and strong: You can see I glued slightly less than half of the cover strip, viewed from this angle. You won't be able to tell in the final product, of course: The other thing I did was work on the belt cover. First off, the holes left by tearing out the button covers (already patched in the back) were filled with ABS paste, so I can get a nice thick surface to drill through for the Chicago screws. They've been taped up all weekend, so I'll remove the tape and sand them down a bit tonight. Here are Chicago screws I have to work with: The "lighter" ones in the middle are the Anovos screws that came with the holster. They're aluminum, so they should be easy to cut or sand down so they're not quite as tall, and I'll use them to hold the plastic belt front to the TKittell canvas belt. The longer, darker ones are stainless, and hopefully they'll be short enough to take two to hold the holster onto the belt. If not I'll have to grind them down a little. I realized I didn't post any photos of my final sniper knee, so I may as well do that here: I had put a return on the inside cover strip with plans to make it all solid with ABS paste, but I don't think I'll need to at this point. You can't see it anyway, so I may leave it as-is, or I may just lop it off with a Dremel cutting blade, which would take about 10 seconds to do. I also don't think I ever posted photos of the final thigh ammo pack, so here is how that all turned out. My personal OCD nature prefers it with the "box" centered on the cover strip, so that's how I aligned it. Fair warning to those who would copy me: Ukswrath's build thread calls for it to be in a centered position based on the edges of the thigh ridges (measured from the back) instead, which approx 1/8" off from where I put it. I'm banking on them being ok with it in this configuration. (somehow I doubt every piece of screen armor was identically placed anyway, and I think it looks much better this way than twisted just slightly off, which would drive me batty!) If they object, I should be able to move it easily enough and the extra holes would be covered, so this should be a good experiment.

Gack, absolutely right! Fixed my post. That's what I get for running off my faulty memory...

The brow trim is actually normal, and accurate to many (if not most) of the screen-used helmets. Very few were applied precisely. The decals weren't applied especially well (particularly the right top one?) but I don't think it's off enough to be problematic. Certainly not for basic approval, but you may need to get new ones and reapply them, or better yet hand paint it, for Centurion. Neither option likely involves Anovos, though. New decals are only a few buck from TrooperBay, but it's more accurate (and does not require a high degree of skill) to hand paint them anyway. (Check Gazmosis' Anovos Helmet rebuild thread for good tips on making is fairly straightforward)

I think that looks pretty good, personally, although you'll probably want to clean up the return edge a bit so it's a nice clean curve. Do you need the backplate to sit lower, or is it set up at a good height compared to the kidney plate, now?

^^ As I understand it, that's the old version of the chart, and Midnight Blue is now deprecated. This is the newer version of the chart:

Cod measurements from Ukswrath's thread: http://www.whitearmor.net/forum/topic/35086-ukswraths-anovos-tk-build/page-21#entry466593

Congrats, Brandon! That's Anovos EIB #2!

These size 10 (US) TK boots are about 8.25" (21 cm) tall. I don't have any IB to measure.

I don't have mine with me at the office, but I'll be happy to measure them if you'd like, when I get home. They do have quite a few photos of the new taller boots on their website here:--------------

VERY high quality work!

That's the correct type of shoe, definitely. You'll have to paint/dye it white, and that never stays perfect, so maintenance will be ongoing. But it's perfectly accurate to wear those, and approvable to the highest levels. Note they are not quite as tall as TK Boots, so you may have more issues with your shins popping up, but it's pretty easy to make a loop to hold them down, so that's not a huge issue. (Technically, it's MORE screen accurate than TK Boots/IB, since the onscreen boots were black painted white as well)

Great progress! I'm jealous of your helmet work. I really want to going on that... But I also keep feeling like the helmet will probably pass (basic) as-is, so my time is better spent working on other areas, until I actually get into the 501st with fully working armor. THEN I can start on all the tweaks I want to do for EIB/Centurion. *sigh*<br><br> I had the EXACT same crack on my backplate, btw. I'm going to have to figure out how I want to reinforce mine, too.

Rough sizing is supposed to be rough. Test first, remove later. It may be easy to take off, but it's really hard to put back on if you take too much!