Addertime

That's a very cool box! Now I know what to do with the roll of carbon fiber vinyl I bought a while back.

Oh, and start with an easy piece like the forearms. You'll learn a lot by the time you complete the first glued-up piece and your confidence will go up too.

That's kinda fun.

Lookin' good!

It's all context. If this was a military history forum discussing WWI infantry tactics, the term would mean something different. This forum is about recreating props and costumes of the Imperial Stormtroopers as shown in the Star Wars films (mostly). Each of us sees a variation on the theme based on film preference but in this context and on this forum, the word "stormtrooper" really does mean something very specific. It's cool that you have a broader interpretation and being a sci-fi fan and builder of random things, I appreciate that. There are plenty of forums, like RPF, where those ideas would probably be better received. Jus' sayin'.

Gandalf - Whereas I enjoy a good pot stir as much as the next guy, I think Lichtbringer nailed it. The 501st is about replicating a specific thing, other things are not that thing. We play here because we want to recreate and discuss that thing. One can cosplay any unorthodox variation they want in many situations but continuity and symmetry is what makes the Legion what it is and what makes it attractive to most of us. The military is all about regulations and standards. The Empire, though fictional, portrays a vast professional military with extremely high standards and unforgiving leadership. It stands to reason that even though it's fictional, the uniform standards would be very rigid. Having a non-standard weapon or some random bling on their armor would be considered "out of uniform" shall we say. Now, just to play devil's advocate... could there be specialized, elite Imperial units who are allowed to use non-standard weapons, off-world thermal detonators and wear whatever they need to accomplish the mission? Probably. They wouldn't be canon at this point, but it's certainly intriguing and possible and the a few strokes of a writers keyboard could make it so.

Great idea and fun shots!

Interesting thread. Before my interest piqued in joining the 501st, I always wondered what this piece was also. It looks like a smaller version the WWII German gas mask containers so I always figured it had something to do with the breathing system but I like that it's a TD better.

PM'd you.

Paint looks great! Helmet day is still in the future for me but my confidence is growing. Keep up the great work!

Congrats! Great build and I love your creative clamping techniques.

Bicep and Forearm - Cont. I've been traveling for the past week and a half but now, I'm back on the build! So, I returned home and immediately glued up the waiting forearm shown above. It was my first time ever using E6000 and I was nervous about the smell, clean up, etc. from all the things I've read here and it all went better than expected.... except the I had planned to trim the front seam a lot more. I kept hearing the words I've read here many times about removing material slowly, etc. and well, I chickened out. I didn't cut it like I wanted to and glued it up as it was with the flat part of the arm at about 22mm wide under the 15mm cover strip. Well, after I pulled the magnets and clamps off the next morning, I hated it. I realized that the flat area needed to be much closer to the width of the cover strip and was presented with my first opportunity to REMOVE a piece glued with E6000. More stress, more drama, but it was far easier than expected. I trimmed the pieces and reglued. Here's the trimmed and reglued arm: I didn't care for the magnet method of holding the pieces together. I felt the strip was not pulled nearly tight enough to the arm material so I changed to a more familiar method and taped it. This word so much better! I first taped the inside of the butt joint to get the seam nice and flat and then clamped the ends of the strip and starting in the center and pulling outwards, taped the strip. The air gaps along the strip which the magnets allowed disappeared and I'm much happier with the look of the seam. I'll be repeating this method for all my future cover strip seams. Detail of taped strip: Having gotten a whole lot of varied experience on this one part, I feel ready to dive into the rest of the build and have been trimming more pieces and will be gluing up the bicep and other arm tonight.

I agree with the above posts. A few months of study and you'll see the differences between the kits pretty readily.

Thanks! I had all the pieces in my random bits of stuff in the shop and it came together effortlessly which made it really fun.

I greatly enjoyed perusing this thread. It a good read and I enjoyed the adventure. When I saw The Tech display, I felt right at home and then I saw you are in Gilroy! I grew up in Gilroy. Small world.

Long, long ago, back in the late 1980's (when dinosaurs roamed the the Earth and we were all still riding high on RTOJ) my sardonic wit caused someone to refer to me as Blackadder after the character portrayed by Rowan Atkinson. When this internet thing became big in the early 90's, I used it as a nick and very few people recognized the character. Typically only Brits and American PBS fans. With the advent of BBC America on cable, there suddenly became an over-abundance of people using the nick. One day I popped into my usual gameing server and there were THREE other Blackadders. The people who knew me over the years always just called me "Adder", so I changed my nick that day and announced, "Ok. I'm online. It's Adder time!" and all my friends on the server realized the real Adder from the pretenders. That was in maybe 1999 or so. I've used it ever since.

It was nerve wracking but I think I'm through it and ready to cut! Thanks for the advice!

Ha! That's where the "Hobby" part comes into play. You're never really done.

Really nice. I'll be borrowing this technique when the time comes.

What part was a fail? These look awesome.

Magazine Housing - Part 2 Time to create: 2 hours Cost of materials: €0.00 So, here we are, all glued up with JB Weld and sanded. As the substrate was quite thin, I wanted more visual thickness and added some adhesive-backed 2mm craft foam to the inside. This will also provide the compression fit I want for the magazine. Next I turned to the top button. I noticed that tinner's rivets have a concentric swirl pattern on top so I shopped that rivet around until I found a wash the right diameter with a perfect sized hole for the rivet. I didn't document this part because I was too busy feeling inspired and just working on it. I made a sandwich with two washers and some JB Weld and placed the rivet in the center and then sawed a groove in the top. In the end, I epoxied it to a spring loaded shaft and mounted the assembly into the housing. It even has a nice little "click" sound. I'm pretty happy with this piece. I made a mock-up magazine which fits nicely and started on the aluminum version. That will have to wait until my next update though and I'm going on holiday for a few weeks so it'll be a while... but I'll be back.

Bicep and Forearm I REALLY wanted to start with the helmet but I heard the voice of my old boss (exhibit and display shop) saying, "Start in the back, Michael," which meant, "Don't learn your lessons with the part that everyone looks at first." I was notorious for doing just that. So... I suppressed my desire to build the bucket first and thought the arms would be a nice easy start. I watched YouTube videos and scoured the forums but when it came down to actually cutting into $1100 worth of plastic, I was more than a little apprehensive. Ah! The first cut down! That wasn't so bad. Well on the way now. The score and snap method, which I use often for other materials, proved to be the fastest and easiest way to do it requiring only a minimum of cutting with the lexan scissors. And here we are, that wasn't so bad. And then the fear set in again and I had to stop. Whereas there's tons of info on trimming, butt joining, cover strips and gluing, there's very little on fitting. I learned from where the pieces around for a little bit that I need to trim the returns on the bicep for comfort and relax the seams a bit because it becomes tight when I flex the muscle and the forearm feels ridiculously really loose but once I saw my test photos, I felt better about the forearm. I can barely get my hand through and the back has maybe a 1/2" of play when flexed. Any advice before I glue these up?

Indeed! They look a lot like the early Ralph McQuarrie stormtrooper sketches.