Addertime

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.

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.

And yeah, if you noticed that I didn't bend the tab, you're right. I went back and did it a few minutes later but didn't document it.

Magazine Housing - Part 1 Time to create: 1/2 hour Cost of materials: €0.40 For the magazine housing, I used ZeroRoom's plan and modified it a little bit. I built a mock up from poster board and decided to add a tab on the back side and moved the fold lines a bit as I used 1.5mm aluminum instead of the 2mm substrate recommended. In all fairness, I tried making one from 2mm aluminum and the added thickness made it impossible for me to get a sharp corner using the level of technology available in my little basement workshop. I spray glued the plan to the substrate and then scored and broke the piece from the larger material. I'm a big proponent of scoring and breaking any thin, flat material whenever possible. It's just so much faster. A few strategic saw cut aid in the breaking the scored pieces loose. Cut the arcs and we're ready to file and sand the edges. Sanding the arcs and then deburring with 220 sandpaper. And a shot of my favorite sheet goods tool, the hand punch. This affordable little punch easily pops holes up to 7mm in materials as thick as 16ga mild steel. And now, we start bending. I used a piece of wood as a ghetto brake press and it worked pretty well. More bending... Some of the bends require creative clamping... and a short time later, we have all the rough bends done. Pretty cool for just a half hour of work. A little more finishing and we'll use JB Weld to close up the shape.

I like the snap attachment. Nicely done.

Thanks Tino! This has been my favorite part of the build so far. I guess I failed to mention that I used JB Weld to fill that gap. It's hard to see in the pics. I'm hooked on JB Weld; it sands an paints well and is easier than mixing up automotive body filler although it probably costs a lot more gram for gram but hey, these pieces are tiny. I shot a little primer across one side to illustrate what it actually looks like:

Power Cylinders Time to create: 4 hours Cost of materials: €2.00 And now for something completely different. I'm changing gears from the tube to the power tubes because I have a short attention span and like to jump around in projects to keep them fresh. I was perusing the copious amount information here on White Armor and happened upon PlayfulWolfCub's epic Power Cylinder Research Thread and I was further inspired by T-Jay's How To: Make your Power Cylinders more accurate thread. I don't have the attention span to create a perfect replica and I'm still trying to create something from nothing here but I was rolling and ready to give it a go. I used some of the images from PlayfulWolfCub's thread to draw a scale pattern on the bracket in CorelDraw and then then created the piece from 1.5mm aluminum sheet. The lighting makes it look kinda golden but it's aluminum, you'll see. I pulled some pieces of hardware from my jars of random stuff and cut the pieces of aluminum tubing (€1.98 for a 1m length) I then cut a thin strip of 1.5mm aluminum and cut it into four sections the circumference of my tubing, bent it around a piece of tubing to make the arc and finished the bend with pliers. These bands are the sides of the end caps. I also added slots for detail. As I was building the end caps on the tubes, the cylinders needed to be inserted into the bracket prior to assembly. The bands were attached using cyanoacrylate. It had the advantage of being thin and thus drawn under the band via capillary action as the band was clamped in place. Then came the washers with the screws and nuts. Now, it would have made my life easier if I had a threaded rod to span the length of the tube but that require another trip to the hardware store and I went with screws instead. Next I epoxied the tubes to the bracket and began work on the capacitors. A piece of wooden dowel from my infamous "box of sticks" as the movers labelled it 13 years ago The name was appropriate and stuck. It holds all manner of longish pieces of wood, tubing, panduit, metal rods, etc. We still call it the "box of sticks" in our house. Anyway, back to our program, I cut three lengths of dowel and drilled the ends fir the wires. Some floral wire from the craft box became the wires. To make bent wire perfectly straight, stretch it. Put one end in a vise and pull the other end with pliers until you feel it stretch just a little. It will be straight and slightly work-hardened making it perfect for lots of applications. Add a little white Milliput and some epoxy and let cure overnight. The fauxpacitors were then epoxied into the bracket. I clipped a few centimeters of cloth-covered wire from an old lamp in our guest room, pulled the copper wired out of the insulation and stuck is onto the fauxpacitor wired which protruded through the rear of the bracket and then painted the brown cloth insulation with red acrylic to match the originals. The final addition is the resisters underneath the cylinders. I used a length of brass tube I bought for this purpose and cut three old-school resistor-length pieces. Filed and sanded. I filled the brass tubelets with Milliput and pushed them onto the wires. Two of the wires were too short so I had to add some dummy pieces to complete the look. And here is the assembled power cylinder piece:

The Tube - Part 3a Front Sight Guard Texture Time to create: 30 minutes hands on and 4 hours drying time Cost of materials: €0.10 I wasn't sure I'd like it but I'm glad I took the time. I considered remaking the piece and pounding the texture into the aluminum but maybe on my next build. Here is the guard clamped in the vise ready for action and the slathering of the JB Weld: I smoothed the JB Weld with a piece of aluminum to create a uniform film depth and smoothness. It wasn't perfect but we were walking out the do to go to the theatre so close was good enough. Four hours later, the JB Weld was set enough to roll a texture into it. I did a test earlier and found that two hours was not quite enough whie lead to a bunch of clean up of the ratchet handle. After letting the piece dry overnight, I cleaned up the excess with an Xacto knife and gave the whole thing a light sanding with 220 grit sandpaper to add a more worn appearance. The finish came out much more distressed than I intended but I think it works as and it has character.