Anzo

Drilling Pill Holes: While the yokes were drying, I passed the time by drilling out the pill holes of the various pieces. They are found on the Biceps, Chest, and Shins. Following Tony's build, I purchased this Tungsten Carbide Dremel Tip My experience with that was overall good but I'll share some cautions to take with it. TREAD LIGHTLY!!!! It is very sharp, so don't forget the cut resistant gloves. Also, you are working with it in very small spaces. Once I broke through the plastic and worked to widen the hole, I had to be very soft with the edges as I worked it. Otherwise the tip would catch on the plastic and knock the the dremel like a pinball all around the hole, creating nasty gashes. Here are my results so far. I may need to invest in some files to smooth out some of the holes. All in all a pretty handy tool if you have a steady hand. Again, I say proceed with caution though as it could VERY easily ruin a piece. Update: I bought a file set at Harbor Freight for $7 today and worked on the Chest holes. BIG improvement with very little effort. Before on top, after on bottom.

KB posted on his FB page the other day that he will now be providing a resin TD and 2 piece forearms in his future kits. REMEMBER OUR SACRIFICE future builders!

Thermal Detonator Part 1: This was perhaps the trickiest part to assemble. It requires a lot of clamps, magnets and patience. It doesn't help that one part of my TD came to me like this for some reason. This is the bottom half that connects to the 3 ridged rail that hooks on the back. It should not have been cut like this. I didn't realize this until last week when I set out to trim and assemble it even though I received the kit in November. Not willing to wait on a new piece from KB (I didn't even contact him about this) I set out to fix it. To do so, I took a dremel to the rough edges to smooth it out into as best a half moon as I could. I then traced that shape onto some spare ABS sheets provided with the kit. Using some cover strips on the inside, I glued the insert to the original piece. Good as new? With that out of the way, I set out to glue the two halves together. I glued the bottom seam together first. It seemed to fit best with the outward facing half (the part people see) overlapping the inward half. That's the easy part. Next comes the hellish portion. I don't have pictures because I only have two hands. I'll refer you to my inspiration builds linked in the OP for pictures on how they did it. As others can attest, there is a TON of torsional force when you try to fit them together and have the side openings resemble anything close to a circle. Otherwise, at least in my case, they were more oval. So it required me to apply the Weld-On, quickly apply whatever clamps and magnets I could as quickly as possible and then physically hold the pieces together to form the circular openings. I did so by glueing and holding one side until it set well enough (about 10 minutes) then glueing and holding the other. Not cool! I then applied E6000 to the end caps. The left cap sticks out about 1" and the right cap sits flush. The left side turned out better than the right, hence the clamp on the right to make it more circular while the E6000 dries. Results of that still pending.

Lots of parts that were half finished or pending are starting to come together. Yoke: I have been putting off the yoke assembly because it just seems a bit daunting. I had to start it at some point so today was as good a day as any. I started by clamping the bridge and the shoulder arches together to see how they fit. It ended up looking something like this. On KB's armor there are some indents in the center of the bridge that lines up with arches. On other armors those indents are cut out and the convex ends on the arches fit into the openings. I thought about cutting the concave indents out on the bridge but realized that the pieces fit fine anyways so I saved myself the effort. That is an option if you so desire however. Observing the fitment check was good because it showed me areas on each piece that needed to be trimmed and dremeled down to line up a bit better. Content with that after trimming and a second fitment check, I glued them together. Next was to attach the back piece to the bridge. I did a fitment check again and marked and sanded away any trouble spots. I then re-clamped to make sure the alignment was okay. Perhaps others will trim better than I did but I could not get the back piece to perfectly align with the bridge/arch piece. If you find yourself in that situation, fear not, it will be filled in later prior to painting. After clearing away trouble spots (namely some excess return edge on the back piece, I glued them together. Don't forget to sand your glueing surface for better adhesion. Here is my sanded bridge on the Executioner Yoke. And here they are! All in all, they were nowhere near as difficult as I made them out to be. The key is having the correct size AND quantity of clamps to hold them all together. I had 1", 2" and 3" clamps to get around the various angles and curves of the pieces.

After being sidelined for a few days with a planned surgery, I'm getting back into the swing of things. I've been having to correct a lot of self-inflicted mistakes lately. Forearms: KB's forearms come as 4 separate pieces, a front and back and two side rails. When cut and formed correctly, they make a completely enclosed piece. I taped up the forearms to wrap my head around how to put them together. Upon doing this, I realized that I made a bit of a mistake during initial trimming. I cut off the side rail on one of the side pieces that the front piece would sit on for assembly. I did this on both forearms. Whoops! In order to fix this, I found some cut pieces out of the heap of scrap ABS I saved and created some faux rails on the missing sides. Hard to tell from the photo but here they are on both pieces. After a TON of fitment, measuring and alignment, I used a dremel to sand down all of the excess return edge so that the side rails would line up with with the back piece. At which point I glued the side rails to the back piece. On the sides that had the mounting rails intact, there are no features in the piece to work around so I used an interior cover strip to hold the pieces together. The other pieces have indents for the greeblies to be applied later. As such they do not fit securely without some modifications. Using tape, I stuck the two pieces together to where I wanted them to be and drew a line where the indents don't overlap and measured the difference. I then backed it off a few mm so that there wasn't any open space when glued together. Using lexan scissors I cut out those indents. I then double checked fitment and glued them together when I saw they were okay. With everything in place on the sides, I then moved to the front pieces. I guess I forgot to take photos here but referencing the CRL, the front piece sits flush on the mounting rails so that it isn't jutting out from the front too much. As originally cut, my pieces were sitting out too far. So I used a belt sander to sand off about 5 mm of edge, checking fitment along the way until the pieces sat more flush on the mounts. Content with fitment I then applied glue onto the sides that had the mounts intact, let them dry, then glued the other sides with a lot of patience, magnets and clamps to get it to sit flush with the sides. It was a chore and I don't recommend it to anyone. Point being, be sure not to trim the side pieces of the forearms too much and leave those rails intact! KB just posted on FB today that he is working on a new mold for the forearms so perhaps this will be ancient history for future KB builders but be sure to ask before cutting too much. The NEXT issue I encountered as a result of my mis-trimming with the forearms is that the upper points of the front piece with the make shift mounting rails jutting out, leaving an unsightly gap. I wracked my brain of the best way to fix this and had a moment of serendipity. Each piece I had to correct was the mirror image of the other. The pieces with the intact rails needed to be trimmed anyway so I took those trimmings and found that they were 90% matches to the opposite piece! So with a bit of glue, some magnets and patience, I fit those trimmings to the opposite side so that the pointy gap was nearly gone! Here are both pieces with the small corrective shims. I'm confident that after filling in the seams up top and painting that you won't even be able to notice. Happy with the work to fix my mistakes, I applied the front "greeblie" after sanding and general clean up to its respective area with E6000 and will let it dry for a few days.

Interestingly, they are pre-trimming the pieces as well. That's at least something!

Congrats and great work!

I've been working on a lot of stuff but much of it is half finished, namely the thighs and forearms, so I'll wait to post about those. Here are a few updates on some more complete things. Biceps: I went ahead and closed up the biceps, comfortable with the feedback I received on the overlap. Left Bicep Right Bicep "Wait, wait, wait!" you say. "There is an extra seam there you goober!" And you would be correct. As I was comparing the two biceps, I realized that perhaps I cut off too much plastic on one side and the seam was just a little to far to the side when I put the two halves together. So I cut out a shim of sorts to extend it out, bringing the seam overlap a bit more center. Here is the entire shim, which I actually ended up trimming a bit anyway. The pencil line was where I wanted the seam to be. The first pic is the completed bicep. Here are the two side by side. My plan obviously is the fill in the extra seam before I paint the pieces. Spats Pt 1: The spats are a bit tricky because they are meant to fit over each other around the ankle, but the pieces, as manufactured, don't fit very well. This was true of the Anovos kit and KB's is similar. So I did some initial assembly and will work on accuracy later. When you trim the spats, I was sure to leave an extra bit of overhang for the smaller clasp piece to glue onto. I then glued the clasp piece on that overhang so that the two butt edges sat as close together as possible. Pt 1 complete. Ab/Kidney No photos here because I was so focused on getting it right I just plum forgot! So forgive the word salad. Hopefully this will be helpful to a future builder in some way by outlining my thought process. Due to some other mishaps I'll detail later, I was super cautious when it came to assembling the Ab and Kidney plates. I just wanted to be quadruply sure I wasn't cutting too much. Upon initial fitting and taping of the two together, there was a lot of overlap of the kidney plate. I forgot to take a photo so you'll just have to take my word for it. (I've been on a heavy exercise regimen the past 4 months and I guess I brought in my waistline more than I thought, but I digress.) My wife helped me to trace some pencil lines of the overlap. On right side it was 30 mm in and on the left it was closer to 60 mm. As I pondered that more I decided that it could NOT be that way due to symmetry issues. I liked the 30 mm line though so I just drew a fit line 30 mm in on the left side too. I then taped up the pieces again and put it on to check fitment. It wasn't quite as snug but still a comfortable fit. Content with the 30 mm lines, I split the kidney in the back. KB's armor has a distinct indentation on the kidney piece so I just cut and sanded along that line. Wanting to STILL be sure it was a good fit, I taped up the now cut pieces back to the ab plate and put it on again. Fitment was still good! So I shortened the kidney pieces at those marks and began to adhere them to the ab plate. To do so I measured the distance from the top of the ab to the bottom edge just below the ab boxes on each side. Ended up around 9 inches. I then cut out some 3 x 9" ABS pieces to act as the bridge. I then applied glue and clamped down. Once that was sufficiently set, I glued the kidney pieces to the bridge pieces, being sure to keep the orientation correct. It is a simple thing but I highly recommend marking "Up", "Front" and "Back" with arrows or words just to keep yourself straight. I then did one final fitment check, crossing my fingers I didn't screw it up. Look Ma it fits! I still need to secure the bottom half with a bridge as well as the box end is poking out a bit.

Cool, thanks for the input!

I have a question about the inner seam on the biceps. For level 3 cert it says that the seam need to overlap. I’m not necessarily going to lvl 3 but since I’m doing executioner as well I figured I might as well overlap for these pieces since they clearly do on the executioner. Here’s what I have so far on one bicep. Thoughts? Would this be okay for both TFA and Executioner?

I've been waiting nearly 3 days to post the above! Boards were glitchy all weekend!

After a far away troop today, I'm back and plugging along with a few more things tonight. Adhesive: At the recommendation of others, my principle adhesive will be ABS cement. I found this on Amazon (adding link to OP). I probably got waaaay too much but better than not enough. Never having purchased it before, I wasn't sure how much I would truly need. You'd probably be okay with just a pint for this build. It says "Low VOC" but it is really smelly! With small kids and a pregnant wife in the home, all glueing will take place in the garage with this ventilator. Fixing Imperfections with Heat Gun Some of my pieces have some "bubbles" or lips that make good edges more difficult. I decided to attempt some heat gun work on one such flaw on a piece of bicep tonight. My gun has a "High" and "Low" setting so I set it to "Low" hit the area for no more than 7-10 seconds at a time and pressed it against a flat surface to flatten it out a bit. Before: After: Biceps Pt 1: Content with that small fix, I then proceeded to glue one side of the biceps tonight. To do so I glued an interior cover strip to each bicep like so... After letting that cure for an hour or so (way better turn around time than E6000) I then glued the other half to each side. There are small gaps near the top and bottom of the seam but that will be filled in and painted over later one so I'm not concerned about them. Shoulder Bells: I also worked on the shoulder bells tonight. Following Ruthar's great tutorial, I clamped the inserts so that they stick out from the top edge of the bell about 1/2". I then traced the outline of the insert with pencil. Finally, after sanding the insert and the outlined section of the bell, I applied adhesive and clamped it down. I repeated these steps for the other bell. Executioner Bells: I then repeated the above steps for the Executioner Bells. They will be chillin' for a while until I get to painting them. Posterior Prep for Strapping: I also took the opportunity while things were drying to prepare the posterior piece for future strapping. I measure the length of the notch and split the difference. I then created faux notches to match the Anovos piece at 50 mm distance from that center line. Matching the distances outline in Ukswrath's thread of 3/4" in and 1" up I marked some holes for drilling. I'm not sure if it had to be exactly those distances and such. The key is symmetry and consistency. The little "swoop" up on the top center ridge was how the piece came to me so I just had to deal with it like that.

Glad I'm not alone in my ignorance! A guy in one of the Facebook build groups suggested it. Bless him for it!

Ab Box Trimming and Shaping To trim the Ab boxes to the desired shape I used a contour tool. I didn't know this even existed until earlier this week. It made this task a breeze! I shaped the tops and bottoms of each box, making sure to keep the tools orientation correct (gotta be cautious of that or else you'll get the exact opposite contour that you desire!) I then taped the boxes to the Ab to get a rough fit. Overall not too shabby! Box D has a bit of a gap up top from over trimming the curve but I can fill that in later upon assembly.

Things look good to me. Best of luck trooper!

Bien hecho y bienvenido!

AJ Edman TK - 77964 Letter Andrew Thanks! http://www.whitearmor.net/eib/certificates/77964-centurion.png

More Shin work: Continuing on from last night, I set out to create faux shelfs to have a more even seam on either side. So I used some excess ABS and glued it with some overlap then glued the front piece onto that overlap. After removing magnets: On the other side, I added a shelf onto the back portion of the shin so the overlap goes from front to back. This was per Ruthar's recommendation in his build to create a cleaner look from the front. Down the line I will add velcro to the shelf and front half that overlaps to close it up. I'm a bit worried that I may have cut off too much ABS here so that when I close it, it won't create a good seam as there will be too much tension pulling outward. Test fitting it around my calf is totally fine but I won't know how it truly looks until much later after painting and such. I may just add some velcro to it as soon as it arrives from Amazon just to know for sure. I might replace this shelf with a slightly longer one too. That's still up in the air. I then set out to do the right shin, leaving a little more ABS to allow for easier overlap on the open inner side this time around. For symmetry's sake, I measured the distance from the indent to the seam of my left shin and copied that on the right. I'm not sure what the exact measurement should be but I wanted to be consistent with mine and kept it about 10 mm. I also added a slightly larger shelf to allow more velcro and adhesion. Maybe too much. I can always trim that piece down the road though. Here are the differences in gaps on the open side for comparison. About 3 inches on the left and 2 inches on the right. All in all though I'm pleased with how the curves turned out on both shins and felt it was worth the trouble.

Will do. I am posting semi-regularly again in my own thread and pose questions from time to time. Please check there as well on occasion when you have time.

You sir are an inspiration! I'm working on a KB kit myself and will be using this for reference going forward.

For no reason in particular, I began shaping my shins to be more accurate to the CRL. I'm not going to go crazy trying to match it perfectly but I knew I could get a fair bit closer. Here they are for reference. I noticed on my shins that well, the connecting edges are very straight. No curvature to them as seen above. Not only that but they do not have a downhill "shelf" on which the overlapping piece can rest upon to create an even connecting joint. Hrmmph this could be trouble. So I went to work on eye balling the curvature on the inner and outer edges and this is what I ended up with. Outer Left: Inner Left: This is what the overlap looks like right now on the inner seam that would open. It looks okay-ish right now but I don't have any velcro between the plastic, which will bump it out. I may have to investigate using a heat gun to create a shelf on either side to get a more level connection. Would be curious to know what other KB builders have done to solve this conundrum. Update: Referencing Ruthar's build he used excess ABS strips to make the shelf. That seems easier and likely the route I will be taking. More to come.

Hey neighbors! I'm in Cloud City to the south and working on a dual build of TFA FOTK and TLJ Executioner at the moment. My build thread is here but mainly I'm just throwing my name out there that if you guys decide to do any armor parties in the next few months then please let me know. I will drive up and join you to help, get help and contribute in any way I can if I am able.

Titan members. I'm your neighbor to the south in Cloud City. If you guys are doing some group armor parties any time soon, please let me know. I will drive up and meet you. Friday's and Saturday's preferred. I'll jump on your boards now to see if those are already being planned.

Small update time! Things got a little busy/crazy over the holidays and I am just finishing up on initial trimming. I'm down to the Ab boxes. So I have these boxes lined up where I think they should go on the Ab. Other than B and E does it really matter? Also, KB's cut lines aren't very clear. I drew lines around where I think they should be, plus a hair more to account for carving out curvatures on the ab piece. Do these look right you think?

As Harbinger said, don't trust them on any dates until you get a shipping notification. I ordered the premier kit day 1 on 5/31/16. It was originally said to ship in Fall 2016. Still hasn't shipped to anybody. I cancelled that and moved on long ago. I expect the standard line to see at least one more delay.