Cookie Nomster

Quick update tonight. Painting has continued on select pieces. I now have satisfactory coats on every piece of armor EXCEPT the left leg and the helmet and armor clips. Those are undergoing first and second coats respectively. The left leg has the extra boxes, so the first two coats went on this evening (~5 min apart). Second set of coats will go on in 48 hours. It looks good in the picture, but up close you would see it clearly needs a second coat. First two coats put on this evening I moved on to the helmet and body clips. The helmet clips have had primer and 2-3 coats already, but they were unsatisfactory and there was too much paint on them, so I ended up scraping some off. They will require one additional coat after tonight. Now, the body clips are an interesting story. I haven't complained much, but I'm a little irritated with the clips I got from Justin Morrison of the Emerald City Garrison. Good guy, and I haven't raised the issues with him yet, but you'll see what I'm talking about. His clips are 3D-printed and have much sharper lines and an overall cleaner look than the clips that come with the kit. They are indeed good looking...that is until you put paint on them. Then the defects in the 3D printing are painfully obvious - at least in the set I got. The clips were £20+shipping. I ordered my clips with the holster, which is an awesome holster and one of the better ones you can get. Perhaps I got a bad set of clips. As you can see from the picture, many surface defects that require work - and there are defects with every single clip. I don't know much about 3D printing, but it could be a crappy resolution, or something else. These clips are small, so its annoying to work on them. My approach was to fill holes with gap-filling CA glue, because I'm not going to do the apoxie-sculpt on these.. they're too small and I don't want to get into the sanding. My clips won't be perfect, but I'm annoyed with the quality for the money. I do recommend Justin's holster, its nice...but I'm less likely to recommend the clips based on my initial experience. Anyway its not pictured, but I also laid down a gloss clearcoat on the helmet beak tonight (one of at least two planned), as I plan to start wrapping up the helmet soon. Additionally, my MICH helmet pads arrived from Amazon for the inside of my helmet. With regard to the helmet, I'm considering ordering a couple fan and mic kits from Ukswrath, but so far I'm on the fence. Might just do the research and build one myself, as the cost is high for the Ukswrath kits and we're talking about low-technology here (you pay for convenience). Plus, it'd be nice to just learn the low-voltage electric stuff so I can fix my own parts if/when they break. I already know how to do home electric, so I can't imagine this is difficult stuff, just time consuming. Highest priority right now on the armor is gloss clearcoat, as the weather is rapidly degrading. Luckily, in 2-3 days, all my white spray-painting should be done. Also, I need to paint black boxes on the armor prior to clear coating certain pieces (abs, forearms, shins, thermal det). I will probably spray-paint the black on the thermal det after taping and bagging everything else off. It will look much nicer than any brush or sponge if I spray.

I still have to do the belt for my kit. Dreading it. Ordered JAFO's kit, should arrive by next week. Hopefully I don't screw it up!

So after painting, my process will be: Light wet sand w/1000 grit where needed (knocks off dust, dead bugs and small nodules/imperfections) Apply multiple gloss coats (same as clear coat, except supposedly with gloss finish) Perform a light wet-sand on each piece. Meguiars compound Wax / Polish This will be a tedious process, and may take awhile to do. But the gloss coat should add good protection over the paint. I might submit pictures for approval prior to finishing all of this. I purchased 12 rattle-cans of Universal Gloss White, and so far I've used 10 full cans, and just started into the 11th one. One can was bad, and had a giant leak, so much of it was wasted. I suspect I'll be left with one can when its done, but we'll see.

I've been slowly making progress. Weekends in October are insane busy for me, but I need to get the painting done this month before the temperatures drop out of the required range. We had some rain here that set me back a bit, but this is a good update. Nearly every piece of armor had, up to this point, received one coat of paint. However, the key exception was the shins. These needed to be glued together. I used two-part epoxy for the job, hopefully it will hold and flex a little bit. These pictures were taken several days ago, and once the epoxy had dried, next step was to install leg boxes on the left leg. I actually did that today. A gain, two-part epoxy was used. I suspect I'll have to revisit these boxes tomorrow and do some minor sanding and perhaps some gap-filling with CA glue around the "seams." One area that hasn't gotten much love lately is my mitcheg1 helmet. In previous posts, I had to do some repair filling and paint-work to the beak. I'm pretty satisfied with how that turned out, and the only thing left is gloss-coat on the beak. But I turned focus to the main bulk of the helmet itself. Over the last two nights, I've put in several hours of painstaking hand-painting on the helmet. The below pictures detail the progress. Helmet with painters tape, prior to removal I was very happy with how well the automotive refinishing tape worked out. This stuff is the real deal, there was absolutely no paint-bleed, and the lines were very crisp. I highly recommend it, and will continue to use this on future project. In fact, at this point I will probably not use decals for the black portions of the armor, and will hand-paint black areas using the tape to mask off areas and get straight lines. After night #1 of painting After night #1 of painting I used a foam brush to paint the grill - this was much more effective than using any kind of traditional brush. The foam "pushed" the paint into the holes. After night #2 of painting After night #2 of painting The lines are not perfect. There's only a certain level of perfection you can obtain with handpainting, even when using model paint brushes. I believe the screen-used helmets actually leveraged decals for some of the black stripes. I might go out tomorrow and buy a small can of gloss white to do some minor touch up in some areas, but overall I'm pretty satisfied with the bucket so far. The other area of focus has been spray-painting the rest of the armor. There were some areas that needed to be sanded and re-painted because of overspray. The other day, my thermal detonator blew off my sawhorse and luckily was only slightly damaged in some non-visible areas. The thermal det is by far the most fragile piece of armor in this kit. I wish it was a little more reinforced. Many people have filled their thermal det with expanding foam. I did not do this, but I might re-visit the idea if I drop it again. You can see helmet clips being painted here, along with touch-up on biceps and thermal det Abs are looking pretty good...this is after the second coat of paint (second day of painting on it) I previously mentioned that I might need to sand down the chest-plate and redo it. I've now applied three coats of paint (actually six coats, but 3 separate days of painting) to the chest plate, and the defect is mostly not visible. I know its there, but I don't think it stands out like it once did. I'm not going to sand anything down at this point unless I must do it. I had a little mishap with a paint can that required me to sand and re-paint the cod. I've been following the same procedure with each new can of paint (shake, spray to check paint quality, then spray armor) and of course the one can I don't follow procedure spews crap out onto my armor. Otherwise this paint has been pretty good so far, but I'm burning through rattlecans quick. I still have some painting left to do. There are some things show here (belt boxes, helmet clips, and calf that still need at least one more coat, and the left calf has not yet been painted at all due to boxes just going on today. I'm getting close to being done with white paint. That will be followed by black paint on thermal det, and various "decal" locations. Then, gloss coating will be last. Following that, wet sand with 1k grit paper, and Meguiars compound + polish to get a nice shine on the armor. I haven't actually tried the armor on in a long time, so I hope everything will fit well. I also have some minor strapping velcro work that still needs to be done once painting is done.

Who here has the Imperial Gaskets FOTK belt? That's one of the last things I need to acquire. I'm just wondering how it stacks up against the Belts of the FO. BOTFO is slightly more expensive.

Outstanding bro!

Quite a busy weekend in terms of armor production. Most things went well, some things not so well. Continuing on where the previous post left off, I had to finish sanding armor pieces. In the previous post, I mentioned that I found a low spot on the chest plate. I addressed this with apoxie sculpt, and went on to sand this down so it was silky smooth. Also finished up the abs and the thighs. All pieces are now sanded. I made one "grave" error with the chest plate - I should have re-primed the sanded area with filler primer, but I didn't do that (simply because I'm inexperienced). More on this failure later. In a previous post, I showed some air bubbles on the mitcheg1 helmet beak. This was unfortunate because painting was mostly completed on this piece. First, I sanded the area down to remove the paint. Unfortunately, there are a lot of air bubbles in this particular piece of the helmet. As I sanded, more were revealed inside the plastic. This picture below demonstrates: Ugly! Very frustrating, so I set to work on it with apoxie sculpt. My intention was to basically create an entirely new beak line on the bottom of the beak with the apoxie sculpt. I was successful in this, and the sanding results were satisfactory. Picture is a little blurry, but no more air holes Next, I switched focus to the shins. The front and the rear pieces of each shin had some variances in the lines where the two pieces married together, so I worked on sanding the lines such that when they are glued together, there aren't any huge gaps. Results look something like this (I know its not lined up perfectly for the picture, but you get the idea on what I was trying to achieve) Worked on sanding the lines down a bit so the front and rear calf pieces match better Still to be done - glue these pieces together on the outside of the leg, and add leg boxes on the left leg. I plan to use two-part epoxy for the job, and this is yet to be done as of when this post was written. So, at this point I now had armor that was mostly sanded and ready to be painted, so I decided to start painting. I did two coats on all the pieces shown, and will let it dry for 48 hours before doing anything else. The process I plan to follow is: Two coats about 5 minutes apart (done) Dry 48 hours Inspect, light sanding on bumps and bugs (believe it or not, bugs like to land on paint and get stuck). Size of defect will determine sand paper grit Two additional coats, 5-10 minutes apart Dry 48 hours Inspect, light sand as needed Gloss Coat (2 coats, 5-10 minutes apart) Dry 48 hours Inspect, sand as needed Gloss Coat (2 coats, 5-10 minutes apart) Dry 3-5 days Compound & Polish This is a very drawn our process, but I want it to look good, and patience appears to be key when painting. I don't think I have enough gloss coat for all the coats I want to do, so I will be headed to the store to pick up more. In actuality, I really would prefer to do 3x coats of paint, but I don't know if I have the time or money for it (mostly...I don't want to spend the time). Here are some pictures of today's progress: You can see the beak there....it looks great! In general, I'm very happy with the paint and how it's gone on so far. I got some experience from working on my helmet, so I know that multiple coats will be critical for this paint to look good. Now, about that "grave" error I mentioned earlier. My failure to re-prime on the chest plate shows a visual defect right on the middle of the chest plate. The problem? The apoxie sculpt, when sanded, is significantly smoother than the surrounding fiberglass! The apoxie sculpt is so good that it's TOO good for the material it's matched up with! I have a super smooth spot surrounded by an area with tiny little air bubbles that would have been covered up by a primer. In the pictures above, you cannot see this defect. I'm on the fence as to what I'm going to do. My initial course of action will probably be this: Continue with planned re-coating of paint Observe after dry time If defect still painfully obvious: Sand down the area to fiberglass Re-prime with filler primer Re-paint I'm really hoping additional coats of paint fill things in a bit, but I have a sneaking suspicion that this ain't gonna happen. Live and learn. I will say that this armor is just covered in defects. You might as well dip it in bondo before you paint it if you want perfection. In general, I don't have the time to achieve perfection, but if I did, I'd be spending a crapload more time with bondo. The paint just picks up every little defect known to man. Ah well...it'll still look good in the end (I hope). Still to do: Glue calfs Paint abs and calfs At least I made a good amount of progress this weekend...hope it's worth it!

This evenings progress below. Only three pieces remain: thighs (2), abs. Unfortunately, I found a low spot on the chest plate that will need to be addressed with apoxie sculpt. If it was anywhere else on the armor, I'd probably ignore it, but I'm afraid it will show up under paint. The chest plate is there for all to see, so it needs to look good. If you look in the picture below at the chest plate, you can see a circular pattern of grey primer in the middle of the chest plate (near the bottom of the chest plate, if it were oriented properly). I did not notice this low spot at all until I was sanding by hand and observed dust collecting there but not other areas around it. Felt it, and sure enough, circular low spot. Annoying! But fixable. If I get a few minutes tonight, I'll get the apoxie sculpt mixed up and put on there so I can sand it tomorrow with the remaining pieces. Regarding the calfs/shins, I think I will glue them first prior to paint. Still undecided on clips, but leaning towards painting them separately and installing last.

Sanding....continued. Getting closer. One useful point worth mentioning: I noticed that the SEM flex primer takes about 2-3 times the effort to sand down in comparison to the Rustoleum filler primer. It seems to adhere much more tightly to the material...and it has a totally different unsanded feel than the filler primer. The only remaining pieces to sand on the body armor are: Thighs, Abs, Chest Plate, Yoke, and Thermal Det. Sadly, these are also the biggest pieces. But I'm hoping they go faster...larger surfaces are easier to sand. There are alot of imperfections on these pieces too...so I expect at least another 2 hours of sanding before everything is ready to paint. Had to use flash, as I lost daylight With regard to painting, I'm contemplating gluing the calfs/shins together prior to paint (and adding leg boxes also). Additionally, I haven't decided if I will glue clips on prior to paint or not. I need to think about it and come up with a plan. I'm also going to check some other build threads to see what guys are doing. I could go either way, and see the benefits of both methods. If you have any opinions, feel free to weigh in.

Quick update tonight...began the sanding process after filling. The ideal way to do this would involve some level of wet sanding, but the apoxie sculpt is relatively troublesome with light grit sponges by hand, so I'm using a detail sander to knock off the apoxie sculpt, then hitting it by hand with a mid grit sponge, followed by a light grit sponge. The end result is alot of dust but nice smooth surfaces. I have quite a few pieces remaining to do, hoping to get more time this week to work on it. What you see lined up here is what I got done in about 1 hour tonight, prior to rinse, which still needs to be done.

There's enough prep work with this armor that you'll get sick of hand-sanding realllllll fast.

Agree....I glazing putty would probably have been much easier than what I did.

The problem is that even the tiniest defects show up under paint. When I was working on the helmet beak, I sanded it down and did some filling and thought - hey, the primer filler should take care of the rest. I don't want to walk around looking like a Stormtrooper pin cushion. Here's a shot of the beak that I took this morning to show the types of tiny defects that become painfully obvious after paint.

So, remember that part about being pretty happy with the number of air bubbles? Yeah, I lied. After allowing the primer to dry for about two days, I brought it in this evening to fully inspect it up close. As many of you know, after primer is when many imperfections are clearly visible. I was probably being a perfectionist, but there were tons of tiny holes to fill that I had previously missed. The number of surface imperfections in this armor is huge, primarily because of the material used to construct it. Tonight the mission objective was to fill in all the holes using apoxie sculpt. First thing I did was very closely visually inspect each piece and use a pencil to circle imperfections I wanted to address, like so (below). This process was performed on every single piece provided by Jim, and only one piece (hand plate) did not need some type of filling. This process repeated on every single piece of armor So, after about 2.5 hours of filling with apoxie sculpt, I finally have everything filled pretty much....except for some spots on my helmet beak that still need to be addressed. But truthfully, the working time you have with apoxie sculpt is probably closer to 1.5 hours compared to the 4 they claim on the package. So at 2.5, it was becoming very difficult to manipulate, and I was glad to be done. I filled probably several hundred holes. It appears the worst spots are clearly around the fiberglass joins, but there are assorted air bubbles all over the place. Truth be told...I'm looking forward to working with ABS on the next build. Anyway...here are two pictures of tonight's effort. So many holes...so little time I have not yet performed any wet sanding of the primer coat (which it clearly needs). My first step will be to let this apoxie sculpt cure for 24 hours, then knock it down with some manual sanding, and probably some spot sanding with the detail sander. I plan to inspect it, and then make a decision if additional coats are required with the primer prior to wet sanding. I have a feeling this will be the next step. A few items have arrived, and I'm feeling pretty close to being at the point where I shouldn't have to buy anything else to complete my first troop once this armor is done. My Darman neck seal arrived (less than a week from order placed to arriving at my doorstep), and also my electrical equipment for a planned experimental mod of the Heston F-11D to add lights. As you can see, we have 3mm red LEDs, some 47k oHm resistors, and some 3v batteries, as well as battery housings, including two with on/off switches. I don't know much about electric, so we'll see if it works out. Tackling the blaster mod will probably be the very last thing I do because I don't need lights to troop with the gun. That's all for tonight folks, check back later this weekend hopefully!

Another update to share. First, I've been slowly working on my mitcheg1 helmet, and have been adding gloss coats to the white. Unfortunately, I had a slight run on the beak, and will have to do some spot sanding, probably 1 re-coat of white, then 3-4 recoats of gloss. However, the helmet is coming along nicely, probably only one more round of gloss coat before I moved to painting the black. Then a few more coats of gloss and probably a light wet sand and compound + polish. I hope it works out....I truthfully don't know what I'm doing when it comes to painting, and there are so many opinions on the internet that I'm not sure exactly what to do...but if it turns out halfway decent, I'll be happy. I know it won't be perfect. I have to keep telling myself that the biggest critics will be others in the 501st. Most people off the street won't notice the imperfections I know exist. Helmet after 3-4 gloss-coats on the white. Next step: paint the black I last worked on the helmet about 4 days ago, so last night I took a big step and began prepping the rest of the armor for paint. Most of my strapping is done, and what remains can be done after the painting (lower-legs, velcro inside forearms and biceps). My Darman neckseal should be arriving on Thursday, so I'm excited to see how that makes everything look. Anyway, I began taping things up for primer. Because this armor is flexible, one of the major concerns is cracking of paint. Many Jimmi builders have found this to be an unavoidable fact of life with this armor. I have therefore elected to use two different types of primer: Rustoleum Filler Primer SEM Flexible Primer The Rustoleum will be used for the majority of the build, particularly in parts that won't experience much flexing (shoulder bells, biceps, helmet, forearms, thighs, calfs, knees, hand, belt boxes). The SEM will be used for the parts known to flex, particularly the abs, chest-plate, spats, and yolk. The SEM is nearly triple the price-per-can of Rustoleum, so here's to hoping it works out. The idea is that the underlying primer must flex, or the paint won't flex with it. Who knows it it will work. I bought one can, and was able to coat the above-mentioned flexible parts with just the one can. Here are some pictures of the process. All these parts used Rustoleum Rustoleum filler primer used here Everything here used SEM flexible primer These parts also used SEM flex primer Parts laid out to dry, which they do fairly quickly. The butt-plate is turned over so I could spray the bottom edge. You can see I also sprayed my helmet greeblies I was fairly happy with the smoothness of my armor. I have to go out and inspect it again now that it has dried overnight, but I don't have too much more filling to do. I spent alot of time, particularly on the lower half of the armor and chest-plate filling in air-bubble holes from the casting process. I still have some work to do, but overall it shouldn't be much more than a night of light spot-sanding, fill, dry, then spot sand and light re-coat of primer. Two days total effort, and only on select pieces. Some of the armor will be ready for a light wet-sand and painting. I do plan to tape over some additional snaps which caught more paint than I thought they would, but otherwise I'm close to starting the full-on paint-job for this armor. Here's to hoping I can get it right.

I would say yeah, there is. I've already ordered parts to convert one the non-lighted version I received last week into a lighted version using LEDs and 3v batteries....hope it works out.

The empress graciously granted me some time on Labor Day to work on the build, and I was able to utilize it to accomplish some things that have been lingering around. In the last build update, I built the belt that would hold up the legs. In between then and now, I used two-part epoxy to glue the fuzzy-side velcro to the inside of the thighs. Here is a picture: Thigh velcro placement After trying things on, I was very happy with the placement and the belt itself. However, I found that the weight of the thighs really pulls down on the belt. Several others have connected their belts to the main chest harness to help keep the belt up. I decided this was necessary after trying on the armor with the belt not connected. So the first thing I did on labor day was focus on creating extensions to hold up the belt. I took four straps, meticulously measured them after trying on abs with belt, and then created loops and sewed the extensions to the existing harness. For those following this build, the best way to do this will be to just run the original chest harness all the way down to the bottom of the abs...would have been much easier. Extensions sewed on and dropping to hold the thigh belt To be honest, I'm not sure yet how I'll suit up...we'll figure that part out later I think it's most likely that I'll step into the thighs and abs, pull them up over me, then snap the abs in the front to the chest harness. The next step was to tackle the calf pieces, which are two-parts. The insides of the knees require trimming, because they don't flare like the outside of the knee. With my particular version of the kit, the calf pieces utilized the same mold for both legs. Earlier in this build, I filled and sanded the indent for the clasps on the inside of the legs (because there are no clasps on the inside, only the outside of the leg). Now, I was careful to make sure my cuts were matching the right sides of the legs. I used aviation snips, followed by detail sander to achieve smooth edges. Freshly cut inside (front and back pieces both shown here, they are not yet glued together) I didn't take pictures of the rest of the process, as you get the idea, but here are some shots of the finished product Front of calf Rear of calf Since I was out getting covered in fiberglass anyway, I decided I was going to cut out some pieces of the forearms which some have used decals for. The black of my undersuit will show up nicely through these holes. I used a dremel followed by needle files to achieve straight and smooth lines. Forearm detailing. I think it will look nicer than decals in these locations. You can see top and bottom of forearms. I also used this time to trim and sand my spats. I will probably follow steamboatphan's method of spats, by utilizing the clip and some velcro. Spats trimmed and ready for primer and paint I also gave a nice light sand to the belt boxes and leg boxes that will go on the armor. They will be ready for primer and paint after this. Belt and leg boxes sanded Next, I used a razor blade to trim up the helmet clips that came with my mitcheg1 helmet. Nice clean lines achieved with a simple razor blade I finished the night with filling of holes and defects using apoxy sculpt. I focused on the thighs, knee pads, spats, and calves. I will sand this down sometime this week...though next two nights are booked with other activities. This part is a pain, but should be worth it in the end. Filling tiny air bubble holes with apoxy sculpt. And last but not least...my Heston 3D blaster arrived in the mail today. This is the 501st version, no stock. I wasn't originally planning to get the Heston blaster, but it went on sale with immediate shipping, so I picked one up since I anticipate finishing the armor sometime in the next 4-5 weeks, and I don't have the time to assemble and paint my own at this time (though I may still do so...or elect for another maker in the future). This will get the job done in the short term. The Heston 3D stock-less blaster. That's all for now folks!

Yeah....I don't profess to pretend anything I'm doing here hasn't been done by somebody else. I've looked at a lot of pictures, other peoples build threads, and I guess I'm just hoping that my pictures give a good view of literally each part of the process. In no way will this be as detailed as your build threads...but I'm hoping it will have more pictures than any of the Jimmi builds I've seen so far. The detail you put into your build threads requires a level of patience and time the force has not endowed upon me.

Amazingly I was able to get another 1.5 hours in on the build tonight. The primary objective was to complete the straps for the thigh-belt. These particular pieces will hang down off the belt created in the previous post, and velcro to the inside of the thighs. Here's to hoping the velcro will be enough to hold up those heavy pieces. The beauty of this system is that I can add a third strap if necessary to hold up the thighs. First step was to measure the length needed for the strapping. Due to the curvature of the thigh pieces, I found that I could most benefit from two lengths of strap - 10" and 11" (one of each size per thigh). This length is non-inclusive of the material on the strap that will loop around the belt (which I measured to be around 6.5"). Total lengths of straps - 16.5 and 17.5 inches. I cut the straps, used a soldering iron to touch up the tips, and then sewing machine to create the loops and sew on the sharp side of the velcro, which will face out towards the inner part of the thigh. Here are some pictures of the finished product. I have not yet applied the soft-side velcro to the inside of the thighs...ran out of time to do that tonight. Close-up of belt and straps Looking straight down on the belt and the straps To give you an idea of how it will hang down, and the placement. I found that it will work best to place this in the area of my waist that I normally wear a belt Holding up the thigh pieces so you can see the general idea. Obviously the straps will go inside the armor.

heston - do any of these include the electronics in them (lights basically)?

Are these the 501st version? Answered my own question, sorry!

I was able to continue progress tonight....the wife graciously allowed me to utilize the sewing machine and so on while she worked on a puzzle in the same room. Maybe it was because I used my newfound sewing skills to repair a set of sheets for the kids bed? Anyway, picking up where I left off from the other night - I started the night working on the chest plate. My initial plan was to utilize magnets with a small amount of velcro, but I don't think that's going to work out. I'm going for the "lots of velcro + snaps" approach, although there is only one snap at the moment. Also, the velcro I had used previously wasn't puffy enough to catch. On this armor set, there is a little distance between the chest plate and the yoke because the edges kind of flare out. That makes it harder for the velcro to meet on the insides of the armor. So my approach is to load up on velcro so that some of it catches. First, I did some removal of what was there previously. Then measured and trimmed sticky-back velcro + CA glue and attached the new pieces. Check it out: Might be a little hard to see, but the yoke is covered in the sharp side of the velcro. All the velcro will be hidden from external view by the yoke And here's the other side...obviously the behind-view of the chest-plate itself. You can see the magnets here...at the moment these will NOT be used. The magnets that are there will probably be removed for better velcro adherence. The magnets obviously pushed the chest plate away slightly, so they will be coming off. I might have to re-use these super magnets somewhere else in the build. With the new velcro, I was eager to try the chest plate on to see how well I liked the connection. Trying on the uppers. No gaskets or neck seal when I was trying this on...was trying to get a feel for how sturdy the connection was. I was satisfied with it; though I foresee potential future tweaking here. The uppers are not completely done yet. I need to install velcro on the inside of the forearms and the biceps...but I'll probably tackle that simple job when I velcro the thighs. Since I had the sewing machine out anyway, my next job this evening was to begin work on the belt which will hold up the thighs. I got the initial simple belt itself completed, but the next step will be to add four straps (two per thigh) that will drop straight down from this belt, and then velcro inside the thighs. Ran out of time tonight to do measurements and the drop-straps, but the belt is complete Simple belt sewn and complete. Next, I will add four drop straps will be added that will connect to the thighs. But, I'm out of time for tonight, see you next time.

Nice Darren! Neck seal looks friggin amazing!

It's been nearly a month since my last post! Sorry for that! The build progress has definitely slowed down some due to life, kids, etc. One major factor has been the heat. Since I'm doing alot of work in the garage, it's blazing hot out there with 90 degree plus weather for the last 2 weeks, not to mention that humidity. With all that said, some progress has been made, and I'm hoping it picks up here in this next month. My last post detailed some helmet painting. Since that last post, I've applied at least two more coats of white to the helmet, with a light wet sand once. I plan to do another round of wet sanding, then a coat of white followed by multiple coats of clear gloss to finish up the white. Then I'll attack the black. Aside from the helmet, my focus has shifted to the legs...specifically the thighs. So I've actually had approximately 3-4 trimming and sanding sessions on the thighs, because I've found that it the mold was much too long for my particular legs. The approach has been trim, sand, fit, repeat. With significant trimming required, you can imagine it took me a bit to do this. Here is an early shot of the thighs, from when I first started. On the left is an untrimmed thigh, and on the right is one that has undergone the first round of trimming at the top only. I ended up trimming from the bottom twice, and from the top about 3 times. Also, I cut out parts of the bottom for the knee cap and the joint behind the knee. Despite the current level of trimming, I could probably do more, but I'm going to leave it as-is for now. Thighs after multiple trim and sand sessions Bottom-front of thigh Rear-bottom of thigh. As you can see, its slightly more rounded. Even so, it will be difficult to kneel. One knee doable..both...impossible I also ordered a holster and clip set from Justin Morrison of the Emerald City Garrison (don't know his TK ID). Other builders have also ordered from him with good results. The clips and holster are much sharper and more refined than the ones that come with the Jimmi kit, but the total cost including shipping was a steep $106 dollars US, which almost kept me from placing the order. I hope these details are worth the price...it's not yet mounted, and won't be until I paint. My next step will to create the nylon belt that will hold up these thigh pieces, plus some additional strapping from my chest rig to connect with that belt. I've also been working, without much success, on final mounting options for my chest plate. I'm getting a little frustrated with it, and have to go back to the store for better velcro. More to follow...hopefully the next update isn't a month from now!

**drooling continues**