fragarock

Hi Troopers, It's been a while since I posted on this thread. When I left off, I had added a scope and cleaned up the Hyperfirm a bit as well as did some painting. Ultimately I was unhappy with my paint job and over the past few months have been pondering a re-paint. If you've been following me you know I made a build thread for my son's EVA foam TK armor which he wore on Halloween. Part of the work was a repaint of a Ruby's kids TK blaster. This was helpful because i got to try out a few painting techniques. Basically practice for my E-11 repaint. Here's the repaint of my son's Rubies. Here's the repaint. You can see my E-11 in the background (prior to it getting a new paint job). Here's what I did on mine. These are the "before" shots. Pew Pew! Started off with Krylon Fusion for Plastic gray primer. I was going to paint it with Alclad II laquer metallic finish paints and I'd read that they can eat away at the resin which this blaster is made from. So the primer was a safety feature. Also it helped smooth out the finish which is a bit rough being a resin cast. Next I primed it with the Alclad II primer. Allclad is applied using an airbrush so the coats are very thin. Here is is after the Alclad II primer Alclad II paints work by using a gloss black base coat. Over the top of this goes the metallic topcoat. So to start off I applied the gloss black base coat over the whole blaster. Here you can see how shiny it is on a plastic spoon. I then did spray tests of various metallic finishes to see which would look best. The polished brass would be used on the scope and the Gun Metal would be the blaster body. Airframe Aluminum was nice and shine so I wanted that for the discharge port and as a base coat under the Gun Metal hoping scratches would come thru. Here is the Gloss Black coat. It wasn't as shiny as I'd hoped. The surface of the blaster was just too rough. So I decided to wet sand the finish using Micromesh sanding cloths. These are high grit for fine polishing. Basically they go up to 12,000 grit. After the sanding i applied a new Gloss Black base coat. You can see it's much shiner that the first coat. Now that the base coat was acceptable...not great...but as good as it would get on this resin. I decided to paint the scope first using Polished Brass. I then covered it with Alclad II gloss clear coat (2) coats to protect the finish so my weathering wouldn't chew thru the brass finish. Over the brass I wanted a semi-gloss black. Something that would look slightly different than the blaster body. I chose Tamiya X-18 and sprayed it in my airbrush. I put a heavier, glossier coat on the end of the scope for a more polished look. Then I started wearing away the top coat with fine steel wool. I did the very slowly and deliberately. Like the scope, I wanted a metallic coat on the blaster body, something that would show thru the weathering. Ultimately this didn't work all that well and isn't a necessary step. But here's what I did for reference. I painted the body with Airframe Aluminum. I used the gloss clearcoat and it looked great but when I started weathering, I wasn't getting the effects I wanted. So it now exists under the top coat. Maybe it will show thru as I get actual wear and tear on this. One useful thing I discovered, a light mist of this aluminum over your dark colored top coat give a great metallic-iness look. Very subtle but nice looking. Really hard to capture on film but looks great in person. Next step was to apply the Alclad II Gun Metal. Here's the Gun Metal applied. I didn't put it on the handle grip, wanting that part to stay more black. Notice that I gloss clear-coated the scope. This was to protect the weathering and give a gloss look but it was too shiny. So I lightly went over it with steel wool which knocked down the gloss. I left the end by the eye piece a bit shinier than the rest of the scope. You'll see this in the final photos. Also, the discharge port is the Airframe Aluminum color. I took steel wool and applied directional scratching down the folding stock parts and the Hengstler counter. Also did directional strokes around the circumference of the main body barrel and end cap. Don't have pics though but it adds a bit of a machined metal look as the aluminum color below gets slightly exposed. Fore weathering/wearing of the Gun Metal finish to show what would be the bare metal below I used AK true Metal wax-based paint "Steel". This comes out of the tube slightly wet and is dry-brushed on. Apply in very thin layers. Build it up slowly. Too much will give a very metallic look but no look right for weathering. I bought this product as a test experiment but so glad I did as it works great. I should have bought the brass and used it on the scope. Here are the final photos after the weathering. I put a light sheen clear coat over the blaster to protect the weathering paint job, (2) coats. A few of these were taken before I put the scope glass/trim rings back in place. Hope you like it. Get out there and do some painting! This was a warm-up for my next job....a E-22. I'll start that build and painting in a week or so. Short person Shoretrooper build coming next year!

Agreed, the up and doen fitment looks good and it doesnt seem to be stickimg too far out from your chest. I think you need to roll the sides in tighter around your sides. Sent from my SM-G935V using Tapatalk

Looking great. How are the back of the thighs? Looks like a bit more could be trimmed for clearance at the but plate if its rubbing. The sides of your chest plate look to flare out a lot. You could hot water bend these inward for a more form fitting look. Probably not necessary but its an option. A few pieces of foam in your shin can help with the twisting. Overall I thinks its really looking good. Sent from my SM-G935V using Tapatalk

Love it. Im very happy with my RS kit. Those guys are fantastic. Wish I was close enough to visit them. Sent from my SM-G935V using Tapatalk

Hi Guys! Since I got my 501st approval back in May I've been on three official troops and one un-official night out with the kids at the Zoo Boo here in Royal Oak. The best one and most grueling so far was a 6 hour troop in September at the Detroit Tigers game. This is a yearly event that has a lot of participation from the Great Lakes Garrison, the Great Lakes Base of the Rebel Legion, and the Mandalorian Mercs. We had a really large group and there were many different costumes which made it even better. For me this was the first time I actually saw a Vader or Chewbacca costume and they were awesome. We got there early to set up and took a few group shots outside the park as the fans started to come into the park. It was quite the scene and super fun to march around the stadium in mass. Then we headed back downstairs to grab some food and get ready for our march around the in-field and a select group got to throw out the first pitch with some lucky kids. We then split into groups around the park to say hi to the fans and take pictures, lots of pictures. I'm sure I took at least 300 and for the most part the adult fans were well behaved and had fun. But like all these events, the best part was seeing all the kids who are so excited to see these characters up close for a hand shake, hi-five or picture. I was also lucky to be included on the photo shoot by Shawn M. Scott. Shawn is a great photographer who attends many of our events. He does standard photos, but takes a lot of time to craft very cool composite shots with special effects. His work is great and it lets the rest of us have awesome photos to remember the troop. https://www.facebook.com/shawn.scott.18 Take a look, there are some cool pictures! I'll definitely be doing this one next year. Special thanks to Kevin Johnson TK 52105 for organizing the wonderful event. Yes, I'm the short one. Our Rebel friends. The dangerous Mercs. And you think a TK's vision is bad! That's me on the right. This is one of my favorites, just kickin' back on a golf cart.

Looking at the photos I think there are a couple things happening here which makes the thighs look off a bit. 1. Freedom of movement is a great thing when walking and it looks like you can bend your knees quite well. But I think the thighs are sitting up a bit too high. You should drop them down a bit and reduce the gape between the top of the shins and the bottom of the thighs. Looking at reference pics from the movie, there are some troopers that have a large gap but most have a smaller one. This will also bring the top of the thighs down so they aren't up under your cod plate. 2. A right side photo shows a lot of slack in your but piece and it appears to be popping out beyond your kidney. If you shorten the strap that connects it to the cod, you can tighten it up and reduce that gap. You may have to trim the sides of this under piece if it's rubbing against your thighs. I had to. 3. Once the but is in position, take another look or photos. I'd leave at least a 1/2" gap between the top of the thighs and the cod. This will improve the look and reduce any clicking when you walk. Do the same at the back of the thighs. Start trimming the front around the cod, cut the top of the thighs and the inner thighs to make the gap. Remember to leave a bit of material for a new return edge, especially on the front. I would do a return on the inner sides too, don't want that area to be sharp. Also, I think seeing the black gap around and in between the pieces is important to the look of the finished armor, just don't over do it. 4. When you've sorted out the front, put it all on and review again. You'll want to trim the top of the back of the thighs around the but plate. I did this but later realized I also needed to trim some off the but piece too. There was just too much extra material there, especially on the sides where it touched the thighs. Again leave some material for a new return edge. Look on my build on page 5 about 1/4 of the way down. You'll see how I trimmed the back. Here you can see how the thigh is down tighter to the shins. Here you can see the clearance around the butt plate. Keep up the great work. It's these final stages where you spend much of the time finessing the pieces and fit.

Hi Stephen, The holster is attached to the canvas belt using the small screws. I believe the slotted screw head should face the inside of the belt so it's not visible when you wear it. These are called Chicago screws here but I'm not sure what you'd call them in the U.K. On my build I used these screws but the kept coming un-screwed so I removed them and used the small cap rivets for a more permanent connection. May not have been accurate but nobody seemed to have an issue with it. Check with your local garrison, they may be more picky about it.

You can cut the cod or trim off the top of the thighs. I had to do both. You do want a it of a gap between the thigh tops and thr cod as well as a gap the but piece. It will look better and you can reduce the clicking when you walk. On your thigh ammo pack, trim the top and bottom edges to be closer to the boxes. Looks like you have a bit too much material left on there. Sent from my SM-G935V using Tapatalk

I like the temporary bolt idea. Those RS split rivets are really hard to bend if you need to remove them. Sent from my SM-G935V using Tapatalk

Brackets and straps are daunting but it means youre getting close. Very exciting to see another kit coming together. Sent from my SM-G935V using Tapatalk

He'll get to wear it all in a couple weeks which will be really fun to see. Im still debating if I wear mine out with him for double the trooper fun. Sent from my SM-G935V using Tapatalk

I bought a Rubies toy E-11 and while I was working on the shoes I decided to experiment with painting techniques on this thing. I went way overboard with the paint job on what is a kids toy but I had my reasons. I wanted it to look cool with his costume but I also wanted to test my painting/weathering on this toy because I have an E-22 being 3D printed for me which should arrive in about a week. I needed to work up my painting skills before the E-22 arrived. So, keep in mind some of what I did here was a bit of an experiment and some things worked while other ideas failed. In the end it came out pretty good though. Here's the blaster as purchased. Plastic in a nice white and orange color scheme...kinda like a push-pop. Tip: If you want a really nice finish, particularly a metallic finish on anything plastic, you need to really sand it down smooth. Most of this blaster is smooth but i should have sanded off the lettering and there are some bad areas on T-tracks that needed smoothing out. My original paint concept was as follows: Paint a metallic aluminum finish with a dark metal top coat and then use sand paper to wear thru that top coat for a weathered effect. Ultimately this technique didn't work well and I mostly abandoned it halfway thru the paint job. I ended up doing a lot of dry-brush weathering to get the effect. At the end, the product was a bit of distressing and dry-brushing. First I primed it black with Krylon primer. A couple good coats did the trick. It dries pretty fast but i let it sit overnight. I've taken to wearing a glove while I paint to avoid overspray on my hand. Next was to provide a base coat of metallic silver. I used this so that any distress marks would be really shiny. An aluminum paint wouldn't be as bright. I think a key step that I missed here would have been to apply a matte finish clear-coat over the black primer making it more durable and less likely to be damaged by the distressing. I painted everything except the grip which I believe on the sterlings was black plastic. Then I did some masking to paint the scope a brass color. I didn't have brass so I used gold figuring it would be close enough and not much of the color would be visible anyways. Now here's where things got complicated and a lot of experimenting occurred. I needed to figure out what paints and colors I would use for the top coats. I wanted a rich, multi-layered look simulating metals. I went to a hobby shop and picked up some metallic paints and I also swung buy an auto paint store to get a metal flake paint. Below are tests on some ABS scraps of (3) metallic paints to see the colors. I new I wanted a couple different tones on the blaster. Here are the paints I used. Some were Tamiya spray cans. One was a metallic paint. And when I really got crazy I used these ALCLAD metal paints which are amazing...and pricey. The pain I ended up using as the main base color was the auto paint. This was an enamel lacquer paint which was Graphite with metallic flakes. This stuff was really nasty and required the organic vapor respirator that I used with the contact cement. I thinned it a bit with medium reducer and sprayed it thru my airbrush. It took several coats to cover. Part of it was learning to airbrush again after 35 years. Here's what i looked like after that base coat. It had a nice metallic look to it but the metal flakes were a bit grainier than I'd hoped. So I used the Vallejo Gunmetal metallic to add some tone variety as it's a bit darker that the Graphite base coat. This paint isn't as bad as the auto paint but I still used the respirator. In this photo you can see that I've painted the back of the blaster with the Gun Metal color which is a lot darker. Here the whole thing has been coated except for the grip. Next I masked off to paint the grip. I used a Tamiya semi-gloss black that was left over from some other project. Now it was starting to look pretty good. Next step was to airbush a bit of Tamiya Smoke on to some areas to add more tone and start the weathering process. Basically I darkened the T-tracks and painted in dark areas in the crevices around the blaster. The paint jar is in the photo above. The photos below show the darkened areas. Next I started the distressing which was basically sandpaper scratching thru the various top coats to reveal the layer below. I used 400 grit but that seemed to chew all the way down to the white plastic. Could have been to low a grit or I didn't have the technique down. So I used 800 with various passes. I tried to knock down the finish at the corners and where regular hand holding would have naturally worn away the finish, also at moving parts. Many of the effects came out well. There was a lot of subtly now in the finish on various parts of the blaster. But I wasn't in any way successful replicating scratches that exposed the bare aluminum below. So I tried another paint experiment. I went out and got ALCLAD metallic paints which can create some amazing finishes. Again this was a bit of experimenting. I sanded down the folding stock area to be really smooth then primed it with the ALCLAD primer/filler. Then painted it with ALCLAD gloss black which is the recommended base coat for their metallic top coats. I then used ALCLAD Duraluminum to paint this area with some darker spots in Gun Metal. I was super happy with these ALCLAD paints. The finish on this area is much more realistic than the rest of the blaster. I'll be using ALCLAD on my E-22. I did a terrible job documenting the ALCLAD painting steps and weathering so I'll explain as best I can. The ALCLAD finish was great but needed to be distressed. I used a bit of sanding but then I decided to do dry-brushing to create most of the distressed/worn look on the folding stock. First I added dark grimy areas around the blaster with the Tamiya smoke color mixed with some matte black to darken it. I dry-brushed this into the grooves and joints all around the blaster. Then I dry-brushed Tamiya metallic silver spray paint to simulate scratches and heavily worn areas all over the blaster. This gave those nice bright and shiny pops around the piece. I also dry-brushed the gold color and the semi-gloss black over the scope to get the worn look. That part wasn't too succesful but I learned how not to do it I guess. Here's the final product. My Hyperfirm E-11 is in the background for reference. The photo below most accurately shows the color. It's not as black as my E-11 but I was trying for a more realistic metal look. Some of the other photos you'll see make it look much lighter or darker...all depends on the lighting. Well that's the end of the build. I hope you find it useful. On to the next project! For reference. Here are some of the reference photos i used when researching the finish.

Hi Guys! Here's an update on the footware. I looked at lots of options from rain boots to kid sized chelsea style boots and decided to go the cheap route and make some shoes/boots myself. I took an old pair of shoes that are starting to get small for him and are really beat up. The idea was to form foam around them to sorta replicate real boots. I started off with a paper template. First step was to make the cover over the toes. This needed to be a separate piece from the back shoe cover so it can flex a bit when he takes a step. I made the paper patter, cut it out of 4mm foam which would be more flexible and less bulky than the 6mm. When cutting these foam pieces I always cut a bit bigger than needed and trimmed off material as I fitted it over the shoe. The back portion would have to wrap all the way around, meeting up with the front piece. And it would have to still allow access to velcro the shoe. Apply some contact cement, and a lot to the shoe as it soaks in the cement on the first application. I applied the back piece first. Now this was a good start but I didn't look right. Took me a few tries to determine the best option was to cut another piece and layer it over the ones that I had just glued down. This second piece would allow me to make a cover flap to hide the shoe velcro and allow me to add the side detail which is a design element on the real boots. Again, start off with a paper pattern and refine it as you go. Here I'm test fitting. Once I was happy with the general look I cut out the side area and glued in a scrap piece of white elastic. This was hot glued. Here's the back side. I glued all the edges too. Here's the piece contact cemented in place over the original pieces. Once this was set, I added a bit of detail around this white elastic by scoring some lines with my xacto to simulate a stitching pattern. Then I hit it with the heat gun to open up the score. I replicated the same for the left shoe. Back to the right shoe, I didn't make the elastic on this side as this was the original piece I had glued down...poor planning. So I just scored some lines to replicate the shape. I figure this is the inside of his foot so who's gonna notice anyways. Next I added some velcro to close the cover flap. Here they are ready for painting. I then used white Plasti-dip and finished them off with white Krylon Fusion spray paint. Nice and shiny. I also painted the edge of the sole black along with the toe tip. Here's the top flap, still allows access to the main shoe velcro. Nice and simple! That wraps up the costume. Next post I'll show how I transformed the Rubies toy E-11 from this. Into this.

Oh we will be there. But i dont think I'll wear my kit because I want to be able to help him get around plus I dont want to draw attention to myself. Sent from my SM-G935V using Tapatalk

Hi Bill, Thanks for this tutorial. It was the starting point for my own EVA foam build thread for my 6 year old. Thanks for the inspiration. P.s. I totally stole your hand guard technique [emoji16]. Sent from my SM-G935V using Tapatalk

My son tried on all the pieces this afternoon and the costume came out better than I thought it would. He looks awesome and was really excited. He insisted we take a picture together and I wasn't going to pass up that idea. Eventually I have to fix the back of the shins, they didn't come together the way I wanted and I really don't feel like fixing them so they'll have to be good enough for this year. Also, need to figure out what I'm gonna do for shoes. Future 501st member??? And here we are, ready to defend our street from Rebel attacks.

I'm back!! I survived another great troop with the GLG at Star Wars night in Detroit. Super fun, I think I was in 200 photos tonight and got to march around the infield which was super cool. On his 6th birthday, my son got his TK helmet. He was pretty happy. Then we tried on the pieces I made while he was off on vacation. I trimmed a bit off the sides of the ab & kidney to make a nicer fit. Next up was the butt and cod pieces. Here's the rough pattern I made for the butt based on measurements. The part that runs underneath and straps to the cod was made a bit long when I cut out the 6mm foam. I figured I better make it longer and cut it back as needed. Here's the piece after I heat bent the sides and bottom. Then I added the raised detail on the back. You'll see pencil lines on the bottom, I trimmed more material off once we test fit the pieces. The cod was similar. Made a paper pattern, cut it out and did test fits to refine the size, trimming away material to get a good fit. Some heat bending. More heat bending, Here's the strapping of the cod to the ab. Strapping of the butt to the kidney. I added side strap to cinch up the side gaps to the cod. Last main pieces were the thighs. This took some trial and error..a couple errors actually. I took measurements of his thigh height and circumference at the knee and up high. These dimensions were used to make this pattern. Here are the pattern lines. I cut out the origin shape in foam then sketched out a rough line where I thought the piece should be trimmed to create the notch at the top and the taper along the top sides. Then I tried it on him about 3 times, refining it each time. Once I had the shape correct I traced that foam shape onto the original paper pattern as a record of the final shape. That's what you see in the image below. This was used to make both left and right, just flip it over to make the other one. Here the piece is cut out and I'm adding the trim around the bottom. This trim was cut from a single strip of 4mm foam and I pencil drew the shape I wanted, test fitting it over the thigh. This got contact cement glue. Here they both are before I added the cover strips to the front and back. Those were 4mm sheets. Last thing to make was the knee ammo pack. I used 4mm foam for the back piece and 10mm foam for the ammo blocks. Very similar to the belt. Here's the whole piece glued. I had painted the thigh before attaching the ammo pack so instead of contact cement, I used the hot-glue gun. Wasn't sure if contact cement would stick to the paint. Here's a random shot of me painting. Wear a glove, makes it easier to paint and not worry about your hand getting covered. For all these pieces I used 2-3 coats of white Plastidip to seal the foam then used 3-4 coats of Krylon Fusion gloss white spray-paint for the finish coat. It dries in 15 minutes and is perfect for plastic. Here's the pile of parts. Tomorrow we try this all on. Take care!

Let's look at how I finished the belt. I completed this work a while ago with the holster being glued about an hour ago. Keep that in mind, you don't have to work on a single piece at one time. In fact it's somewhat beneficial to jump around a bit as the glue or paint is drying on once piece. Drop boxes are attached using 1" wide white elastic strips hot glued to the back of the boxes and then to the back of the belt. In this photo you may notice that the belt and the drop boxes have been Plasti-dipped white with a coat of Krylon Fusion white gloss paint. I masked off the elastic straps with painters tape during the paint process. Here you can see the sheen. To glue the white elastic to the foam belt ammo box I used hot glue. Like the other glue scenarios, I first scribed some lines into the back of the foam and hit them with the heat gun to open them up. This allows the glued to flow into the grooves. Once the belt was glued, I hot glued the drop boxes on. Then, hot glued the Velcro ends so the belt can be fastened. Final piece of the belt is the holster. I basically copied my TK holster, scaling it down 50%. Here's the paper pattern and the resulting foam. I used 4mm foam for this piece. It will be hot glued to the back of the belt as well. The holster foam was folded over and I used contact cement to glue it, same with the strap. Just heat bend it before you glue it. Makes it hold the shape better. I Plasti-dip sealed this piece but this time using black. No need to paint it as the black looked pretty good. This likely won't fit the toy E-11 that I bought for my son so it's non-functional. I'll see if I have time to post more tomorrow night. I need to do some helmet mods to my kit as I have a troop on Saturday. Star Wars night at Comerica Park where the Detroit Tigers play. Should be fun!

Yes for some test fitting and adjusrments. But hasnt put the whole kit on yet. Sent from my SM-G935V using Tapatalk

Time for a quick update before bed. I have been working on this costume for the past few weeks, just needed to concentrate on building rather than posting. At this time it's nearly done but I only have a little time tonight for an update. Last time I had finished the TD construction. Now it's time to finish it up. I started off by using white Plasti-dip to seal the foam. This is needed otherwise the foam will soak up the paint. So I put a couple coats of this rubbery coating on. The first coat goes on pretty heavy and the second coat is for touching up any spots you missed the first time. Before painting, place the can in warm water for about 10 minutes to help the spray go on smoother. Once it was coated, I then painted it with Krylon gloss white spray paint for plastic. I put at least 3 coats on. Then I brushed on the gray tube color. From previous TK research this color is Gunship Gray. I had a can laying around from my TK build. Here's the painted TD, just needs some clips. For the clips I purchased aluminum strips from the local hardware store. The width seemed about right so they just needed to be cut to length and bent. For cutting I bought tin snips rated to cut 20 gauge metal. Then I bent the shape over in my vice. I wasn't sure if contact cement would work on a painted surface so I attached these to the TD with the hot glue gun. For the gloves I used the same technique from my TK to attach the hand guards. I stuffed them with rags to get a rounded shape the used E6000 to glue down the guards, taping them with painters tape to hold them in place until dry. That's all for tonight. Take care guys and girls. Troop On!

Well done. Its a lot of work but they look like they cam out great. Sent from my SM-G935V using Tapatalk

So, let's build a thermal detonator. Kids can play with explosives. Can't they? For reference, here's my TD I started thinking, "what would be best for the cylinder shape"? PVC would be great but probably too heavy, this is only foam armor after all. So, the trusty paper towel roll was the winner. Luckily I had one in the kids craft/marker drawer that I'm sure would have ended up as a pirate telescope but now will be transformed in the imperial armory a.k.a. my basement. I determined the length based on the size of my TD relative to a part of my chest armor then used that as a rough approximation for the scaled down version. The tube is pretty flimsy and I'm sure my son will be playing with this thing so it needed to be beefed up. I glued some scrap pieces of foam into the tube to give it some rigidity. The foam strips run full length. Then I cut 4mm foam to wrap the outside of the tube and used contact cement to glue it on. Don't forget to glue the seam too. I cut out some circular shapes to cap off the tube ends. 4mm again. Not the best circle but close enough. Glue these on. Once the ends were glued I cut some 2mm foam strips which would simulate the end caps. Cement these into place. More 2mm foam for the control panel plate. To make the rectangular piece I used some 4mm foam. I marked out some lines and cut half way thru along each line. Then I hit it with the heat gun to open up the seams. It didn't look quite right so I went back and too ok additional 45 degree cuts along each joint. Then another heat gun treatment. Here's the final TD, minus the clips. To do those I bough aluminum strip metal at the local hardware store. Just need to cut it to length and bend it into shape. Once the TD is painted, I'll attach the clips, probably with the hot glue gun.

I'd go with photo 1. You need to trim off that floppy part of the top of the ab anyways. I had the same dilemma regarding the notch, ultimately because I'm short I had to remake the notch anyways. But the CRL isn't exactly clear on where the notch is suppose to be. Ideally it aligns like you have it in photo 2 but not all the TKs had this. if you look at the reference photos of the RS suit, the notch is in a different position on the left side compared to the right so there appears to be some flexibility on this point. Ultimately it's all covered by the belt so you're not gonna see it anyways. If you're taller, or approximately in that 5'-10" sweet spot you may not have to trim anything. I'd align the pieces like in photo 1 and put the but piece in there as well to see how it falls relative to the other pieces. Ideally it fits in perfectly with it swooping underneath to meet up with the cod.

Thanks guys, I'm kinda winging it here with this first foam build. So far it's working out OK. I didn't get to work on anything yesterday other than shop-vacuuming water out of my basement. We got hit with some freak thunderstorms yesterday evening and got several inches of rain in about a couple hours. Not too serious but did chew up most of my night. luckily nothing was damaged. So, with the basement dried out it was time to get back to work and start on the belt. I looked at my TK belt and proportionally scaled it down to a size that seemed correct for my sons armor. The main section is 6mm foam, 4mm may have looked more accurate but I wanted it thicker to make it less likely to tear. The ammo boxes on my TK are pretty thick, they stick out quite a bit from the face of the belt so to replicate this I used my foam floor mats, doubled up to be about 10mm thick. These were glued using contact cement. I cut the raw pieces bigger than the final size to leave room for trimming and cleaning up edges. As you can see, once glued the long edges aren't perfectly aligned. That's okay, I just used a very sharp box cutter and cut both long edges down to size to get the correct height for these ammo boxes thingies. Here it is after trimming those long edges. Next I laid out the pieces. The finished boxes would be 2.5" wide so I laid out (6) of them at 3" wide again to give me extra material on the sides as I wanted to cut these at a slight angle which would match my TK belt. Once they were cut out I marked the belt center and loose laid them out to get the spacing. Here you can see how I cut the sides of these pieces at an angle. Next step was to replicate the little plates that cover up the pop rivets on a real TK belt. These were cut from 2mm foam sheets and glued using the Omni-stick as contact cement is too tricky on these small pieces. After gluing down the buttons, I contact cemented the larger ammo box pieces onto the belt. Note that I marked their positions in pencil so i'd know where to apply the cement. I probably should have take the time to sand down the waffle pattern that's on the back of these floor mats. But I didn't. So, to fix this I used a bit of filler sealant. Apply a bit along each edge that has gaps and work it into the joint smoothing it out with your finger. You could use a small flat putty tool if you have one. Same method as smoothing out caulk. Get it packed in the joint. Then let is set for a couple minutes to stiffen up. Dip your finger in some water and rub over the joint. This will smooth out the sealant and wipe away the excess. You don't need much water. Also keep a paper towel handy to clean your finger tip. Here's what I used. Got this tip from Punished Props. Here's the smoothed out joint. Let it sit for a couple hours to dry. I may try sanding it with fine sandpaper. I figure once I spray prime this, the joint will be barely noticeable. To make the drop boxes which hang below the belt, I used the 5mm floor mat. This time I sanded the back on my belt sander as this should be smooth on the front and back. There's a learning curve to this which I'm still working out. Too little pressure and nothing happens, too much and you create grooves. I think the trick may be a piece of 2x over the piece while sanding to distribute the pressure evenly. It's also easy for the sander to grab the piece and fling it. Here's one of them. The square edges look too sharp and need to me rounded off. Here's another Evil Ted trick, glue sandpaper to paint sticks. This gives a nice, stiff sanding tool to round down foam corners. I glued 80 grit and 120 grit on opposite sides of this stick. Then, lightly sanded off the corners. I finished up with some loose 320 grit I had laying around. The actual belt part will be made from extra 2" white elastic that I have laying around. I have to figure the best way to attach the foam to the belt. E6000 or maybe hot-glue it. The back of the belt will have traditional Velcro to close it. The drop boxes will get hot glued to elastic straps. Here it is, before final assembly. I still have to prime and paint the foam before gluing it to the elastic. That's all I have for tonight. Next step may be the thermal detonator. I'm running out of things to work on. Really need the family to get home from vacation so I can test fit all these recently made pieces and do the final adjustments. Looking at this phot, the drop boxes look a little wide, maybe I'll trim them down a bit. What do you think? Items I still have to make: TD Thighs Holster Boots...gotta figure that one out...maybe sneakers that get covered in foam to look like boots. ???? Then the painting process.

The ones I had to cut out were RS as well. Sent from my SM-G935V using Tapatalk