fragarock

Hi, I have a build thread going but had a detail question for anybody who's familiar with the RS TK kit. The tops of the shins don't have cut lines. Is there a certain return edge width required here? I presume there's no return edge on the bottom. Is this correct? How do you identify which pieces go together as they're not marked? Thanks for the help guys. Here are some reference pictures.

Here's what I'm facing. This photo shows what I was originally going to do, align the bottoms, thinking I had to get the kidney notch in the right spot. This photo shows what I guess I have to do to make this correct. Align the tops. I can do this....re-drill out the original holes I had and patch the others...no big deal. The only issue is this will force the ab piece upwards. Which in turn literally pushes up the chest piece up into my throat. So I'm going to have to carve out more neck area on the chest. It also pushes the cod up a bit into the crotch which is getting a bit tight. Do I need to trim off some more of the kidney bottom to have it align with the ab bottom? Would require making a new notch. If the consensus is to have the tops aligned that's what I'll do. At this point I just want to have it centurion approvable. Thanks for your input.

I am worried about the top alignment. But I can't get the various parts to fit comfortably if I align the tops. Hopefully it's not a huge issue. I did see a image in Diana's build that showed her tops not aligning. But that may have been changed in her centurion application which I don't think I've seen yet.

So are there any specific rules about how the top and bottom of ab/kidney have to join up? That could save me some hassle. Sent from my SM-G935V using Tapatalk

The rivets on the ab side are fine. The kidney ones are off. If you look at the pic from that post you'll see that the bottom of the kidney isn't properly aligned with the bottom of the ab, it's too low. The kidney notch should be up higher. I inadvertently aligned the top of the kidney with the top of the ab. That's how it's supposed to be normally but in my build, they won't align because I had to chop down the top of the ab to make the brackets work with the chest. So my kidney will be a bit higher than my ab piece. I tried to pry apart the rivets with pliers but couldn't do it. Not sure if I'm actually that weak or if the rivets RS supplied are made from adamantium. I cut the off with a dremel wheel...several dremel wheels as they kept shattering. Sent from my SM-G935V using Tapatalk

After thinking I got the left side fo my torso fitted together correctly, I realized I messed up the rivet locations. While waiting for some new split rivets to arrive in the mail I figured I'd work on the belt. The RS belt is a white fabric with an off-white canvas-like material on the front. It comes with the snaps to attach to the ab plate already installed. The ABS part of the belt needs to be cut down a lot to get it to the proper dimensions. Here's the belt and the uncut ABS part. There are several good diagrams floating around on the FISD site. Here they are for reference. Very handy as they show where all the cuts need to be made. After looking at these, I went to work rough trimming the edges off the belt, basically all the scrap material that was keeping me from getting the piece to sit flat on my work table. Next was to mark out the actual cut lines in pencil to match the diagrams above. The RS belt comes with dimples in it to mark the fastener locations. Here I was double checking it compared to the diagram. Once I marked out the lines, my top-to-bottom height on the piece was 100mm. To cut these lines I clamped down my straight edge and went to work with a utility knife. Score-and-snap method. Then cleaned up the edges with some sanding. After also trimming off the corners this is what the piece looks like. Next step is to center it on the center of the belt. Since my snaps were already installed I just measured between them to get the center point. Once you've got that done, you'll have to drill out (3) holes for the fasteners. I used a 1/8" bit. Important item here! When you are wearing the belt, the soft side of the Velcro is on your right, the prickly hook side is on your left. Keep this in mind when you're working on the belt and place the canvas belt in the proper orientation before you attach the ABS piece. Place the ABS piece over the canvas belt making sure it's centered left-to-right and top-to-bottom. Mark the drilled holes with a pencil onto the canvas belt below. Then using a leather punch and some light hammering, make the holes in the canvas. I ordered the strapping kit from RS. This includes cap rivets for attaching the belt ABS to the canvas. I wasn't sure the exact method for this but it made sense to put the tall part of the rivet thru the bottom of the canvas. Then put the ABS piece over and place the cover rivet. To hammer the top piece on you need to be on a hard surface. I moved the whole belt to the concrete floor for the hammering. I used on of my snap/rivet setting tools and a hammer to set this top piece into place. Doesn't take much force. Repeat until all (3) are installed. When I first opened the BBB I didn't know what this thing was. Eventually figured out it's the button covers for the belt. These need to be cut out and glued over the rivets. Drop boxes need to be rough trimmed. Looking at other builds, the number 10mm kept coming up for the thickness so that's what I used. I marked this 10mm line all around the box and then cut it out with scissors. I didn't cut exactly to the line, left a bit more material then put the pieces on the belt sander to even them up all around. There's a front and a back piece. The attachment happens at the back piece. So I drilled a 1/8" hole, 1" down from the top of the piece. This is where the RS supplied 1" white elastic will attach. I attached this with a 1/8" diameter pop rivet using my rivet gun. I did it prior to gluing the front of the drop box on. Others do it after....as long as you're using a pop rivet. Next determine how the other end of the elastic will attach to the belt. Flip the belt over and work from the back side. Place the drop box so that the side of box is aligned with the end of the ABS part of the belt. Also, the top of the box should be just about touching the bottom of the ABS part of the belt. Once I had the box positioned, I marked the belt where the fastener would go through the canvas belt. I decided to have it be nearer the top. Punch a hole in the elastic with the leather punch. I couldn't use the punch on the canvas belt because I had already attached the ABS piece on the other side. So I used an XACTO knife to cut the hole. Insert the cap rivet, find something hard to hammer on and that's it. On to the holster. I bought mine from Darman http://www.whitearmor.net/forum/user/1656-darman/ and it's been sitting around for several months since I did my E11 modifications http://www.whitearmor.net/forum/topic/38895-fragarocks-hfx-hyperfirm-e-11-mod/ I set the holster in position relative to the belt per the diagram at the beginning of this post. Marked the hole locations and punched them thru. Then transferred the marks to the belt straps and punched them. Finally I attached it using the cap rivets that RS supplied. I set the rivets using the metal setting plate. This way the rivet head that's exposed on the front of the belt wouldn't be damaged during the hammering. And here's the completed belt. Or as my lovely wife called it, "a fanny pack". Ya, a fanny pack with a thermal detonator on the back! That's it for tonight. Here's a link to a good video explaining how to install various snaps. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3qPLy0WpLak Next post will be the repair of my left side torso straps and re-riveting....removing split rivets is no joke!

A few other supplies that I've needed are: sand paper in various grits. I bought a pack ranging from 120 grit up to 4000 grit. Small glass jar and acetone to make ABS paste. Good for patching junkets areas. A snap setting kit. A leather punch for making holes in cloth such as the elastic strips and your belt. Metal ruler or cutting edge. Fabric tape measure. For measuring circumference and along curved shapes. there are also various tools I've had to use, pliers, hammer, etc. Usually for installing connection brackets and straps or rivets. Good luck! Sent from my SM-G935V using Tapatalk

Thanks Louis, I'm glad you're enjoying it. Makes me happy other people can see the progress and maybe get something useful out of it. I've been working on the armor for about 3 months now and although a slow march, I'm happy with the progress so far. Feels like I'm nearing the crest of the hill and am on the downhill slope.

I'm glad you mentioned this. I wasn't sure about these returns, something just didn't feel right about them, especially after making the ab/kidney connection. I'll chop those off. Luckily I placed the kidney rivets at the break in the return edge, not for the end of the return so I won't have to mess with the split rivets. I kinda planned that thinking those returns would not work out. Happy accidents!

Had the day off from work for MLK Day. Spent the morning with the kids at The Henry ford Museum looking at trains, planes, and cars and generally running around like idiots. After some PB&J's and nap time I got a couple hours work in on the kit. Here's the progress. New notches were needed in my kidney plate. There were some on the original RS plate but I had to chop off the bottom of the plate and lost the notches when I did that. So time to make some new ones. These are 22mm x 22mm. They should align with the groove in the ab plate. Unfortunately I goofed and installed my brackets before making this notch....big dummy! So I'm gonna have to remount the brackets on each side of the kidney plate. Here you can see the goof I made. I started off by cutting about 6mm short of the 22mmx22,, lines. This will leave me some material to make a new return edge. I used the heat iron set to "4". Mine doesn't have a temp guide so "4" is about as accurate as I'm gonna get. I started doing one side. Hold the iron on the side you want to bend for about 15 seconds then with mild pressure push the return over while holding the iron at 45 degrees. I did this then let it cool for a few seconds to firm back up. Then did it again to get it to bend all the way over. Notice how I cut out the ends of the existing returns at the notch to make it easy to bend....otherwise I'd get some warping. Here's the finished return. Once the notches were made, I realized I had to trim off some material from the sides of the butt. This way the sides would align with the notches as shown in the diagram. Again I marked off the area leaving some material for a return edge. Then the old heat iron treatment. And here's the new edge aligned with the notch in the kidney plate above. Next task was the cod strap installation. Following UKSwrath's build I measured the position for the split rivet. For me it was 1" from the end of the cod. I drilled a 1/8" hole and then bore it out some more as the hole was too small. Insert the rivet. This rivet doesn't get painted. Next punch a hole in the elastic strap. I bought a punch and snap setting kit for this work. Don't need to wack this very hard...gentle. I hit the punch too hard and bent it into oblivion. Luckily there was an extra. You could also make a hole with scissors. Place the elastic with the washer over the elastic. Then use a chisel if you have one to hammer down into the split rivet and spread apart the sides. I didn't have a chisel but found a flat head screwdriver on its side worked just fine. This will only get the heads bent a bit. Then you need to finish the job with the hammer. Next was the left side connection of the torso. Again following UKSwrath...I marked out the holes for the split rivets. 10mm in from the side edges on the ab and kidney. 20mm from the top. 10mm from the raised horizontal ridget on the ab. The middle one gets centered between the top and bottom. Transfer these marks over to the kidney plate. Then drill with 1/8" bit and bore out the holes. I had to bore out all the holes as the split rivets that came with the RS kit were bigger than 1/8" diameter. Then insert the rivets. Some people pre-paint these white prior to installing them. I'll paint them after. Also because I needed to set these on a hard concrete floor to split the rivets, I would have messed up the paint job anyways. Then I measured out some 1" elastic strapping. I made it 2" long. You'll need (3) of these. Then you need to punch (2) holes in each one. The holes should match the spacing between the center of the rivets on your kidney and ab which you just installed. Ideally 20mm apart but mine were 25mm due to the return edge on the ab piece. It all depends on what line you used to measure 10mm in for your rivets. I set all mine on the kidney side first. Then had some trouble getting them pulled over to fit on the rivets on the ab. I could stretch the fabric over but found the chest pieces was just in the way of the hammering process. So I took off the brackets for the chest piece which gave me some room to maneuver. Then I reinstalled the chest. Here are the kidney rivets installed. Here's my screwdriver technique on the ab side. Final attachment. Finally I adjusted my TD brackets per Christine's comments. They were easy to remove with a screwdriver. The brackets have to be bent back to get to the rear screws. But it's easy. I drilled new 1/6" pilot holes. Here's the new bracket location. I also spread the end caps a little further apart before doing this. That's it for today. Thanks for tuning in.

Hey Christine, I'd like to get to centurion although I'm not sure I'll get there with all the chopping I've had to do....we'll see. I do have a canvas belt that came with the RS accurate strapping kit but I haven't worked on it yet. Maybe that's the next piece I should do? I actually just started remaking my kidney notches and realized I have to move my brackets. <insert face palm here>. So that's my current task. Once that's fixed I can do the belt or I was thinking about getting the arms and shoulders set. Is the belt more important to work out with the torso at this point? Sent from my SM-G935V using Tapatalk

Work has kept me very busy for the past week and I'm just getting back to the build. My ab plate seemed to hang a little too low off the chest so I undid the brackets so I could get the elastic straps out. Once they were out I sewed a new line across them to essentially shorten the size of the loop. Then reinstalled everything.......meanwhile.....1 hour later. I also finished up the ABS paste, sanding and polishing job on the bottom of the kidney plate. Afterwards I drilled the bracket holes and the corresponding holes in the butt plate. Finally got the torso section assembled and tried it on. Now I don't have the side connections in place yet so a little blue tape is needed to hold it together. Generally it fits around me well although I haven't taken an back pictures yet to see all those connections. Here's what I noticed so far: 1. Need to remake the notch on each side of the kidney. I lost it when I had to trim off the bottom. 2. Where the butt plate extends between the legs (the area with the snap) I need to trim material off the sides. Right now it's rubbing against my thighs and is in no way comfortable. 3. The butt piece sticks out a bit behind the kidney plate. I'm presuming this won't be an issue once I get the belt on. Also the left and right ends of the butt plate flare out a bit past the kidney plate above. Again figuring the belt will fix this. Or do I need to bend those ends a bit more? Any feedback you have is appreciated. Next I'll tackle the hinge strap/rivets on the torso......need to do some more research on that. I also worked on the TD. The RS kit comes with a plastic tube already formed in grey. I presume it's the correct color but I haven't been able to find Testors Gunship gray at any of the hobby stores near me to compare. Anyone know if the raw tube is the correct color? The end caps need to be trimmed as does the control panel piece. Here are the pieces for reference. First I rough cut these out. These should be 20mm wide according to various threads I looked at and the reference library photos. So I used my trusty compass to trace the line around and cut with scissors. I the cut just a bit short of the line and cleaned it up on the belt sander. Here's the control panel. Trimmed around it like usual and did some hand sanding. You also need to cut out the ends. I left a bit of return on each side so that this piece would look like it had some thickness. Then some glue and onto the tube it goes. Once it was taped in place I grabbed the small brush and painted the screw heads. The RS TD comes with the clips already attached which is nice. Here it is drying. My notes said the total width of the TD was to be between 184 & 190mm. I set mine to be 184mm. Should it be wider? The end caps aren't glued so I can move them out if needed. Here's the completed TD. Ready to be thrown at some rebel scum. Of course I'll follow the Combat Operations instructions from my Imperial Handbook that my wife got me for Christmas. Finally I have a question regarding forearm strap. I can't tell from the reference pictures where the straps are to be positioned. I think they go to the inside of the cover strip facing the body rather than facing out. Can someone confirm their placement? Here are the options below (note that this is the left arm looking at the front): Option #1 (centered) Option #2 (outside of the cover strip) Option #3 (inside of the cover strip) Do you just glue this into place with E6000? I read somewhere that when glued, the top of the forearm and bottom of the bicep should be touching or almost touching. Is this correct or is there supposed to be a space between them? I figure when they're hanging off the arm, the forearm piece will drop slightly anyways creating a small gap. ????

Really exciting to see it so close to being done.

Thanks! It's hard sometimes to feel like you're doing well when there's so much work to be done. I'm 5'-5" and the only piece I haven't chopped literally inches off is the back plate. There's a lot of trial and some error doing this. Even with Christine's valuable WIP it still is a challenge because what works for one person has to be customized for you. So I'm just trying to focus on one area ata time....just the way I like to work. And that way I don't get too overwhelmed. Hope you like the progress. Sent from my SM-G935V using Tapatalk

Ya, the consensus was that it's from the original. There are lots of little imperfections all over the armor pieces. Part of the charm of this set. Sent from my SM-G935V using Tapatalk

Hi, I am using the bracket system and on my return edges I held 8mm which is about 3/8". Originally I did 10mm but found they were digging into my skin. A couple areas I trimmed too much and had to add a strip of ABS to reinforce the bracket connection and to just make it wide enough to install brackets. If you have the time I'd definitely do the reinforcing everywhere for added strength. Sent from my SM-G935V using Tapatalk

Thanks for the feedback and good call on the bolts being visible on the bottom of the back piece. I bent that bracket a bit when bending the side but hadn't looked at it carefully enough to to see that the bolt head is now flared out. I'll bend that return edge back to re-hide it. Guess there's going to be a lot of little detail areas to review and fix once I get the torso assembled. Right now I'm trying to look at the big picture and get these pieces aligned and attached so that I can wear them without using tape to hold it all together. Then I'll know what else has to be fixed when I see it in the mirror. ABS boil bath is something I haven't attempted yet. Guess I should. Don't know why I've been reluctant, can't be any harder than the heat gun and ABS goop. I'm really enjoying the work. It's hard only being able to work in one hour spurts because you feel like not much is being accomplished. But if I can get the torso mostly fitted and assembled in the next week I'll feel good as its such a big portion of the armor set. Sent from my SM-G935V using Tapatalk

Hi there, If you remember from my last post I was having trouble connecting the ab to the chest piece. I used the bracket and elastic loop connections and found that when I positioned the chest over the ab in a manner that looked and felt correct, there was a serious problem with the brackets. Instead of the chest brackets being high above the ab piece, they were way below it. After talking with Christine it became clear that my ab piece was way too tall and I'd have to cut it down. That would then bring the chest brackets above the ab brackets as the Imperial armorers intended. This is just one of the things we short guys have to do I guess....an stand on a chair to reach the tops of my cupboard shelves. Here's the size of this piece as it comes from RS. With the pieces connected, I traced the top of the ab line on the inside of the chest piece then measured the distance between that line and the top of the chest bracket. Since the ab bracket has to roughly align with the top of the chest bracket, the distance of 1.5" was how much material I had to remove from the top of the ab piece. Unfortunately it meant removing the brackets I just installed and the side rivet that came on the piece. Here's what that cut line looks like on the outside of the ab piece. Yikes huh? I had to cut off 1.5" but also needed to keep about a 3/8" return edge so I only cut off 1 1/8" which is the line you see below. Zip, zip, hack, cut, slice, !!!!! And there you have it! So once that painful moment was over I drew a 3/8" line for my return edge. Apparently I forgot to photograph the re-making of the return edge but it's the same thing I did on the bottom of the chest. Heat gun to bend then some ABS paste + sanding = new return. Then redrilled holes, countersunk them, and installed the brackets. I also used my new sewing machine which I can't believe I bought and which my wife thoroughly enjoyed teasing me about. RS provides a long strip of 1" wide black elastic to make the straps between the torso pieces. So I cut multiple 2 1/2" long strips, folded them over and sewed with a zig-zag stitch then reversed stitched in the hopes it will hold tight. I really have no idea what I'm doing with this sewing machine, just winging it! Here's a shot of the return edge with the new holes waiting for brackets to be installed. Here's the elastic strip, 2.5" long (typical for all 9 torso connections) I also started to work on the back-to-chest connection. I actually did this about a week ago but here are some photos. RS provides the white elastic straps with the sew-in snaps already installed. Once less thing to do makes the price of this add-on assembly kit worth the price. You can see my assembly notes from various FISD posts and Trooperbay videos. There's an absurd amount of info you have to look at when figuring out how these pieces are supposed to go together. Makes more sense once you've done it but it's really daunting during the research phase. I also attached my shoulder bridging. Also done about a week ago but while re-reading Diana's RS thread I realized I positioned them too far back and the backs of the straps were touching the OII plate on the back piece (She had the same problem). So tonight I ripped them off (than God I used E6000) and repositioned them with them between the 5th & 6th rib. Once they were in place I used the heat gun so they would arch over the gap and land nicely on the back piece. Luckily while playin pirates with my son we rediscovered my old display mannequin for my Roman Centurion armor. When moving back from Sacramento I had packed it away and never re-assembled it...it's all carbon steel and super heavy and complicated to put together. But while my son wore the helmet and played with the gladius I fitted this up for my TK armor. I then went to work on the brackets for the bottom of the back piece. Same process as before. But the reinforcement strip I cut were linear and didn't fit dug into my back when I tried on the armor. So, with the help of the dremel, they had to be ground down to follow the curve of the return edge. Here was the first look at the torso pieces in action on the mannequin. At this point the chest, ab, and back are solid. I don't think I need to shorten their lengths anymore (although the do need to be curved around my body more). Side view. The kidney-to-ab connections aren't done yet so there's an obvious gap still. Back shot. Looking at this it became obvious that the kidney piece is proportionately too tall. So I had to try this on and see where how this was aligning. Yep, looks and feels too tall. This side shot really shows the problem. Ugg....more cutting. I need to take off about 1 1/4" on this sucker. Now I remember from Diana's and Christine's builds that you don't cut the top of the kidney...cut the bottom which will be hidden by the belt. Time to get rid of that pre-made notch. Lots of lines in this photo. Top line is the new shorter size, the line below that is where I need to cut to leave material left over for a new return edge. again I left about 3/8" for that. Time for some slicing and dicing with the scissors. Again I used a heat gun to make a new return edge. This one came out a bit better than the one I did at the chest but still needs an ABS paste-a-thon to flatten it out. From the back it looks great, just not from the bottom side. So this is a work in progress. I'm on the second layer of ABS goop and will post photos once it's cleaned up and shiny. Here's the second thin layer of goop. I show this because I heat-gunned the sides so that they curve around me more. This should help to reduce the look of this as it was too wide on me from the back. Getting back to the back...see what I did there? Okay it's getting late and I need to get to bed. The back also looks too wide on me so I took a shot at creating a better taper effect. The pic below shows what I want to achieve. The ends need to bend in around me more, just like the kidney. Trusty heat gun in hand I worked on the left side first. I've found that a setting of 450F works well on small areas such as return edges. To bend large areas that temp isn't hot enough because the ABS cools in one area before you can thoroughly heat the next area. So on this larger area bend I set it to 650F but was very careful to watch out for melting. Here's the other side. That's it for tonight. Please let me know if anything looks too horribly messed up. Thanks!

Glad you're enjoying it. Hopefully you'll get some good tips of what to do and learn from the mistakes I make from time to time. It's a process and a long one so take your time and if you goof something up or hit a roadblock there are lots of people here to help out. Sent from my SM-G935V using Tapatalk

Okay, with some input from Christine I now know how to deal with this ab-to-chest connection. Getting back on track with the build thread, here's the other progress I made. I had been reconstructing a new return edge on the bottom of my chest plate. After the second layer of ABS paste and some power sanding with 220 grit sandpaper I got it pretty flat. Then I thinned out my ABS paste with some acetone to be able to put a really thin layer on the few remaining areas that had some air bubbles or slight divots. Once that dried (in about a couple hours) I hit it with some 800 sand paper by hand to get it nice an smooth. Then to bring back the glossy look, using my finger I rubbed some acetone over the surface. Here are the before and after photos. The new edge has a few blemishes but they won't be seen. After this I installed the hooks on the top of the ab plate. I cut the return edge a bit too small during the initial trimming so I figured I'd reinforce it with another strip of ABS. I used Zap-a-gap on these strips. Once dried I laid out the brackets starting with the center one. Note, the center one has to be bent a bit to conform to the shape of the return edge. Center it over the top and mark the holes. Then drill with an 1/8" drill bit. Important! The brackets are all slightly different sizes. So keep track of which ones you're using in a particular location. Don't use one bracket to mark all your holes. Here's a top view after drilling. I bought a countersink bit to use at these bolt holes. That way the heads will sit flatter in the return edge. It's easy to use, just do it by hand with mild pressure. A few turns is enough. Here you can see how one bolt that is countersunk compared to the other which is not. Here are all three brackets along the top of the ab plate. Here you can see how the bracket over the center needs to be bent. Here's the finished top view. That's where I left off last night. I then was trying to figure out how these brackets would connect to the tall brackets on the chest as laid out in my last post. So....I'm now going to have to cut off all this work I did as I chop off about 1.5" from the top of the ab in order to get its brackets to align with the brackets on the chest piece. Luckily this bracket work on the ab only took about an 1.5 hours. This is one of those learning opportunities. I should have put the brackets on the chest first then looked at the overlap between the chest and ab plates. Then I would have realized I needed to trim down the ab plate and not wasted time doing brackets. More to come. Thanks for tuning in.

Thanks, this explains a lot. Guess I'll have to chop off the top of the ab.How do you determine the size of the elastic loops for this chest connection? I just got and tested my new sewing machine last night (there were many giggles from my wife) so I'll be working on these loops soon. Sent from my SM-G935V using Tapatalk

Hey Christine, Can you post a pic showing how you strapped the chest to the ab piece? If you look on my thread I'm having trouble figuring out this connection given the 4" to 5" overlap of my chest over the ab. Not sure how wire and elastic are supposed to work here. Did you chop off material from the top of the ab? Sent from my SM-G935V using Tapatalk

Hi, Since I left off with a question on shoulder bridges, let's start there. This piece didn't seem to flexible so I was worried about bending and breaking it. But I found it actually bends quite a bit. So I clamped it down and scored it a few times with my utility knife. Then snapped it apart. Pretty easy. Once I had it apart I ground down the excess material off the sides using a belt sander, finishing off with some hand sanding. Here they are. Now I'm going to fast forward a bit and jump to a critical area I really need some help on. I'm trying to install the screen accurate strapping between the chest and ab. When positioned relative to each other in the way I want, the wire hooks are really far apart. I can't really expect to have an elastic strap that long can I? That can't work! What do I do here? Do I need to cut down the top of the ab piece and reinstall those brackets so they're close to the brackets on the chest? I'm gonna have to cut off a lot of the ab if that's the solution. Short troopers please HELP!!

Merry Christmas Eve Troopers! My last posts were a while ago. I've been busy at work and my wife and I have been working to get ready for the onslought of Christmas parties and the big day tomorrow. After I trimmed my chest piece I took a night to go review the strapping system of hooks and elastic that came with the RS suit. I also looked at ukswrath Anovos build and Tropperbay's videos. What I realized is, I should have looked at this BEFORE I trimmed the torso pieces. To get the brackets to mount with enough meat on the return edge to hold the screws I should have kept around 10mm. On some of my pieces I have about 6mm. This may be OK but it's cutting it close and I may have to reinforce with ABS strips to not only make these attachment points stronger but also make them a bit wider. Doh!! I didn't get much feedback on my last post. Maybe everyone was thinking, "he really screwed up his return edges....let's not tell him". I did take another look at how the chest and ab pieces fit together. Previously trimmed the neck and curved the sides to wrap around me. After looking at the relationship of these two I decided to trim off some material from the bottom, more like the Luke hero suit. This will reduce the scale of this piece and hopefully make it look more proportional to the rest of me. I guessed at about 1.5" of material to remove to get the new curve. But I also needed to create a new return edge for my bracket system so I only cut away about an inch. I used my compass to transfer the original bottom edge profile up to the new cut line but I also enhanced the swoop a bit. After mentally committing to what could be a serious screw-up I dove in and started cutting. Oh man.....what have I done? No turning back now. Time to get the heat gun and try to make a new return edge. I set my gun to 400 and started at one end. To bend the sections I used a pair of pliers with the head wrapped in masking tape so that it wouldn't mark up the soft plastic. This may not be the best way but it kind of worked. Biggest complaint is i'd love to use something wider as the pliers can only bend about an inch of material at a time. There's got to be a better tool /MacGyver contraption out there. Here's the beginning of the bend. I kept going, doing a bit more and more. Here's the initial pass. The shape looked good from the front but it's pretty messy underneath. From the front it looks pretty good. The return edge was a lot harder to make than I thought it would be. Bending was easy but the curve of the armor and thus extra material in the bend caused some rippling. I'm not very happy with the look. Perhaps I could get away with leaving it but it would be slightly noticeable from below and would drive me nuts if I don't fix it. Note that the return edge is about 10mm. Here's a rough fitting with the new bottom edge. Seems pretty good as my ab button plate will now be visible. What do you think? To smooth out the ripple on my chest return edge I went back and looked at Christine's ABS paste extravaganza in her build thread. If it worked for her it should work here too. So I mixed up some ABS paste out of the some of my saved clippings (I'm saving them all for future repairs). While the ABS paste is brewing I went to work on my back piece. Once I get the chest return edge smoothed out, I want to hook up the chest to the back with the real straps as well as the ab piece. That way I can start hanging the kidney and but pieces with tape and get a good idea how much I'll have to trim off THE BOTTOM (lesson learned from Christine) of the kidney. So I pulled out my notes from the other night when I went thru the strapping system. The RS accurate strapping kit comes with the shoulder straps already containing the snap for the shoulder bells. Previously I determined that I needed 1 inch between the chest and back armor pieces so that made it easy to center these straps and glue them with E6000 to the back. I had to keep looking at it, making sure the snaps were pointing down. Once this was done I set it aside and went back to the chest for some body work. I used a small putty knife to trowel on some paste. It was relatively thin, about the consistency of Elmer's glue. The point was to fill in the ripples and end up with a level finished surface. I figure this would take several layers to achieve the flatness. Here's the first layer sanded down with 400 grit sandpaper around a sanding block. I couldn't find my sanding block so I had to use one of my kids wooden toy blocks and wrap the sandpaper around that. Whatever works right? This seems to be okay to me. I kind of like the control I have with this method. I think it will end up looking good and be quite strong for the hooks to mount to. Here's the second layer of goop. I'll let this dry and do some more sanding after Christmas. The next piece to work on in between ABS gooping will be the shoulder bridging. The RS kit doesn't come with cut marks so how much flat area do I leave beyond the raised ridges when I cut these? Also since they are one big curved piece that doesn't bend much what's the best way to cut these out? Merry Christmas everyone!

Agreed. Do the ridge side first. You may want to trim off the excess material at the wrist end of the inside half. After I got the ends aligned I glued my inner strips along the ridge side. Then fitted and trimmed where the halves meet up at the back. Then did that inner strip, then did both the outer strips. Keep at it, it's hard to visualize the process of measuring, cutting, fitting, gluing, etc..until you've done it. The right forearm will go faster. Sent from my SM-G935V using Tapatalk