toxication

Added more snaps today, the conectors between lower arm and biceps are now drying. The snap on the cod-piece is also in place. Even now, when I am so close, I feel intimidated by the amount of ABS and work still ahead of me. I thought my First Order TI was a lot of work, smoothening it out, painting it to commercial-paintjob-levels of high gloss. But somehow this iconic costume makes me constantly backtrack and triple, quadruple check what I am doing. Next up: the ammo pouch on the thigh. cut the edges tighter to the boxes, haven't smoothened them yet. It is too warm to do any sanding today Also didn't cut the round edges yet as I am now measuring and playing around. I would have loved it if I could have put the middle pouch lined up with the coverstrip, However I do not feel I have enough playing room to get the pouches lined out on the corners of the leg to move it around. Innerleg: Outer leg: And the front: 45 (yes, I know I still need to clean up the glue on the coverstrips...) Tips on the placing and alignment here would be much appreciated! Shoulder straps... they were still too wide: So started by marking them off with pencil. Attempted to do snap and score on them, but they are too bent and too narrow an edge for that to work for me (might work for others of course, but I could not get a proper grip on it). So marked the line with a pencil and used the scissors instead. After cutting and sanding: The fit seems a lot better now: Cleaned them under the tap to remove all pencil marks and sanding dust. No more clamps, so not glueing them down today just yet. Now I am off to also cut the edges of my belt pouches a bit closer to the boxes and then the 45 degree corners off of it. Again, all your help, comments and suggestions are incredibly appreciated!!

The poppers I have are strong I have them in my two TI costumes as well. so over a year, with 38 troops in the two costumes have survived without a hitch. The only difference is that on my TN (First Order) I have them attached with instant glue instead of E6000, as well as that they are more hidden in padding of that armour. Generally when attaching them to the elastic band I add a piece of either webbing or some other firm fabric to make sure they do not come out of the elastic too easily. That is the one thing I have had with my side straps on my ANH TI. The snaps image is indeed what I was looking for!! Thanks! I have it already for the front and back, but hadn't found it for the arms yet

Did some more preparation for strapping. But first things first, cleaned the shoulderbells more so they are wearable and can fall over the biceps properly. Still pondering whether I should remove more of the return edge. Suggestions are welcome! Keep in mind, I did not sand the edges just yet, since I first want to make sure I do not need to remove more. With sanding they will smoothen and get more equal no matter what. As you can see I also started adding snaps inside the shoulderbells for strapping of both shoulder as well as bicep connections. Started off making a big set of snaps today: Going through them quite rapidly btw Also prepped the pink shoulderbell I intend to use for the Pink Ribbon fund raiser we have in September. Biceps also have snaps, since I really want all parts to be easy to maintain and separate from other parts Next up is trying to figure out how and where to attach the wide elastic to connect bicep and lower arm. The location of that is still a bit misty to me, seen a lot of differences all over. But that will have become clear once i put it all on. Hopefully I will also be brave enough this weekend to attach the ABS shoulder straps. Want to smoothen the edges still and possibly sand it down a bit to make it a smooth and tight connection to the chestplate.

Did some more work on the strapping. Glued the snaps in the upper legs And started on the belt to attach my upper legs to: The snap-bands are still quite spaceous, so I have enough space to play around with them.

Just use e6000, no rivets there. That is very very close to the edge, a rip is not easy to fix, glue is easy to fix if ever needed.

yeah... true, stanley style knife would work of course.

The belt is indeed not yet to my liking This is why I haven't done the corners yet. Going to see if I can cut away a little bit closer to the boxes indeed. Score and snap on the belt is not all that easy, what with those dumb boxes being in the way though. If you have useful suggestion where I can do it from the inside I'd love to hear it! The snaps themselfs only get glue on the sides, where it runs out from the nylon. I have used these snaps previously in my ANH Tie armor and so far (over a year) no reaction yet luckily. Will keep an extra eye on this though, cause the white armor shows a lot more than the black one.

Today I finally made time to start putting some snaps in.. started with the shoulders of both front and back. once this is dried properly going to add more and more snaps so I can start assembling the whole thing into a cohesive costume! Putting them in with e6000. Also made some progress on the belt again. sanded the buttons down so they will fit nicely and look mostly symmetrical The middle button is going to be a tight fit btw

Decided to paint the buttons prior to glueing. Not sure yet whether it is a logical thing, but I did it anyway Realized I have no elasticband for the dropboxes, so sending the wife out tomorrow to get me some. that way I can finish the belt as well.

Started working on the belt this morning. Punched the holes in the canvas belt, drilled the holes in the holes in the ABS. Stuck them together with chicago screws: Drew the outlines for the square-round buttons on the belt Drew the 45 degree angles on the ammo parts to cut that off as well: Considering now what I want to do, fasten them with the screw-side on the canvas side or on the outside. Canvas side has the advantage that it is easier to tighten the belt in the end. A little drop of glue on the other side will then ensure that always stays in place on the ABS side underneath the squares. Also going to have a look how to properly tighten the dropboxes. I have cut them out, still want to sand the edges a bit cleaner, but they are basically ready: and they fit perfectly and snug:

the coverstrips I indeed still want to triple check. and the ankles indeed can do with a bit more cleaning out, by the looks of it. Thanks for the tips! Really great to see so much active feedback here, compared to JRS for example. It was really hard to get feedback there on my FO Tie (also the ANH tie, but that is a lot less work) Loving the amount of suggestions, tips etc. I am getting here!

Totally forgot, also made a blue thing Well ok, a Thermal Detonator...

yeah, quite happy how it came out. The tips rigt now are still very pointy and sharp, so I will still trim that down a bit. But indeed it is looking excellent now. Hopefully tonight I will get to put the ammoboxes on the upper leg and be (mostly) done with the legs.

Photo's! I removed (most of) the tape and magnets and clamps and other things keeping the pieces together while drying and remembered to make some photos:

Sorry, no photos today on the progress. Will try to add some tomorrow. Did some useful things today, Closed the left upper leg, opened the right leg again, removed glue and glued it closed again. Indeed looks a lot better now, even with clamps, magnets and tape it still looks better than it did. Thanks again for the help!! Also put the thermal detonator together. Still need to replace the silver screws with black ones though. But that I can do after initial approval as well Plan for tomorrow is to finish the belt, close the right upper leg on the back so I can put the ammo pouch around it on Sunday. Hopefully I will have time this weekend for the shoulder straps/bridges as well. Once that is done I can full on go for the strapping on everything! Exciting!! Really looking forward to it!

Mainly curious how it will workout with the back of the leg though. Don't want to have too much stress on the ABS to get it aligned at the back. Pondering whether it makes sense to first put the coverstrip on the back and then on the front?

Wow, thanks guys that is an overload of information! Based on your suggestions I will be taking the leg apart again and moving the outer thigh down a bit. I technically have enough space around my knee to allow for the misaslignment at the bottom. I'd rather do that than trimming the top Not sure it will fully resolve the offset the two halves have though, but will see!

Going to have to mod the upper legs a bit, make them a tiny bit shorter, cause right now I cannot really walk properly. ASsuming the butt-plate will come lower in the end. Should I remove 1centimeter all around ? Or just on the outside? This is the part where I get a bit hesitant in putting the knife in the armour In the meantime I will put coverstrips on the back of my lower legs and start working on bending the ammo boxes for the thigh and attaching the sniperplate.

If you look at the photos of my right lower arm you will notice a similar difference, It is really curious to see how big the difference is.

Progress report: Front coverstrip of the left thigh has been glued, started cleaning out the sniperplate and getting it ready for attachment. Trial fitting it on the leg looks like this: This line I will still straighten a bit more to better match the other side; Here the bottom line underneath the boxes is straigt:

Not my photo but from a fellow DG member with an RS kit: You can see the front of the upper legs has fairly sizable offset.

Thats how they come.from rs. I am as.puzzled but there are several pieces that are like that. My right arm has a similar thing.

Shoulder bells cut, to a bit bigger size than they most likely need to be in the end. right upperleg is now equipped with a coverstrip: Same thing for my lower legs: Next up: bending the thigh ammo boxes and installing the sniperplate.

Mounted the lenses in the bucket. Using 2 smaller lenses instead of 1 big one. My ANH Tie bucket has the one big lens, which is great. but considering the TK bucket is fairly small I wanted to keep as much space as possible so opted for 2 smaller lenses. Mounted with these screws on both sides of they eye-holes the lenses are now tightly in there: First put the screw (sorry, not a clue what these things are called in English, please enlighten me!) then covered them with a bit of webbing dabbed (ok, soaked) in glue for extra firmness: This construction works well in my Tie buckets as well, so applied it to TK. Still need to do the paintjob of the bucket, but currently looks something like this: Still going to see if I can get the lenses tighter in there. But first need to figure out how to get padding in my helmet in a somewhat comfortable manner. If I use the standard leaf structure padding the bucket is simply too small, my eyelashes touch the lenses

That indeed is a nice thought. Starting off a bit bigger and if and when needed sizing down. Downsizing is always an option, getting them bigger again is a bit more of a hassle. Excellent tip! Thanks!