Jump to content

Ensi

501st Stormtrooper[TK]
  • Posts

    226
  • Joined

  • Last visited

Everything posted by Ensi

  1. 7. Cinemateket "Children's Day" - Oslo [17.03.2018] My first time actually supporting/handling for the local 501st gang here was at this troop in 2017. Again I was doing the same thing with the same people Felt really good! This time I also "premiered" my newly finished F-11D blaster which I assembled myself. Job was to take pictures with the kids as they were showing TFA an hour or two after. Holding for General Hugs Mandatory Elevator Shot
  2. Hello all! I've seen a lot of confusion about wetsanding and polishing with the goal of increasing the shine. Lots of people mixing up terms and using the wrong methods/products at the wrong time/place. So I decided to put up a little tutorial to clear (hehe) things up. DISCLAIMER: I am not a professional, I do auto detailing in my spare time and have some experience with paint correction. This will be a pretty long tutorial but stick with me and hopefully we'll learn something 1. What is shine? To be brief: when something is really really flat, it will reflect a lot of light directly into your eyes, making it appear shiny. Below is an illustration of perfect paint reflecting light, this would look like glass: (Illustrations are not to scale, just there to give you an idea). But that's a show-car-130-hours-polishing-lunatic-finish. Most of us use spray cans, and spray cans suck. They spit out paint unevenly and most of it is propellant anyway. And we do it in conditions that are not optimal, so we end up with very uneven paint full of orange peel. For this tutorial i've prepared a plate of ABS plastic which has been painted black (easier to demonstrate) and clear coated. See this pic below? See that wrinkly, orange'y look to it? That's orange peel. Image 1: If we want to go the extra mile to get rid of this, we need to do.. 2. Sanding - Levelling the paint Using sandpaper is ABRASIVE. From Merriam-Webster: abrasive 1: causing damage, wear, or removal of surface material by grinding or rubbing Focus here being "removal of surface material". Every time you swipe that sandpaper it removes some material. What we are trying to achieve here is a flat surface, we are trying to flatten out those "peaks and valleys" by removing/flattening the clear coat. A sandpaper's "grit" determines if it's coarse or fine. A higher number means it's more fine, and will remove less material. A lower number means it's more coarse and will remove more material. You need to have enough clear coat on your piece to be able to do this correction. Or else you might sand into the basecoat or even the primer. Which sucks because that means a re-paint.. Here is a list of my PERSONAL sandpaper grits: 40 - Super coarse for doing an Alderaan on whatever you are working on, I never use this 80 - Very coarse, for removing material quickly. I use this on woodworking projects 120 - Quick removal of material while still being in control 180 - I use this to knock down 3D-print lines and filler 240 - Smoothing filler if i'm feeling a bit scared 320 - This is what I sand my parts with before primer 600 - For wetsanding my primer 800-1000 - Anything from color-coat/clear-coat fixes to wetsanding hard clear coat 1200 - For knocking down tough orange peel 1500 - For knocking down orange peel 2000 - For removing 1500 scratches 3000 - For removing 2000 scratches For this test piece I started with 1500 grit to knock down the orange peel as the clear coat I used is kind of soft. Keep in mind every sanding step in this tutorial is done wet/wetsanding. As you can see here i've flattened out the peel on most of the piece but I missed a spot. I went over it again and made sure the entire surface was equally "dull". After this I went over it with 2000 grit. This is a finer sandpaper and my goal here is to eliminate the scratches from the 1500 job. Notice the sanding marks going the opposite direction this time. This is a good way to gauge if you've successfully sanded away the marks from the previous steps. And finally I went over it with 3000 grit in the opposite direction to remove the 2000 grit marks. At this point you should start seeing some shine My camera really struggled to focus taking these pictures. And we're done with sanding! Dry off your parts and move on to.. 3. Polishing - Levelling the paint again, just very very little From Merriam-Webster: polished; polishing; polishes transitive verb 1 : to make smooth and glossy usually by friction : burnish 2 : to smooth, soften, or refine in manners or condition 3 : to bring to a highly developed, finished, or refined state : perfect This is were it gets confusing. Some people "put polish" on their car, but they really mean wax. Some people "polish in the wax". I mean, it's been used so much in so many different ways I know it seems confusing. For simplicitys sake: Polishing is the last step in paint correction. In the auto detailing world, if you would let's say fix orange peel on a car, you'd go through all the steps above then.. 1. Use a RUBBING COMPOUND with a machine to knock down the 3000 grit scratches, paint should look like ANH Vader at this point 2. Use a POLISH with a machine to further level the paint from the faint marks the COMPOUND may have left, at this point the paint will be as clear as an ESB Vader 3 Apply a WAX/SEALANT/COATING on top of the newly corrected and flawless paint, to protect it (and also add a tiny bit more shine). Wax/sealant/coatings will fill in tiny tiny scratches making the paint appear more shiny, but the effect will diminish as the wax deteriorates. Rubbing compound and Polishes are ABRASIVE, they will REMOVE clear coat, just like sandpaper, only much much finer. Think of them like liquid 30000 grit and 80000 grit sandpaper After drying off my newly 3000 grit sanded piece, I found a foam polishing pad, and primed it with some rubbing compound. Priming is basically just "feeding" the working area of your pad with polish so there are no dry spots. All my compounding/polishing was done by hand. I then applied some more compound to the pad, a pea sized drop and went to town in small, circular motions. Follow the instructions on your product. After finishing I wiped off with a microfibre cloth aaaand... BAM! Shine!! The compound I used was Menzerna FG-400. It's a really good compound, it finishes super fine and you could just leave it as it is right there! You can also use Meguiars M105 for this step. Or any "rubbing compound", as long as it doesn't have fillers/wax in it which will trick you and lie to you. You can also just straight up use a polish, but you might have to work a bit longer to achieve the same effect. Now on to the polishing, for this I did the exact same thing with a finer foam pad and Menzerna SF-3500 (Meguiars equivalent M205). Honestly it didn't make much of a difference since the FG-400 finished out so nicely. If you're using other products you may have to do this step if you see "haze" from the compounding step. I tried my best getting an in focus picture but my camera got so confused because of the shine 4. Wax/Sealant/Coating - Protective Layer A wax is a protective layer, it is NOT abrasive. At this stage you can add wax if you want, it'll protect the paint a bit and also give it a tiny bit more shine. It's the prep-work and COMPOUNDING/POLISHING that really makes it shine. I didn't bother adding wax to my polished test piece as it was already as good as it gets. I did however tape off the piece before polishing, so I had one side which was 3000 grit sanded, and one side that was polished. I tried adding wax to the sanded side: After buffing it off with a microfibre and removing tape: And that's it Hope you learned something! Any questions feel free to post them here and i'll do my best to answer. After closely inspecting the piece I can see some orange peel left, but that's from when I put my color coat on, which is under the clear coat.. oh well.. Spray cans suck!!
  3. Thanks Going to post some more updates later as i've had some time with the armor. Mods i've done etc!
  4. Aw man the Anovos suit looks so good, superb job on this one!!
  5. Aw man, if that's true it'd be a bummer. Planned on buying a few parts from him, they looked real good!
  6. Hit up Belts Of The First Order on Facebook, great 3-layer kit. If you decide to go Jim he offers the pouches (at least he did when I ordered mine) which work fine. If not I know Trooperbay has them too.
  7. Yessss, more FOTK's! Any update?
  8. You can do it!! It just takes a bit of time I never did. It wasn't my strongest area either so I spent like 3 weeks reading about electronics trying to wrap my head around it You can do it in several ways, I opted to use an 18650 for the UNLIMITED POWER it has. Here's my wiring schematic if it helps: I've cropped out the technical stuff as it will vary. Keep in mind I am no electrician and toying around with 18650 cells is no joke. You could easily do it with a 9V battery for the LED's and just use a mini torch like everyone else did in the front Thanks! The brand of paint I used is CRC Pro Paint. It's this cheapo all-round acrylic paint we sell at work. Same stuff I used on my suit! I smoothed/primed/sanded the silver parts exactly the same, but in the end I hit it with gloss black and then clear. Polished it a bit at the end but it didn't help much. Then alclad chrome if i'm not mistaken was airbrushed on
  9. Haven't had any catastrophic failures yet. Several small cracks though, which i've reinforced with fibreglass mats and resin from behind. This armor requires upkeep and is a bit of work sometimes. But I guess you have that with every armor? Still think it is the best looking kit right after ANOVOS, if you can get your hands on that
  10. Bend/shape a piece of metal or plastic around the lip Not as screen accurate but looks way better with those supports.
  11. Thanks! Yes I wanted it practical, didn't want to mess around with several batteries
  12. Already have someone that's gonna print it up for me, I guess this madness never ends hahah
  13. Done!! I could of course have done more smoothing, and there are some cracks and some blemishes that I didn't fix. But as with my kit, nothing is perfect, just move on before you go nuts! (Yes I am missing a screw under the forward grip, which I fixed right now )
  14. THIS POST IS GOING TO BE HUGE DO NOT QUOTE THE ENTIRE THING LOL. Finished pictures is in the next post. So I used the weekened effectively and finished my blaster!! It's amazing that I spent all these weeks doing the surface prep, and it's only when you start assembling that you get your reward. Assembled it in 2 days with electronics and everything, surface prep took forever. Masked off the scope bracket, wow this was a pain to do, so many small pieces of masking tape. Did not come out perfect but I think that's the best I could do with such a small piece Now let the fun begin! I assembled everything according to the guide Germain provides, all with screws and some glue reinforcement where I think it could help. Having all the screws organized makes everything so much easier. Assembled the grip, glued the grip inlay with CA, put a spring and some E6000 on the "second trigger", installed decorative screws. Glued on the thigh bracket, installed screws, attached frame to grip. Installed muzzle and sight. 6mm Airsoft BB painted black and glued into place Started pulling electronics and installing the switches Painted the screws to make it blend in a bit better. This switch turns everything on/off. Assembled the scope and some other various parts Actual glass lenses was used in the scope, the tint is some kind of film a co-worker had laying around. Cool hexagon pattern, almost looks like a killflash, which I think fits the FOTK's modern style. Hot glued the voltage regulator for the flashlight down, also hot glued the light-plates (?????) down. Ran more wires Above both lights is a sheet of clear plexiglass CA'ed in place, with 2 layers of that film you put on your bathroom window so people can't see you poop. The lights are angled because of the cables underneath, I should've done it a better way but it doesn't look that bad Notice how the wires are not going up the hole I made for those wires? Easy to make mistakes when you are this hyped! Wired up the flashlight. Note that both cables are black and labelled, this is because I didn't want a red wire going up the barrel and potentially showing. Before I glued on the ring, I sanded off the black finish on the flashlight. This switch turns the flashlight on or off. Also note, the structural bracket should NOT be white. I was so certain it was and painted it. Then I realized i'm a dumbass. Gonna go without it until I can get it machined out of aluminium at a local makerspace in the future Phew... Next post will be finished pictures..
  15. No, they are straight from printer to assembly. He just prints them in black/white material, silver parts are painted though!
  16. It is able to, but you have to add the screws yourself as it only comes with 3D-printed "screws". Quality is good, there is no surface finishing done, it's straight from printer to assembly. It is super light so great for trooping.
  17. That's from Heston and it is indeed a nice blaster for the price, you get lights and it's fully finished. I have one that I troop with now, and it is SUPER light, very good for trooping. Although it has a fair bit of print lines, but the price and weight make up for it. I also have boots and gloves from IB, they are great! And also have the undersuit and neckseal from stormtrooperundersuit. The shiny area cracks/frays along the seam right down your crotch area, so it is hidden by cod and buttpiece. It is the undersuit you want for screen accuracy, but do note they are very small in size. I wear a medium everything, ordered a large, but it's super tight, wish i'd ordered an XL. If you haven't found a vendor for gaskets yet, go with Geeky Pinks and get neckseal and gaskets at the same time.
  18. Looking forward to this! Really hope ANOVOS actually delivers. So jealous of that ATI stock I'm guessing you printed the heavy version blaster? Toying around with the idea of getting a stock like that but would maybe look weird on standard since the heavy version is bigger.
  19. So as I am mostly done with the boring sanding and filling (still some left tho) I moved on to the fun stuff! As I said before I was gonna outsource the chroming work to a garrison friend who has an airbrush and alclad. Before I could do that I needed to give the parts a glossy black finish Drove over to him and hung out, saw all his AMAZING props. Including an E-11 he'd built using only real parts. Decomissioned Sterling, real tank scope, real hengstler, the works! So sick! Commence the alclad: The results were awesome Compared to my old blaster The magazine cover did a print boo-boo and because of that I was missing the ball in the print. Drilled a small hole and countersunk a 6mm airsoft BB into the hole. Installed the bracket scews. I did this before gluing the bracket on to the piece (which i'd recommend you to do instead). As I was drilling freehand one of the screws ended up not going in completely straight which also meant the bracket was not straight. It bothered me so much so I tried to fill the hole/mistake i've made and re-do it. First I filled it with some epoxy putty, that didn't work. Was way too soft, probably because it was old. So I wrestled that out of the hole, and filled it with 5min epoxy glue. Nope, soft that as well, probably because there was such large amounts of it. Or maybe it was old too? Who knows. Cursed a bit and removed that too. Then I tried with the polyester resin I had laying around from my boat repair kit. Those of you who have seen my FOTK build thread know that I have used this kit extensively to prevent cracks. And it worked wonderfully!! Just taped the hole from behind, mixed up the resin and dumped it in there. It's not 100% lined up super straight, but I think i've come to the same realization as with my FOTK. "Nothing will ever be perfect and you'll lose your sanity if you dwell too long on one step". The screws I use are button head anti-tamper torx M5 screws. Guide says M6 but M6 doesn't fit into my Jimmiroquai supplied holster. I even had to sand some in my armor build to make the M5 fit. I also had to remove my ball bearing on my holster to make the holster usable. This will probably not be an issue if you have a holster from another maker. Wetsanded and polished up the metal holster bracket (supplied by Justin Lee Morrison). Inspired by the KCP blaster thread and pictures, I decided I didn't want a sticker in the pillhole on the left side. I dug out a sheet of aluminium i've gotten from a friend at work and fabricated my own using drill bits and files. Also polished that up a bit! Both the pillhole part and the holster bracket got a few thin coats of clear coat to minimize corrosion/oxidation. Then I tackled the flashlight switch. I thought long and hard about this one, and ultimately decided to sacrifice some screen accuracy for practicality. By adding a switch to the empty pillhole on the left. Added some M3 anti-tamper torx to it to make it as First Order™ as possible as well as making it removable for future repairs. Haven't decided if I should paint this assembly white or just leave it like it is. Drill bits, files, and lots of patience Next up? I'm gonna sit down and relax before the final round of sanding
  20. Do you know how to use filler, spray cans, and sandpaper? Then you can do a Jimmi kit. It's probably the easiest available FOTK kit out there right now. Only minor modifications necessary, maybe some down/up-sizing of parts depending on your body type. You have all the info and help you will ever need and more here on these forums And yeah it's expensive, the things that make it expensive is all the other stuff: gaskets, boots, gloves, belt, pouches, blaster, neckseal, undersuit, nylon webbing, elastic, velcro, magnets, glues, tools etc etc etc.
  21. Oh and I forgot to say, Germain your attention to detail is amazing. I just LOVE how idiot-proof these parts are, where it's possible, he has made the parts in such a way that you can't orient them wrong. There are notches and spaces made out so everything lines up nicely. Thanks!
  22. Been busy doing a clothing run for the 2 Norwegian Squads, with custom text and everything, wow what a time sink. Finally got the rest of my parts! I am thinking about changing my middle name to Sandpaper First up, I re-did my electronics. Instead of running off a 9V battery, I instead opted to use an 18650 cell. I also researched and learned a lot during this time. Threw a variable voltage regulator into the mix and now everything runs off 1 battery! Yes! Drilled holes for the cabling Sanded/dremel'd the flashlight ring to accomodate my flashlight which was larger Joined the grip parts together as many have done, with reinforcement. Pro-tip: If your power cylinders come out awful (like mine did), slice it in half and print them vertically, looks much better. Just glue and fill the seam later. More filling and sanding Tapped the rest of the holes and assembled some of the pieces together, couldn't help myself. It's starting to look like a proper blaster!! Next up? More sanding and sanding and sanding, you get the deal
  23. 6. The Last Jedi Premiere - Lillestrøm Cinema (Lillestrøm) [15.12.2017] The usual, stand guard, mingle with guests, take photos
  24. 5. The Last Jedi Premiere - Ås Cinema (Ås) We were asked to be part of the premiere in this small cinema. People did not expect us. As usual, walk around, greet people, take photos, check ID's on cinema entry. The usual shenanigans. I arrived early so I got kitted up first and when I walked out I almost tripped on the stage (didn't see it below me). Must've looked funny... No dedicated handler on this one, note to self: Get a dedicated handler. The cinema was governmental so it was in the same building as the library. Took some photos there too, while one person studied. Imagine sitting as the only person in a library studying and 2 stormtroopers and a snowie walk in
×
×
  • Create New...