shashachu

Awesome, yeah I think it'd be helpful to get as much hands-on help as possible. You're short enough that there really shouldn't be a gap inbetween the ab and cod - on the contrary, they should probably be overlapping. Good luck! You're getting there.

Taylor - what Garrison would you be joining?

Agree with Luc - the cod doesn't need to be so much in between your legs - let it just hang off the ab and it hopefully won't dig into your thighs so much. Definitely try detaching it from the butt and position them independently.

Agree with Luc. The entire ab/kidney/cod area looks too high. None of the back, kidney, or butt should be overlapping. The cod and butt should not be attached. If you detach them, you should be be able to drop the butt down way lower. If the cod is digging into your thighs you should be able to trim in down a bit. The whole ab is sitting too high - drop it down and tuck the cod behind it. On me, the bottom of the ab piece hits just around my hip bones. On you it looks like it could be lowered by a few inches.

I did do a lot of trimming on my forearms. I somewhat regret it not because it didn't turn out well, but because it was a pain in the butt. I think it's more common to leave the forearms a bit bigger and just add foam to make up the room.

Now that I have the right arm pieces assembled, I decided to try them on (with the proper gaskets and gloves as well.) I have to say that it doesn't look too bad in my opinion: And a test to see if I can touch my helmet Here's a side by side of now vs my initial fitting. I'm pretty happy with how I've managed to size things down, although the bicep is still pretty big: I also started work on the left arm pieces:

Looks fantastic! And the way you sanded them actually makes it look like you've got a return edge there as well. Nicely done.

I have the 4 part as well. I feel like I just did something slightly strangely. Oh well will probably work.

I have no idea how it's supposed to be glued down...or do most people leave that area unglued? My hands are small enough to glue the whole thing. Or is it easier if you use a stronger adhesive? Who knows!

Took the clamps and magnets off the forearm this morning and it looks...okay? Haha. It's pretty wonky. I think it should be okay but it'll need a lot of filler and sanding.

I'm beginning to see why the FOTK forearms seem to be the bane of everyone's build. The 4-part KB forearms just don't have much gluing surface to hold everything together, and the fact that I've sized them down probably doesn't help. I was kind of able to glue the elbow side of the flat inner forearm piece to the rails (which are not flat so really don't provide that much contact surface for glue), but the wrist side (the box) just had nothing to adhere to. So I ended up making little gluing brackets out of scrap ABS to try to hold everything together: Would you believe this single forearm took me 3 hours? :'( And it's still full of gaps. I'm hoping that the filler with help hold things together some. One detail that I left out was that I've decided to do my build with E6000. It might be something I'm kicking myself over later, but it's just the adhesive that I'm most comfortable with, and with the amount of disassembling and reassembling I've already done, I just don't see this build working for me with a more permanent adhesive.

Personally I'd probably just trim the curled part off, glue with an inner cover strip, then fill the seam. (Caveat I do have a KB kit but haven't gotten to the ab section yet.)

Many of us short troopers cut the first notch (wrist side) off of the forearms. Totally approveable. And I believe you should cut at the other trim line on the inner forearm unless that makes them too small.

Wow can't believe how fast you're blowing through this build! And glad you found the heat gun useful and not that scary - it's my #1 indispensable tool for armor building. I'm just way too impatient to use a hot water bath. From the back, the kidney looks just a tad bit big. I wonder if a touch of reshaping to get it to match the width of the back better would make it look more proportional?

Nice work! Easy pass!

@TheSwede has a newer KB kit and a great build thread: He made some interesting mods to the 2-part forearms so it should be a good reference.

Awesome! Following your build because I have a KB FOTK, so mine will be pretty similar. Looks like you have the upgraded kit with the resin TD and 2 part forearms?

Sometimes it can help to let the E6000 sit for a minute or two before putting the cover strips on so that it gets a bit tacky and will hold things in place better.

Wow looks great!

Actually just found some good photos on Facebook:

Here are a couple not very good photos I downloaded of the Finn mod: Personally i am planning on getting approved first and then doing the mod if needed.

Nice work! The curves looks great.

Thanks! Certainly my experience with my ANH kit has given me a lot of confidence working with armor in general, but also knowing that the TFA is going to have to be filled, sanded, and painted removes a lot of fear of not making everything perfect.

So after looking at more build threads and also checking out some of the KB build groups on Facebook, I realized I had the totally wrong idea about the forearm assembly. When I trimmed the side rails, I'd left some return edge on the bottoms so that they stuck up a lot. If you look at my forearm from the previous post, you'll see I butted it right up against the ridge on the outside of the forearm, making a sort of seam. But after looking at the CRL image, I realized the forearm past the ridge should be flat and seamless: Fortunately, I'd glued it with E-6000 so I just ripped it apart. I had intended to attach the side rails to the outer forearm via overlapping, but the only way to make everything seamless is to use a butt joint with an inner cover strip. So I trimmed off the return edge of the side rails that would face the outer forearm, and did some significant trimming of the outer forearm piece: Another change I made was to cut off essentially all the return edge on the flat inner forearm: In this rough tape-up, you can see that now none of the pieces overlap: Then I went ahead and glued the side rails on using an inner cover strip: I'm feeling much more confident about the forearms now. As that was drying, I also started work on trimming and heat shaping the left bicep, and glued one half: That's it for now! I think I finally have the upper limbs figured out.

Snuck in a wee bit of work last night. Closed up the right bicep: Thanks to @Cricket's suggestion, I got a roll of gaffer's tape, which is super sticky and much better for holding together pieces. I also glued one side rail of the right forearm: For those of you who have completed the 4-part KB forearms, I have a couple questions: 1) For the side rail that doesn't include the indents for the greeblies (so not the one in the picture above), is it glued to the outer forearm piece with an overlap or are you supposed to trim the outer piece and attach them with a butt-and-cover technique? I looked at both @Ruthar and @Anzo's build threads and it's not 100% clear to me. I wanted to confirm before I trimmed the outer piece. 2) How much return edge (if any) do you leave on the inner forearm piece? Should I trim it completely off so that it's basically just a flat piece? If I do leave a bit of return edge (I have a few mm right now) it's not really clear to me how to glue it on, as it would just be sitting on the mounting rails of the side pieces, which gives little surface area for gluing. On the Anovos kits it seems to be totally flat, but looking at some KB build threads, it seems like some folks leave a bit.