shashachu

Great progress so far! Looks like you have the new redesigned yoke?

Starting Assembly It's been a busy few months at work, but I was feeling depressed at the lack of progress on my armor, so I decided to sneak in a few hours work last month. Like my OTTK, I decided to start on the biceps. As mentioned before, they are simply massive on me, so I broke out my trusty heat gun and reshaped the right bicep to bring the circumference way down. Here's a comparison photo of the original left bicep, and the heat-reshaped right bicep: And a test fit with the gaskets: Finally, just to say that I glued *something*, I glued the shoulder bell extensions and an inside cover strip on the resized bicep. I also trimmed down the bicep overlap so that the unglued edges below meet in a butt joint, which I'll eventually fill. Aaaaand that's all I've got so far. We are actually moving next week, so I don't think I'll be able to get much work done for a while. At this point, I'll be thrilled to finish this kit in 2018.

Accessories Over the weeks, most of my major accessories have arrived: Belt from Belts of the First Order: Boots from Imperial Boots: And custom gaskets, neck seal, harness, and shorts from Geeky Pink: The extra neck seal is an OTTK neck seal that Teresa threw in when I very off-handedly mentioned that the neck seal she made me for my OTTK (which I troop in and love) is just a tad snug. Thank you, Teresa!!! I also ordered shoe lifts from Amazon because the smallest boots that IB makes are men's US 8 (I wear a men's 6 on a good day) so they are super roomy. With the boots, lifts, and helmet, I think I should come in at a TOWERING 5' 6"!!

Catching up on updates, I have finished rough trimming the armor. Lower Limb Trimming Checking the CRL, I noticed that the shins come together in a curve, not a straight line. While it's not explicitly mentioned in the text of the CRL, I figured I'd do my best to match the photos. I haven't trimmed them yet, but I did tape up where I want to trim them: For the thigh pieces, I have to say that I'm not super happy with the very rough trimming they did in the shop. It's clear they were rushing things. Nothing unrepairable, but it's certainly not making my life any easier. I don't know how much return edge is customary, but they tend to rough trim extremely closely, so I don't have much of a choice: They even cut into the armor itself: Nonetheless, I did manage to rough trim everything, and taping it up, the lower limbs are (like the rest of the armor) quite massive: It'll be a bit of a decision how much to size them down. With my OTTK I sized everything down in circumference quite dramatically, but with the size of the FOTK torso, I think that may leave me a bit chicken-legged: Finishing the rough trim With the limbs finished, I moved on to the rest of the pieces of the armor (minus the ab boxes): And laying everything out:

Hey, thanks for checking in, Tony! They are old, but I do have some updates. Thanks for the kick-in-the-pants. I'll work on that now. :)

Fantastic! Well deserved!

Nice, will you be getting a set of the 2-part forearms?

What happened? Why do you think it's beyond repair?

Yeah another shorty TK shooting for Centurion! Thanks for linking my build, @Cricket! There are indeed a number of us miniTKs who have reached Centurion, so I've got no doubt you can do it as well. Re: gloves, I personally troop with $5 Home Depot Gorilla Grip gloves, though I have vague plans to eventually glue my flexible handguard to them. For now, I just use the ABS ones attached with velcro. I was approved with and troop with a Hyperfirm B-grade. Our garrison has pretty strict blaster handling rules (basically treat them like real firearms) so I probably wouldn't have any opportunity to make it go pew pew if I had one that had lights/sounds. Looking forward to following your progress.

Can you do a test fit (using blue tape etc) to get a better idea of how close the back sits to the kidney? If they're not right up against each other, you probably don't have to worry about the slight overlap. Or maybe you can trim a bit of the back return edge right at the corner.

That looks right. Read through a bunch of the pinned build threads, especially ukswrath. There are a number of great RS build threads too. Many people start with smaller parts like the biceps. Use E6000 and go slowly. We're here to help.

Strapping between the shoulder bell, bicep, and forearm will definitely keep things in place. Here's mine: I agree that it looks like your thighs are long.

It's hard for me to say for sure; I'm inclined to tell you to leave it because overtrimming is hard to fix. But maybe you can try just laying the plastic belt on top while the canvas belt is snapped in and see what it looks like? Or just wait to see if others chime in with opinions. I added a couple thin strips of Velcro onto my belt and the front of the ab to keep the belt in place, so I haven't had an issue with it shifting around.

Looking great, Christine!

Depending on how wide the plastic is, the belt might be a touch too high; the plastic should just touch or slightly overlap the ab button plate. I don't think a larger overlap is necessarily a problem, though. Also, having the snap under the ammo pack is actually kind of a pain because it makes it hard to snap the belt to the ab since the line 24 snaps are pretty hard to snap. I ended up putting a little box of abs inside the ammo pack so that I had something to push against when I snapped the belt on.

Yeah, I think the thing to keep in mind is that you'll have the easiest time if you can get the calves to roughly stay in place without fasteners, whether it be the elastic/hooks, velcro, etc.

When I was working on my WTF kit, I had pretty big misalignments on the calf openings. I banged my head on it for a while before realizing that I had to heat and shape the *fronts* of the shins in order to get the calves to close properly, not the back. I did use a heat gun, but I'd used it a bunch at that point in my build and was pretty confident with it. I assume you might have gotten scared off of it, but if you do use a heat gun again, maintain a decent distance, keep the heat gun moving, and be patient. A great tip I got from another build thread here is to heat the plastic just to the point that the plastic starts to lose its 'spring', then remove the heat immediately. Then hold the plastic in place until it cools. Here is a shin before heat shaping: And after (this is with no velcro yet):

For the shoulder spacing, there's no required gap. I am so small that initially the front and back plates overlapped at the shoulder, so I had to trim them back. I also attached both sets of shoulder straps with snaps, but I have basically never unsnapped the left side, so it could easily be glued.

Just some random black spray paint I had at home; I just very lightly went over the scope area. If you look at the pics in my EIB vs Centurion application, you'll see the difference: https://www.whitearmor.net/forum/topic/43133-tk-19233-requesting-anh-stunt-eib-status-wtf-766/ https://www.whitearmor.net/forum/topic/43656-tk-19233-requesting-anh-stunt-centurion-status-wtf-367/

I have the Aker/iComm and put everything in my chest plate. I actually haven't had any issues with feedback so far. Like Luc/Christine said, I put on the mic, then balaclava, then neck seal. I actually run the mic wire under the neck seal but over my shirt and just sort of loop it up to the iComm. It takes a bit of getting used to and sometimes I end up doing things in the wrong order. But I like the balaclava because it keeps my hair in place as well as the mic. I use the mic that came with the Aker and it works best if it's pressed right against my lips, so I actually pull the balaclava completely over my mouth and the mic. I have plans to move to a wireless setup, but I was having trouble getting the mic to not pick up too much ambient noise. I put my hair in a ponytail (but only pulled halfway through so it doesn't hang so long.) I've pulled the mic out of the way here, but you can see my general setup:

Most do use webbing and attach directly, but I did the rivet-in-snap method you did with your cod snap in case I ever need to change out the webbing or separate the ab and kidney completely. It's worked out really well for me so far (7 months, 10 troops.) In general I tried to make as many parts of my armor replaceable/repairable.

Well done, Zac! Super clean build. I think you *might* be asked to supply a picture of the inside of your right thigh ammo pack rivet. Also, the elastic holding your shoulder straps looks wide; most common is 1/8". This is only a requirement for Centurion and it's not actually specified in the CRL so I think it might be one of those things that is for accuracy only. Finally, when I applied for EIB/Centurion, I was asked to paint over some of the brass weathering on the scope on my Hyperfirm so you might be asked to do the same. See you at Centurion soon. :)

Yes, I would trim both the big and small ab button plates so there's no overhang. I'll try to find some reference pics.

Yup, non-visible strapping/snaps doesn't affect approval. The exceptions might be the visible snaps on the butt piece and the 'Han snap' on the right of the ab. I know they shouldn't be painted white, but I don't know if they need to be silver, either. The CRL doesn't specify. @ukswrath any input here?