shashachu

CFO is pretty active on Facebook - I'd probably just try messaging him and ask.

Ah oops I was responding to this post but didn't notice it was from March. "My concerns is with the clamshell design of the shins. In my construction thus far, if I pry open clam shells with the hinged end just glued via a cover strip, there is a tendency to rip the entire piece in half/pop the cover strip off."

Nice work! I use a inner cover strip on the front of my shins and haven't had any problems with them. Only been 6 months and about 7 or 8 troops, but they don't seem to be in any danger of coming apart.

I also made my belt boxes functional, but after half a dozen troops, I've still never used them. They're slightly too small for trading cards, unfortunately.

I got mine on Amazon. Tandy Line 24 snaps are super high quality. I also echo others that you might want to try splitting the ab and cod and shimming the space in between - it will be hidden by the belt.

Congrats!!

The latest: sounds like KB will be staying open. If it were me I'd wait a bit for things to stabilize, but hopefully he can turn things around. Maybe some sort of run system will work better.

(Delete if not allowed.) This situation is unfolding as we speak, but based on a couple Facebook posts from the official KB Props account as well as comments from Hal, the owner of the shop KB was working out of, and Kevin himself, KB is closing and anyone with outstanding orders should reach out to PayPal.

My shoulder bell, biceps, and forearms, are all connected by snaps and elastic. I disconnect them to store them in my bin, but when I'm suiting up, I connect them all and slip them on like sleeves. Most of the time I can get the shoulder bells snapped to the shoulder straps myself; sometimes I'll need help snapping the second one on. Gloves go on last, and I tuck the cuffs into my undersuit sleeves.

Let's talk adhesive and filler. From what I gathered, the place that it's most crucial to use something like Devcon or CA glue is the yoke, as E6000 allows too much flex, and your filler will crack. Otherwise, E6000 is probably ok? I'm thin enough that I actually think I'll be able to get away with not splitting the back of the kidney and just assembling the ab/kidney as one closed piece, so I'm not concerned about flex there. What are your favorite glues and fillers? I'm primarily concerned with durability because I don't want to refill and repaint every year, but also ease of use (eg ease of sanding). For glue I've heard people use: ABS cement CA glue Devcon E6000 For filler: Devcon JB Weld Bondo ABS paste Apoxie Sculpt (I also have Milliput; I think it's similar?) DFL-1 Spot Putty Evercoat metal glaze Halp!

Walt redid the TD end caps a while back to fit on the pipe easily, but I wonder if there is some pile of old end caps lying in the shop. My kit came with one new (bigger) cap and one small cap. I was able to make the smaller one fit with the heat gun.

Ah yeah I got you now. Yeah I have several inches of overlap between the chest and back so I'll definitely be able to trim the back.

I'm not sure I know what you mean.

Definitely cut the cod - makes a world of difference. Cricket pasted it back together with ABS paste, but I just tucked it behind the ab and strapped it.

GREAT job with the ear trimming on the helmet. Are you planning on trimming back the teeth any more? If you trim to where your pencil lines are, I think they'd look perfect. I personally used Testors paint, but either Humbrols or Testors should work if you use the right colors. I also love hand painted helmets, and it's surprisingly fun to do. I did use stencils from Trooperbay, though. For return edge, I agree that the ab return edge looks a bit big, but it's up to personal preference. I think you'll want to think about trimming back or even getting rid of return edge for non-visible areas (e.g. top of ab, top of biceps) for comfort. Also remember that there should be NO return edge on the wrist end of the forearms for Centurion.

Hey! Any update on the liners? Definitely still interested.

So something that's finally sinking in is just how BIG the FOTK is compared to the OTTK. I got really discouraged last night because I decided to try on the chest and back, and they just looked silly on me. It looked ok when it was just the armor: But on me, I was swimming in it. I really wanted to just give up on the whole project, but I spent some time today looking at some builds photos on the KB Facebook page, and there were a few troopers who also had slim frames who somehow managed to make the armor work without doing any major surgery on the kit. I recalled everyone saying that the gaskets would add some bulk, so I decided to just try it. I have a set of custom gaskets coming from Teresa, but in the meantime I have a too-large gasket set from FN armour that I decided to try. I started by trimming and taping the ab/kidney. The chest/shoulder gaskets were so big I couldn't even get the biceps on, but once I had the chest/back/yoke on top of the gaskets, the abdomen, and added the helmet, I dare say that everything actually looked pretty ok: When I'm not wearing the ab, you can see how small my body actually is in the armor: Nevertheless, tonight was the first time I actually felt a bit of confidence that I'd be able to pull this off.

I was thinking I might just cut off the chest that has the orange peel texture, so I may also have to recreate the rectangle details. I think I'm ok on the yoke trimming, but I'm pretty sure I did remove more of the side return edge than is ideal, but the rough trim that KB did on the yoke didn't leave me much choice. If I end up running the shoulder bell straps and the shoulder bell metal tab through the return edge, I think I'll need to add some reinforcing material there. They sent you a whole b grade yoke? That's pretty cool! I still have a bunch of ABS from my OTTK kit, so I'll use that to reinforce the yoke.

Ahhh how have I missed all the updates?? Looking great, Christine! I had no idea the WTF ab plates are nonstandard since it's the only kit I've worked with. Really fun figuring out the quirks of each makers' kit.

And the trimming continues, this time the chest, back, yoke, and yoke connector. The pulls in these areas are not the best, unfortunately. The sides of the chest have a bit of an orange peel texture: and the plastic is very very thin. I had some cracking on the back already, just from trimming. The yoke is so thin that it's actually floppy - is this typical? I did have a question about the trimming of the back and yoke. I was planning on leaving the return edge on the top of the back, and trimming back the yoke so that the filled seam isn't right on the corner. Here's how much back return edge I have right now: And I'd trim off about here on the yoke: Does this seem like a reasonable idea? Or do most people trim off the top return edge of the back so that the back and yoke meet at the corner?

I used a heat gun, too. It was quite a lot of effort, though. I essentially had to heat the fronts of the shins while overcorrecting the position of the backs of the shins so that they cooled somewhere in the middle. A bit hard to explain, unfortunately. And re your belt position, make sure it's not sitting too low - it should be touching or even slightly overlapping the ab buttons. I had to reposition the snaps on my belt and I also added some Velcro to keep the belt up. Looking great!

Nice work, Jeff! You've obviously done your research and your detailed build thread is going to be really useful for future WTF builders. As for the shins, one piece of advice I picked up when building my WTF kit was to get the shins lining up properly even before adding any closures. I used Velcro on mine so might be slightly different, but I heatgunned the bejeezus out of my shins to get them lined up. Here's a shin while gluing: And here's a shin after lots of heating and reshaping, no Velcro:

Got a bit of time last night after SVCC to do some more trimming work on the kit. I realized I'd left too much edge on the flat panel on the inside of the right forearm, so I trimmed that off and also trimmed the left bicep and forearm as well as both shoulder bells. It's been an interesting experience working on a kit I know I'll be repainting later. While I agonized over every little scuff and mark on my OTTK, I freely draw cut lines in black sharpie all over the FOTK. ------------ I will say that my experience with the KB kit so far has been in line with what I've read in other builds, in that the cut lines tend to be a bit ill defined, and the pulls are quite soft. The trapezoid bicep details, for example, are barely there. Also, the indent on the chest is very soft. I was going to try to make the cutout detail in the ABS rather than using the resin insert, but it being as soft as it is, I may not have a choice. Now that he's moved to a new shop with a bigger vacuumformer, perhaps the pulls are sharper. And maybe I'm just getting used to the ridiculousness of the sizing, but I will say that the arm pieces don't look *too* crazy to my eye. --------------- I'm definitely going to have to significantly resize the biceps, but I'm less worried about it now, especially since I remembered that the inside seam is filled, so I don't have to worry about the inside and outside seams being lined up. Lastly, I finally saw a FOTK in person at comic con! I think he was actually visiting from a neighboring garrison and I didn't actually talk to him, but I definitely creeped on him (well his suit anyway) a lot. So if this is you...sorry. ---------- Both Praetorian Guards are from my garrison, and I thought they looked amazing.

Thanks! I just requested access to the forums.

Thank you, Luc! Do you have a build thread or any photos to share?