shashachu

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?

Yes, I will definitely need to at least heat bend the back, as it's massive on me. (I also have a KB)

Thanks for the input! I've never worried about the E6000 pulling apart on my OTTK. Is there a worry that the bondo/filler would crack if the parts are only held together with E6000, or is it actually that the parts might come apart?

To be honest, I think I'm going to be making it up as I go along. As I mentioned, I think the built-in details make this a much tougher build to modify for small troopers, although I know it can be done (I've seen photos of a 5' 3" woman in KB armor). I'm actually more worried about the width of it - the chest and back are extremely broad on me. The craziest thing I was thinking about this morning was heat bending the back to make it narrower, and slicing out a strip from the middle of the yoke and connecting it back together. Since the armor has to be bondoed/sanded/painted anyway, that opens up the door for a lot more drastic modifications.

Hahaha no pressure! Thanks for the suggestion - edited the thread title as well as put my height/weight info. I'll probably end up going for EIB, but I may not go for Centurion due to the requirement of rubber gaskets. But never say never.

It's that time again! I bought a Standard Line Anovos TFA helmet a while back, and had been thinking of pulling the trigger on a KB FOTK kit for a while when I happened upon a garrison friend selling a KB kit and a bunch of accessories (blaster, pistol), so I jumped on it. I knew that it would be a much more challenging build for a short and slim trooper (I am 5' 3", 125 lbs) than the OTTK due to all of the molded-in details that I can't just chop off, so I let it sit in the box for quite a while, and instead did a lot of research, primarily studying Ruthar's and Anzo's fantastic KB build threads. I finally had some free time a few evenings ago and decided to stop procrastinating and just jump in. The first thing I did was take inventory of all the armor bits in the box. (Yo dawg, I heard you like boxes...): Everything looked complete, except my TD has the same trimming error that Anzo's did, where they accidentally cut out a big semicircular chunk of the top of the TD. I decided to just not worry about it, as I'm thinking of ordering the new KB resin TD anyway. Somehow having everything laid out like this actually made the build seem *less* intimidating than when it was all sitting in the box. I guess just seeing everything together makes me realize it really is a finite amount of work. Like my OTTK, I decided to start with the biceps and forearms. It actually took me a few minutes of staring at EIB and Centurion applications to make sure I'd picked the proper 4 pieces for the forearm, but eventually I rough trimmed and taped everything together for a test fit. Lolz. Somehow it looks semi-reasonable in photos, but in person, the bicep is RIDICULOUSLY large. Like...I could fit both my arms in it at once. I am not going to do any resizing until I have my gaskets, but it's clear I'm going to have to do some major work. The good thing about the overlap construction for the inner bicep seam is that it gives me quite a bit of flexibility in terms of resizing. My plan is to take the heat gun to the bicep pieces to give them a much tighter radius (I used the heat gun a ton with great success in my OTTK build), then do a lot of trimming from the rear piece to preserve the details in the front piece. The one thing I will need to be careful of is that the outer and inner seams don't get too asymmetric, as I'll be taking most/all off the rear piece. I'm also planning on trimming for length from the top, as the cut should be hidden by the shoulder bell. For the forearms, I don't think I'll be able to do much in the realm of resizing for width, but they're not as wide or long as I was fearing; I should be able to take my helmet off and on myself, especially if I add the 'Finn notch.' Also, the good thing about having tiny hands is that I'll be able to completely glue the forearm closed, instead of having to leave the wrist end unglued like most builders. I bought the kit with a set of FN gaskets that proved to be much much too large, so I have a set of Soulart's gaskets in order. But just for kicks, I tried the elbow gasket on with the bicep and forearm, and now I know how NASA astronauts feel in their super bulky space suits. Question for other FOTK builders - is it a mistake to do the build with E-6000? With the number of times I pried apart and reglued my OTTK parts, I'm nervous about using weld-on or whatever more permanent glues most folks use. Any thoughts? That's it for now! Hope to have more progress soon.

4

I would be in for a liner as well!

Got it; that makes sense. I actually fixed the pull-through by backing the canvas end of the rivet with a thin piece of ABS - like a plastic washer. I think I may go ahead and switch to Chicago screws for this build. Thanks for the input, everyone!

The hole in the canvas was burned with a soldering iron. The rivet breaking was really strange - I thought it was set properly, but maybe not?

True. I was trying to avoid buying another tool for a single use, but they're probably a lot stronger than pop rivets.

I did - the first time the rivet pulled through it was actually on the canvas side. This time the rivet just broke.

Twice I've had the pop rivet holding the plastic belt to the canvas belt pull through or break - the latter as I was getting suited up for a troop this morning. (Luckily a Garrison mate had white duct tape handy to hold it in place during the troop - screen accurate!) Are there sturdier alternatives to the pop rivets? Maybe Chicago screws?

Nice work! One potential issue is that the drop boxes should be aligned with the end of the belt. I don't know if it's just the perspective, but yours look like they are a little off.

You're a star, Daetrin! Thank you!

Same - pending here. TK 19233.

Wow, congrats #800!

Just bought a KB kit from a Garrison buddy and will be studying this thread carefully. Thanks for taking the time to put so much detail in!

Nice work! Great to see more WTF kits reaching EIB and Centurion. Speaking of Centurion, I'm not 100% sure it's specified in the CRL, but the white elastic holding down your shoulder straps looks big - I believe 1/8" is screen-accurate. Don't know if it will matter for Centurion or not.

For height, I trimmed it similarly to the belt - a couple mm above and below boxes. For length, I essentially eyeballed it by holding and bending the ammo pack against the thigh. (Heat bending it first might help.) Since the length depends on the circumference of the bottom of your thigh piece, even if I did have measurements, yours would be almost guaranteed to be different. Just be sure that it's pretty tight against the thigh and it should be ok. As for the Velcro, still holding up great, but it's only been 3 months and 3 troops. I wouldn't be surprised if I eventually had to replace it, but I don't foresee that happening anytime soon. Hope this helps!

Congrats, David!