shashachu

Helmet Interior I knew that I wanted to Plasti-Dip the helmet interior, and before assembling the helmet I went back and forth a few times about whether I should plasti-dip before or after assembly. I eventually decided on doing it after because I didn't want to have to drill holes through the plasti-dip for assembly, but I didn't really know how I'd disassemble the helmet after drilling all the holes in order to plasti-dip it. Retrospectively, I could have temporarily held the helmet together with screws instead of rivets for easier disassembly, but I just didn't think of it at the time. In order to plasti-dip the assembled helmet, I added blue tape to the interior of the teeth as well as the eyes, then taped a plastic bag around the entire exterior of the helmet. I sprayed about 3-4 coats of plasti-dip, leaving around 30 minutes between coats. It worked very well, and there was very little bleeding of the plasti-dip. What little there was was easily scraped off with a fingernail. The WTF kits come with a long sheet of green plastic for the lenses. Originally I was planning on just holding it in place with the ear screws (maybe with a bit cut out for the bridge of my nose), but the piece I had was just a bit too short, so I had to scrap that plan. I recalled seeing other people's builds that held the lenses in with screws, so I modeled my solution after those. I first drew a template out of cardboard, and transferred that to the green plastic. Each lens would be roughly the size of the eye, but with 3 tabs for the screws. I decided to use Chicago screws embedded in milliput. I drilled the holes into the green plastic, installed the Chicago screws, then put blobs of milliput around each of the 3 Chicago screw bases. I'd let it harden a bit, then press it into place. Very carefully, I'd unscrew the Chicago screws and remove them and the lens, leaving just the milliput and base in place to dry. For the frown mesh, I simply used a roll of cheap screen material I found at the hardware store, and held it in place with electrical tape. The whole roll only cost $5. I decided to make my own fan set using simple components found on Amazon. (Fans, wires, crimp connectors, switch, USB charger) I'm terrible at soldering, so I used crimps with heat shrinking to connect the wires. I used this diagram that I found on FISD for reference. Unfortunately, I can't recall which thread I found it in; if I find it again I will edit this post and properly give credit. I installed a length of 1/2" split electrical conduit tubing and held it in with velcro in order to hide the wires. The USB power stick sits near the right hovi tip, also held in with velcro. The power switch is just sort of floating in space, but it seems to work out fine. The fans themselves are also held in with Velcro. I took the advice of many other builds I'd seen and pointed them up towards the lenses. I got a set of tactical helmet pads from Amazon and found that my helmet would bobble around like crazy when them installed. After consulting with some folks on Facebook, I followed their advice and removed the top pad, and everything fits more snugly. My helmet still bobbles a bit if I tilt my head quickly from side to side, so I might eventually investigate other solutions, but this seems good enough for now. Here is the completed interior:

Alas, I will be missing the GGG TLJ screening but I'm sure we'll meet each other soon!

Congrats, Walter!

Following! I'm considering getting a KB FOTK next year, and yours is one of the more detailed build threads I've seen.

I want you to troop more so that I can finally meet you and shake your hand for all the help you gave me and everyone on this forum on our builds.

Congrats, Stephen!

Helmet I know a lot of people start with the helmet, but I deliberately left it last because I was scared of screwing it up. It's by far the most iconic piece of the armor, so I wanted to be sure I felt comfortable enough working with plastic to feel like I could do it right. I watched Walt's helmet assembly video more than once, and found Pandatrooper's ATA helmet build to be invaluable. Finally, it was time to start. Many people use a Dremel for helmet trimming, but based on my past experiences using a Dremel, I wasn't going to let a Dremel anywhere near my helmet. I started off trimming the eyes by drilling a series of holes, and then using both an X-acto and utility knife to connect the holes: You'll notice these cuts are very far from the edge of the eye, because I figured I could always cut off more, but I didn't want to over trim. Bit by bit I hand trimmed the eyes, filed, and sanded until I was happy with the shape: I used a very similar technique with the teeth by drilling a hole or two in each space, and hand trimming out the rest. I had a hard time with under trimming the teeth, but I found that once I started focusing on shaping the teeth themselves instead of focusing on trimming out the space between them, it became much clearer how much to trim. After doing the basic trimming, I used magnets to start to position the two pieces together: Of course I couldn't resist trying on the helmet at this point: (The front-facing camera on my phone really distorts the helmet.) Unfortunately, I didn't take any photos of the rest of the assembly, but I just followed Pandatrooper's ATA build. I also want to say that it is possible to screw up the helmet assembly A LOT and still things will turn out okay, so hopefully that eases the minds of other new builders. For those who are curious, I drilled the hole for the ear rivet in completely the wrong place which made it overlap where the ear screws needed to be, so I had to drill out the rivet, re-drill holes, reposition the ears, and re-rivet it back together. The ear trimming was somewhat difficult, but the good thing is that they can be pretty wonky, and you can just claim screen accuracy. Helmet Paint For any paint that needed a black outline, I used Pandatrooper's method of laying down the black first, and then painting the grey on top of it. While I never tried painting the outlines any other way, this worked out really well for me, and I'm a terrible painter. Although WTF kits come with tube strip decals, I knew I wanted them hand painted, so I ordered a helmet decal set from Trooperbay. It worked out great except when I tried to lay a decal on grey paint that wasn't quite dry. As is true for all aspects of armor assembly, it never pays to be impatient. Helmet Details WTF kits come with Hovi tips cast in black, so I painted the insides white. They also come with hovi tip mesh, and I shaped them over a chapstick tube to get the proper shape before securing them with E6000. The hovi tips have screws embedded in them, but one of mine was pretty off-kilter, so it took some work to get the hovi tips positioned correctly. WTF kits also come with S-trim and brow trim. Currently neither are held on with any glue; the brow trim is held on by the pressure from the helmet rivets + screws, and the S-trim is held on with friction. So far no issues. I prefer a lower brow, so I positioned it accordingly.

Thigh Strapping and First Suit Up Before I actually had my kit, I had grand plans of hand sewing an elaborate suspender system to hold up the abs and thighs. After actually getting everything together, I decided to do the simple thing and sew a single belt with 1" nylon webbing and a plastic buckle: The thigh positioning was something I knew might take a few troops to dial in, so I wanted something adjustable. I used 3" elastic, and attached the armor end with two snaps, and the other end I looped around the belt and secured with velcro that's specifically meant for fabric: I imagine I'll ultimately just sew the elastic in place once I'm sure the positioning is right. I originally only had the thigh strapping in the front, but before my first troop, I noticed the back of my right thigh tended to sit a little low, so I added elastic in the back and looped it around the belt in the same fashion. (No pictures, unfortunately.) The thigh strapping was the last piece I needed before doing my first full suit up. Everyone here can probably relate to the excitement I felt seeing everything come together: There were a few small issues here and there, but overall I was extremely happy with how everything was coming together.

Shoulder Bells and Shoulder Bridges For the shoulder bell trimming, I went off of Cricket's build and trimmed 12" from the bottom of the spine for length, and 5" from the edge of the spine for width. I didn't document it, but I closely followed Ukswrath's build for doing the strapping (black elastic + #10 sew-in snaps), but I attached the elastic to the shoulder bell with a snap/snap plate instead of gluing so that I have the option of easily swapping out shoulder bells. For positioning, I basically freehanded it by taking several photos from the front and the back until both the gap in the front and back was minimal, marked that position with some blue tape, and sewed the female snap in place. The shoulder bridges that come with the WTF kit come flat, so after trimming, I had to heat bend them. At the point I was pretty comfortable with the heat gun, but most people use a hot water bath. After bending, it was just a matter of gluing them in place. The one thing to be aware of while positioning the shoulder bridges is to check their positioning from both the front and the back before gluing - smaller/shorter troopers might have problems with the backs of the shoulder bridges touching the top of the O/II back piece. I don't currently have any reinforcement on the shoulder bridges, so we'll have to see how they hold up; I know many people have had issues with them cracking or outright snapping in half. (Note that I didn't do a very good job bending the left shoulder bridge; this was pointed out in my EIB application as something to correct.) I considered using the bicep hook method to keep the biceps in place, but it seemed difficult to get right, so I did the simple thing and attached the biceps to the shoulder bells with elastic and snaps: After the shoulder bridges were in place, I could finally see the entire torso together: (This photo was taken before correcting the belt position.)

Maybe we'll run into each other sometime; not sure how common it would be for the GGG and Central California Garrison would be at the same event.

Hey, my TKID is 19233 and my EIB number is 766. Spooooky. Congrats!

Amazing work!

Congrats, Stephen! This has truly been a labor of love. Definitely an inspirational thread for all new builders.

You're off to a great start! For the biceps, what about if you split the difference between the outer and inner pieces? ie mark the center line and trimmed some from the outer and some from the inner so that they end up around the same size. A little asymmetry is totally normal but it's nice to have the cover strips roughly in the middle.

Congrats, Jeff! I think you may only be the second WTF centurion?

Chest is looking *much* better! Bravo. You're almost there!

Voted!

Painting looks great! If you want you could clean up tiny bits of the outside edges of the black outlines, but I think it's probably fine as is. Screen accurate! I also used the Trooperbay stencils and they worked out great. I did have to trim the tube stripe stencils because they were too long to fit the WTF bucket, but there's no required number of stripes. Here's mine for comparison: Also your ab buttons look 10000x better than mine and I've been approved for EIB.

Cool, can you PM me your address? Will try to drop it in the mailbox tomorrow (it'll go out Monday.)

Hey! I saw that you're actually selling your WTF kit. Do you think you'll still need the rivets? I can also hold off sending them until you've gotten a kit. Let me know.

Great! I'll PM you probably this weekend to get your address.

Also, I won a set of rivets from justjoseph but didn't end up using them because I'd already purchased a set of them. I'd be happy to pass them on to you, no charge. I'd need to double check when I get home, but should be a set of split rivets as well as single cap rivets for the thigh ammo pack. And re the gloves, non rubber gloves are approveable for EIB. Only Centurion requires rubber gloves.

Awesome! Glad to see another WTF kit in the works. I'm the opposite of you - super small - but I love my WTF kit and got approved last month. Good luck with your build!

Hey Stephen! First, sorry about the bad advice re the cod rivet placement. As for your armor, I feel like the chest and shoulders look a little big all around. See how much the edges of the chest stick out from the ab armor? I'd consider heat bending the chest so it wraps around your torso more tightly. I believe Cricket did it, and I did it as well. What are the measurements of your shoulder bells? Somehow they look very wide as well. I might consider trimming them for width, or maybe wait until you've adjusted the chest to see. But in general your upper body looks bigger than your lower body, and I think it'd look more proportional if you brought your chest and shoulders in. For the legs, there's a decent amount of overlap between your thighs and both the cod and butt plate. In an ideal world I think your kidney could be a bit smaller but with the brackets, redoing the strapping will be a pain. Maybe trim the tops of the thighs? I'm not sure what the best solution there is.

Yeah I want to switch the gloves out for other ones (nomex or something) so I was going to try to do something more temporary. I guess E6000 can be removed.