revlimiter

OMG sewing sticky velcro is the absolute worst. It's well worth the money to buy a small roll of non-adhesive velcro just for the few times like this when you need it. Flashbacks of constant needle cleaning sewing sticky velcro into my daughter's jawa hood... uck.

Mine is hand sewn. It's never seen so it doesn't have to be pretty. Any rigid material like Velcro will help shore up that elastic. Just don't cover the whole thing. It needs some stretch. But it also needs some strength.

This is what I did to my shoulder straps to keep them from bulging out. I sewed in black nylon over the top inner edge of both. That provides a bit of bracing that keeps the elastic where it should be. A simple change, but it took someone brilliant to come up with it. And that wasn't me. Someone randomly posted it in one of the facebook groups one day and I instantly copied. Also, as I said in DM, you're looking GREAT!!! I anticipate an easy approval.

reminds me of one of my favs

er... some? heh. Ideally you wouldn't have much visible aluminum above the TD. The TD and belt should be about the same width, and the TD should be centered on the belt, so you should just barely see the metal in an ideal world. But your belt may be thicker or thinner and you may have some visible aluminum when dressed properly. You don't want a big obvious tab above the TD, but you don't want it to be hovering above the belt in a non-centered manner either (no metal showing in other words). Reference pix borrowed from @gmrhodes13

This is a Jimmy kit that I got 2nd hand from the 501st forum. I paid about retail, but got it NOW and basically free shipping. It's a very pretty kit. The details are SO sharp. I mean, them abs. Look at that 9 pack. So sharp. And tons of pinholes and low spots, but so sharp. MMmmmmmm. Bucket! It came with all the good jimmiroquai stuff. Visor, Mimban visor, etc. And it's ITCHY. Omg. Every time I pick up a piece I'm itchy for the rest of the day. I hate haaaaate fiberglass. So after the armor recently came back out of the BBB, the first thing it got was a light coating of Justin's Fibreglast 1110 vinylester flexible resin on the inside surface. Just one coat. I know it'll need more, especially after some parts are trimmed, but now I can at least pick up armor panels without itching for the rest of the day. I also have a rather beat up Black Series bucket that's gonna get sliced all apart and turned into something more accurate. And, as the background hints, I've got a shiny new baby resin printer just kickin' the parts out for various projects. I bought Nico's helmet print files. I'm not sure I'll print the entire thing, but having key parts on hand to help bring this toy into Screen Accurate Land (tm) will be nice. I got these prints out of it last night. Just lovely stuff. I've also printed a set of @BigJasoni's belt boxes. Using his suggested Siraya 80% Fast / 20% Tenacious resin mix! It's an amazing resin mixture. I've thrown several of these boxes across the shop and watched them bounce off the wall with no damage. I hollowed the boxes and hope to actually have them be functional on the belt with a combo of magnets and elastic. The sharp edges and perfect finish are just incredible to me. I've been printing filament for about 10 years. Never got into resin till after this past Black Friday. I was missing out. So. WHAT am I building? That's the question I keep asking myself. I don't necessarily want to have this armor set be a Rogue One TK, but that's the most logical first step. I'll get it approved for R1 and then go from there. I really like the Mapuzo troopers from Kenobi. They had just the right amount of filth. They weren't partially dressed like many of the Mando remnants. So I might try to do that after finishing the kit. MAYBE help with or at least follow in the footsteps of a CRL creator? I don't have any burning desire to blaze paths or be the first for a given CRL, but I do wanna help with them. I also really love the yellow guy. The Artillery/Mortar/Shell Trooper. I have indeed purchased the 3D files for the mortar pack and launcher and they may be printing on 3 of my 4 printers at this moment... This armor could end up with some yellow stripes. One bucket will almost certainly stay yellow. I also like the R1 Incinerator TK. So red and angry! This armor might stay red at the end of it's build, but that flame gun would take soooooo long to print. I dunno. All I know is I have to build a Rogue One TK first. And I have to get off my butt and do a build thread. So here we are.

Three build threads on FISD? Not counting blaster builds? Yeah. I did this meme shortly after my BBB day last September. I got this right about the same time that I started my HWT build. And while I was (and am) super excited, I didn't want to get distracted and have a partial HWT pack thread. And then like 3-4 months passed. So here's my R1TK build!

For the thermal detonator, you can literally unroll the metal to get the plate at a more correct angle. Put it on the belt (or something flat) and roll the TD downwards. I'm betting that it isn't centered in the belt currently anyway and would have some room for the metal clips to unroll a bit. Of course, you may end up with some visible metal above the TD body. If there's enough metal to permit it, just keep unrolling till the plate angle is correct. Then flatten the metal tabs with a hammer and re-bend it. It's usually aluminum and aluminum usually allows you to do this.

Looking good!!! Looking real good. And the drop box looks centurion perfect.

That looks really good! Not flopping around is like 80% of the battle.

12/28/22 - Lobo Anime Troop for ACC (1) 45th TK troop, 42nd for 2022 This one was just a quick middle-of-the-week troop to hand out fliers for Albuquerque Comic Con at a comic store. I really wanted to go to hit 42 troops for the year. Why 42? Because why not. I ended the year in 4th place for the garrison for troop count. 1st was Brandon (the ROTJ TK) with 61 (!!!), 2nd was Randy (Vader), 3rd was David (Gunner). So... the obsessed were out on that rainy Wednesday. Rainy. The UmbrE-11 had to make an appearance. I also had on rubber gloves after learning my lesson getting my nice pilot gloves soaked at a previous troop. Can a TK miss his own umbrella? Yes. Yes he can. After the troop, we were invited to the Pizza Hut next door. Literally everyone in the place had come out to take pix with us and were all about that Imperial Life. They gave us two free pizzas on the house. Yeah, shortly after this, Brandon got force choked. Sorry @elwessbrandon Waiting for the pies. (My sickness with stupid poses is spreading!!!!!!!!! And no butts were broken that day.) Thanks for the smiles 2022. Here's to even more in 23.

My boot velcro has survived 42 troops so far. No problems with it coming loose. I did have to replace the velcro on the back of my shins after about 36 troops, but that was much thinner. I've just used the standard 3M velcro sticky side. No extra glue. I use a square about the width of the cover strip. For the bucket and glasses... do you have an old set laying around that you could harvest the lenses out of? If you had your glasses lenses integrated/taped/attached right behind the green lenses, life might be easier.

That looks pretty good! Don't be afraid of having the top of your head on bare plastic. Rarely if ever will you experience impact. It's not uncomfortable to have the bucket touching your scalp. I sliced up a cheap 3M hardhat for my wife's TIE bucket and got it in there. It works great! But that bucket has soooooo much more room than the TK. You could fit everything in there and still have room for a party.

Do you own or have you considered some sports goggles? I only wear glasses to read (like now, typing at the screen), but have known folks who wear a type of goggles while doing sports. Specifically ground fighting.... so they REALLY stay in place. They look similar to swim goggles, but without quite the same seal to the skin. They're also impact resistant. Hmm. Googling seems to indicate they are indeed called prescription sports goggles. Might be worth looking into for trooping? Most are extremely low profile, so they should fit in the bucket well. And lastly, I gotta get in on the bucket interior pic parade. Mine is a VERY tight fit, but that's all the junk in my bucket. - Modified pads for my ears which contain hacked apart studio headphones for - The rear mounted hearing assist (usually has a piece of black fabric over top - amp and iCOMM mounted up high - fans at the very front by the hovi speakers with battery mounted at the chin

The fiberglass itchies is directly impacting my progress on my R1 armor. I understand your pain. It's not nearly as fun to work with as ABS... Hope the plastidip works!!

There's a lot of AP build threads on here. My own is linked in my signature and there's many in the ANH Stunt section. Mark (owner of AP) is active on the forum. Email is indeed the best way to get in contact with him for any questions or repair parts. Welcome to FISD Robert!

Morgi's is a huge suggestion. Having the helmet as low as possible is extremely helpful for your vision. Also try to get your eyes as close to the lenses as you comfortably can. Both of these fitting tricks really help you to actually live happily inside the armor. My own bucket has only some fuzzy velcro on the top to allow it to sit as low as possible and my lenses fit like glasses - very close to my eyes. I have no problems seeing and really enjoy being inside the bucket. Your arms are looking great! I hope to see them both on shortly.

On the topic of thighs wanting to spin - it took me a long time trooping to figure out the culprit, but it's the way you have your thigh garters. When I started trooping, I weighed about 10 lbs more than I do now and about 20 lbs more than when I figured out my thigh spinning problem. I use a belt exactly like you've got rigged up. My midsection had decreased, and so I had my belt tighter. That put the garters running between the belt and thighs at an odd angle and the thighs very very gradually spun to equal that angle out over about a quarter mile of walking. It wasn't all at once so it was really hard to figure out. The fix was to make sure the thigh garters were straight up and down and not trying to spin the armor one way or the other. I hammered a few snaps into my belt so that I could adjust (and FIX) where the garter sat depending on my size at the time and that totally sorted it out. No more spinning. I mention this because it'll bother you whether you're using suspenders or a belt. The thighs will want to spin if the garter pulls them in one way. Just something to look out for. The elastic on the front of the shin is a great idea. I use velco there to keep the top of the boot attached to the bottom of the shin. There's not much force, so just about anything will work to keep the shins fixed. The important thing is that you have something there. This looks great, BTW. You're getting so close!

I almost hate to say this in public... but the forearms do tend to move. We get them perfect for centurion applications, but in daily trooping, they're not always (or ever) in their exact correct spots. Same with shoulder rotation. Mine tend to move forward and look nice on their own, but they are definitely not always aligned that way. On shoulder straps and snaps, I'm a huge proponent of double snaps up there. The arms just love to come unsnapped at the shoulder. Having double snaps on both the shoulder strap and inside the bell does a ton of good things for keeping them connected while trooping. So... if you were planning on moving shoulder snaps anyway, I would highly suggest turning them into double snaps. As far as moving the snaps forward, It seems like about a snap's width works well. Like a cm or so. Half inch-ish. Glen would know the answer in his sleep most likely as I've seen him post about it. Lastly - butt flare - There was a build thread with someone who did something like you're describing to fix butt flare as well. I can't find it now, but it was in there not long ago. Probably one of the last 10 threads. Have a dig? It seems like a good idea to me.

Very likely those arms are fine for basic. Looks quite good to me. I wouldn't mess with it until later in the process. V-tabs seem to work well. I don't think they'd hurt at all!

Congrats on your first two troops!!!

Think of it this way: there's many ways to skin a cat. Every way that ends in a fresh cat pelt is valid and correct. Nothing you've done has barred you from centurion level and there's likely more work to be done in the future to achieve it. You're still on the right path. I mean some folks have to move bolts to be locations for centurion. Others have to splice in sections of abs to make their armor fit at all. The material is very forgiving and there are techniques to do all of this without destroying the armor. Anyways, back to getting you some basic approval.