revlimiter

My condolences for your loss as well. I can't imagine that sort of pain. Troopy hugs your way. On the topic of armor... have you considered retrimming your partner's set to fit your frame? It might not be possible if panels needed to be extended and you don't have spare ABS around, but it might be a more meaningful kit at the end of it. Maybe about equal work to building a fresh kit too. I'm another happy AP customer. Mark does great armor. Welcome to the board Danny.

This awesome thread needed a 7 year bump! I was trying to find something good to get my blasters off of tables with and google provided me with this thread. Thanks @Astyanax !!! The amazon product link still works. Prices have gone up a bit, but mine came out to about $3 each. A bargain IMO. Rock solid. No tipping, rolling, or wobbling. That Jawa blaster is just shy of 7 lbs. These hooks have no problems supporting that kind of weight. My stairway landing nook is cozy AND well armed.

Good lord, that 2nd link. ALL THOSE PHOTOS! I had no idea I wanted a 68mm TD until now. Will pour over those tomorrow in my downtime. Thanks!!!

I recently figured out that I can sit in my AP armor. It's not great... it's more like perching than sitting, but I've got a pic of me doing it in my build thread. I've sat maybe a dozen times now with no damage to the butt plate or mounting tab area. And that's great and all, right. Doesn't help you with this thread. *and yet it might.* @MaskedVengeance replied in there that he was surprised no one has ever done a silicone butt plate for us. And I keep thinking about that post. A silicone butt plate would remove all the damage danger. Sitting would still be basically perching without more articulation in the cod area (which you're addressing in this thread), but... a silicone butt. That plus a bit of flex in the cod plate would give us troops a lot more posing options. It would require a pretty large mold and probably building up the back side of the master piece with some clay to make it thicker, but I bet a flexible posterior plate would be possible. Maybe worth reaching out to an armor maker to see if it's possible?

Every time I get to update something in here I keep thinking it'll be the final build thread update. And then I get to do another small something to my armor. One of the four TD screws came free by itself... amazingly in my storage bin! So I didn't need to find a new screw, but I did have a very rattly Thermal Detonator due to the loose nut inside. No matter what I did, I could not get one of the end caps off to fix the screw. I boiled. I pried. I twisted. I spent two days not getting anywhere... so I sliced off the white plate and cut an access hole. And I made the hole big and pretty, because why not? I got the screw re-installed and applied some E6000 to all four of the inner nuts and threads. Should have used loctite in the beginning... I sent the above pic to @Scimitar and he was replied "close that up with some magnets and turn it into storage." BRILLIANT. Two days later, amazon brought me magnets. These are 60x10x3 mm bar magnets from FINDMAG. 12 came in the pack. Really nice quality! Pleasantly strong and they came with some foam double sided tape. They are almost precisely the size of my AP TD cover plate. A little too precisely. A little less wide seemed best to keep all modifications hidden. Fortunately, they are easy to trim with some wire snips. I hollowed out the magnet recess with a dremel sanding drum. Inner magnets are held on with the foam tape. There's about 1 mm or less wall thickness left in this hollowed area to separate the magnets. I just sanded till the magnet was flush with the top surface. E6000 applied. Cover plate carefully aligned. Rubber bands added. And a day later I got to take this photo! The magnets were indeed flush enough with the surface to glue to the cover plate. I added an elastic retainer and E6000'd that in place for the next day. This provides a sort of hinge for the cover plate and also keeps it from being able to get knocked off while trooping. And it doesn't keep the lid from closing. WIN! I also brushed on a little grey paint in the recess. Because why not? FINISHED! The cover plate actually fits more snugly than before with the magnets. No gap anywhere. There's no way to tell this got modified at all. The magnets are STRONG. It's probably possible to knock the cover off by backing into something hard, but the elastic will keep it from going anywhere. You basically can't pull the cover straight off, but it hinges nicely. And inside? STUFF!!! I'm calling this the Thermal Detonator of Happiness. A 2" wide sticker fits perfect. I drew up and printed about 100 of these little chibi troopers. I guess it was originally a silver coin from New Zealand? I drew up something close to the original with a little nicer helmet and blaster proportions. I thought it would make a fun sticker to hand out at events with little ones. There's also room for a couple tiny toys to give to upset younglings. And a challenge coin, complete with protector wedges nicely into the end. Honestly, I could fit twice this amount in there, but I can easily retrieve any of these with gloves on. With the TD packed more tightly it gets hard to fish out what I want. Maybe that's the final update on my TK build?

I got @Scimitar's blaster in the mail, did the build, and shipped it back to Eric... and I managed to not post the photos. I'll just share the finished ones instead of the build. It's another Quest Design using identical parts, so they'd be slightly different angles of the same build photos. Parts added/changed: - Real folding stock from @justjoseph63 - Replica Hengstler counter from BlasterFactory.com - Greeblie kit from @justjoseph63 - Some spare upgrade kit parts from @T-Jay - Scratch build sight box - weathering and clear coat This would look a lot like the before photo. I added some brass weathering to the scope and gave everything a ton of clearcoat. The whole blaster got 6 coats of matte clear. The T-tracks and grip got an additional coat of semi-gloss clear. Then the grip got 2 more coats of gloss clear. Sounds like a lot, but the finish is really lovely. I built a sight box using the same stuff I did on mine. Even got to use another of T-jay's threaded rods! I built new capacitors from left over T-Jay stock. There was exactly enough for the two guns. Top scope greeblie from Joseph is looking mighty fine. The counter is a reproduction piece from blasterfactory and is really fantastic. Eric wanted the same Miata odometer guts that I used in mine, as he's also deep in the Roadster cult. The back side of the counter is open showing the labeling. Rather cool feature. Awwww yeah! The folding stock from Joseph and sight box build were the reasons I was doing this build. Since everything was fresh in my mind and all the tools were handy, this took about 25% of the time that my first one required. Both blasters fresh from factory rebuild. Eric's up top, mine on the bottom. From the same assembly line. Ready for action.

Sorry for your loss. No words are sufficient for that. However, that's a brilliant way of doing the elastic! Mine are just tied together...

Congratulations Centurion!!!

I signed up for a Star Wars Reads troop at a local library next week. They want us to read to the kids, which sounds like a ton of fun! I loved reading to my daughter when she was itsy. Since I have a week to repair things, I decided to be brave, kit up, and try to SIT DOWN. And I did! No breakage, snappage, or crackage. My butt is still 1 piece and shiny. Or maybe I just got lucky. But I did it! I had to post a proof pic. Now to practice reading and turning pages in my bucket and gloves.

Congratulations Centurion!!!!

Good luck Nicholas!

Good luck Dan! Looking good!

This is BEAUTIFUL!!! I'm blown away at how nicely it came out. Side note: to download an entire thingiverse fileset, remember to add /zip to the end of the URL. This prevents you from being forced to watch the 5-15 second ad for EVERY. single. downloadable file. Thingiverse has declared war on their users in the past couple weeks.

Congratulations CENTURION!!!

Beautiful E11!!!

This is extremely serendipitous. I was just cleaning printers in the shop thinking about the original replica blasters vs real Sterlings. Crazy coincidence since I hadn't yet looked at the forum. Also, beautiful post and fantastic info!

Congrats Andrew!!!

Congratulations Chris!!!

My build thread deserved to be updated with my Blaster thread. Power Cylinders: I finally get to troop with the new blaster and armor upgrades tomorrow. Am excite.

I highly recommend the amber lens. It's like the cherry on top of the E-11 cake. (mine above)

Someone more knowledgeable about the exact measurement than me should weigh in ( @T-Jay or @justjoseph63 ?) But I believe this monocular has the correct size lenses for your scope. https://www.amazon.com/Telescope-Adjustable-High-Power-High-Definition-Travelling/dp/B09JWBP8X5 It looks just like the one I used in mine, but I managed to not get the measurement off the side before I cut it apart. If it is the right one, it's gonna look much much nicer than anything a printer could produce.

I've never run one down, so I'm not sure. After 4 hours of continuous use one was still going strong. I keep a couple spares in my bucket bag but haven't needed one yet. I had to look it up. Yours is 180 grams. The lipstick ones are less than half that at 80.

If I may humbly suggest, get yourself a huge roll of velcro. https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00006RSP1 I got the 15ft x 2in roll. It made my helmet build so much more enjoyable. I never worried about having enough or running out. I redid the velcro inside my bucket at least 3 times and re-wrapped SHAs and iCOMMs a couple times. I think I have about 7 feet left after using it like crazy and wasting it whenever I needed or wanted to. Most of my bucket is lined with the hook/rough side. The helmet padding can then be applied anywhere since it sticks nicely to the hook veclro. I have no padding at the very top of my bucket and instead just use the loop/fuzzy side velcro up there. It sounds counterintuitive but it's actually much more comfy than having the big round helmet pad up there.

That thing is TEN THOUSAND mAh, not 1000. So it's pretty big and would likely power helmet fans for days. Seriously. Gonna be rather heavy too. I have a lipstick power bank in my bucket. Anker Powercore Mini 3500. It's very light (80 grams), tiny (95x23x23mm) and fits easily behind the vocoder. The one annoying thing is the power button. You have to turn the Anker on and then you can turn your fans on. I've got some knockoff lipstick power banks that don't require the extra button push, but are getting a bit old and not lasting quite as long as they could. The Powercore mini was possibly discontinued and is getting a bit hard to find. They're still on ebay for about $15USD each. Also, amazing job on those thigh garters!! Looks extremely secure and comfy too.

Looking good Tom!!! Welcome to the Empire. The one thing that stuck out to me was the Thermal Detonator. Your O is pointing towards noon, or maybe even a little past. The O should be more visible. The TD can also be a bit more centered on your belt. (images borrowed from @gmrhodes13 who shared the same advice with me in my own build thread. ) I literally unrolled mine a little bit to get the O at the correct rotation. Very easy to do.