revlimiter

I used Testors Model Paint thinner from the hobby store to redo my grey buttons and it worked very well. No damage to the surrounding plastic. It seems very gentle. What kind of paint did you use to do the buttons Cory? If you used acrylic, it won't ever come off with thinner. You'd need rubbing alcohol.

I scrubbed mine with paint thinner for quite a while and had no damage come to my button panels. The paint had only cured a week or so, but it was REALLY on there. Still, it wasn't too hard to remove. The blue acrylic on mine was far far worse to remove with rubbing alcohol. If you take some paint thinner and scrub some scrap ABS from trimming your armor, you'll see how far you can go before the plastic gets gooey. It's a LONG way. Thinner isn't anywhere near as aggressive as pure acetone, at least in my experience. And that said, to echo Glen's suggestion - sand off the old paint. I'd use a light sand paper. 400 grit would make quick work of it and not harm the ABS much at all. Rubbing compound would work too, but might take ages unless you have a power buffer on hand. Once the panel is clean enough, you can shine it back up with an automotive polish or scratch remover. I like Meguiar's Ultimate Compound. The rubbing compound suggestion has the huge benefit of not needing to re-polish the surrounding white ABS. If chemical stripping isn't working, mechanical stripping is the way to go.

My build thread needed to be updated with the excellent electrobinoculars from @justjoseph63 because OMG are they awesome! I ordered these with "light weathering for a cleaner TK" and Joseph really came through. The weathering matches and complements the weathering on my armor case so closely, I just had to photograph them together. I know white on white isn't the best, but well... TK. Note the TK number on my strap. Out of all the ones posted in the Binoc Sale Thread, I think mine are the finest by far. Must troop soon. Get your own here:

Wow, that's a large difference. I'm not an authority by any means, but I'd try to fix that personally. What happened to the original panels?

I still have some extra cut vinyl on hand. Would you like them? I can pop them in an envelope. Downsides: You will still have a bit of paint bleed and you'll also have to clean up vinyl adhesive left behind. It's kind of a pain, but it worked okay on mine. Not much cleaning was needed really. A toothpick with either rubbing alcohol or paint thinner worked fine for me (my blue was acrylic). And once cured the adhesive was easy to remove.

That looks pretty good. TBH all close-up photos of ab buttons show each and every sin. They will likely look a lot better on the armor. You can always use like 2 dots of E6000 to hold them on temporarily for your own visual assessment. Or even some CA glue. That stuff cracks free easily for alteration or final securing with E6000. If I remember right, it's an 11mm circle for buttons. I cut small circles out with my vinyl plotter.

@justjoseph63@TheRascalKing Thank you both! I'm feeling the love. I'm actually still working on my kit very slightly. I've got ABS paste sitting in the extremely small seam in my left thigh-knee right now. I know it doesn't NEED it, but the backs look so good without the seam. The front deserved that sleek one piece look as well.

Congratulations trooper!!! Now get out there and make some kids smile.

TKs need pockets. That's just all there is to it. I've got a nice pouch velcro'd to my inner chest, but I have to take off my arms (and basically torso) to get to it. Not great for locking up the car after a parking lot change. So I started digging around this board for a storage solution and found Mayo's ( @MakeNoiseMan ) awesome drop boxes. I had to have a set of my own. Cracked the two halves free. I've never been happier about using CA glue on something. They came free with a satisfying pop. I had a bunch of left over white shoulder elastic, so it seemed like using that for the card retention straps and the hinge would work well. I cut and sealed each elastic edge. Folding elastic and then heating produces a very nice crease. Perfect fit for the larger side of the box. Hinge glued to the outside bottom of the inner boxes with E6000. And the retainer straps got glued to the inside of the outer boxes. I used blue tape to keep the E6000 from seeping through and bonding both halves of the elastic together. Seems like maybe overkill, but I had the clamps to spare. Why not let them be useful again? You can also see the industrial velco I added to the tops to keep the two halves together. Spoiler: the velcro is stupid strong. Once things were dry the next day, I sized up the hinge against the outer box and made some small black marks for where to cut. Then the elastic got re-trimmed and re-sealed. Trimming the hinge elastic exactly meant the boxes would pair up flat and not be thicker than they were before. Held in place with some magnets and left to cure another day. I added some finger grab holes to each drop box. This lets me break the stupid-strong velcro free and access the goodies inside. Note, I can't really get to stuff in these boxes with my gloves on or while trooping. The velcro is just too strong. And that's okay. I just want a place to keep my keys and ID. Maybe a couple dollars for ice cream. But if you're reading this and thinking of the boxes as a place for trading cards... ehhhh.... further modification of the idea would be needed. Maybe some weak magnets to hold the tops together. Finished! That's a useful dropbox!!! A TK pocket if you will. Proof of concept. The retaining loop is a little loose with only 1 card and a few bucks, but it's okay for now. I may tighten it later. And, for me, the money shot - A key and fob fit inside the box! Note that the little ring won't let the box close, but that's easily fixed. I have some braided metal flexible key rings on the way from amazon. Replacing the split ring with the glorified fishing line will solve this and let the box close. Reinstalled. Nothing is different from the outside. The boxes hang as they did before and have no extra thickness. SUCCESS!!!

I just realized I didn't update my build thread with my armor bin. I probably spent far too much effort on this, but it was super fun. I painted it, weathered it, and shot it with a blaster. I designed and printed in-universe vintage travel stickers for it. And I turned the inside into a padded TK picnic basket.

Happy holidays to my brothers and sisters in white.

Outstanding how-to and fix idea! Definitely easier and more accessible than ABS paste.

FANTASTIC!!! Nothing beats a TK for the holidays. Here's hoping for a quick approval and a Christmas TK number.

It's all the same to E6000

(there's a Centurion certificate too!!! omg) Adam Wolf TK-89400 Centurion Letter size Joseph thank you again! Of course we have one for Centurion, and here is yours! https://www.whitearmor.net/eib/certificates/89400-centurion.png

(how did I miss this thread?) Adam Wolf TK-89400 EIB Letter size Joseph Thank you! You are welcome! https://www.whitearmor.net/eib/certificates/89400-eib.png

My own experience has a sample size of one (1) AP kit, but I think the correct chest plate height is defined by your neck. It should feel kinda like a button up shirt with the top button done up. So, quite close around your neck but not too tight. Yours looks to have some space up there. And with it cinched up, you can probably get away with not having to shorten that chest plate. The height looks more correct in your first post photo. As for the torso heating and reshaping, I would humbly suggest you don't spent a ton of effort doing it. Get it to where you like, but don't kill yourself trying to make it look sleek and narrow. I mean, you totally can and that's part of the fun of building armor, but in my obsessive build thread reading while finishing up my own AP kit, it just isn't as sleek an armor set as some others. The AP has a rather wide midsection. I thought maybe it was just me, but with my own reading each AP build looks to be kinda wide in the middle. Anovos seems to fit more narrowly, for example. I didn't heat my crotch plate. Good luck trooper! You look to be well on your way.

Congratulations Chris!!!!

Thanks Andrew and Colin!!! And yeah, your bins are INCREDIBLE Colin. Thanks for inspiring many hours of enjoyable Husky hacking.

Verified. My armor would still be in storage if it wasn't for Eric.

The hubcaps finished printing! I printed the cog in silver and the base in white, but they weren't too silver or too white. Each got a quicky paint job before being glued together. Maybe a waste since I just immediately weathered them, but it's nice having actual shiny silver similar to the plaque and clasps instead of grey PLA. And there's my bin project completed. SO Satisfying! The cog wheels are so much nicer than the plastic RPF1 knockoffs. I actually weathered these a lot more than it looks. They just didn't wanna look dirty. But I'm happy with the finish. I also added one more vent and gave it a good coating of leaking oily junk. So that's it for my bin build. Can't wait for the next troop to get it into the field.

I've finally reached the whole reason I started this bin build, well... aside from actually needing one. Stickers. I got this idea to do an in-universe bin with vintage travel stickers and everything took off from there. Similar to what you see in the Star Tours queue with the bags and robot, but maybe a bit more... more. All aurebesh. All vintage. There's some vintage travel-style Star Wars stickers on the internet, but none really did it for me. There's one etsy shop with some nice stuff, but they're asking $6 per inkjet printed sticker. As a print shop owner, that's insane pricing. So I spent my spare time over the last week and a half collecting up vintage sticker artwork examples and reimagining them in the Star Wars universe. Poor @Scimitar has been getting these texted in a constant stream as I finished them. Doing these stickers really sparked my imagination for my TK's back story. All the places he went and didn't get blown up. There's a great thread on here for various TK back stories. I've wanted to contribute but couldn't really find the spark of inspiration. This project did it for me. Anyways, I've made around 20 different designs for my bin. OCD can be a wonderful thing if properly wielded. Starting from top left... Zeltros Ritz, Hotel Theed Naboo, Imperial Palace Coruscant, Imperial Navy, Star Tours (this was a fun one for me), Welcome to Fabulous Canto Bight, Blastech Industries (borrowed directly from wookipedia), Cladtech Armor, Sorgan Adventure Fishing, and my own REVlimiter heart logo in aurebesh. Sorgan started out as an Idaho fishing sticker or something like that. Note the AT-ST and krill. This idea was all Eric's. Air Mandalore, Fortress Vader, Aldaraan Royal Hotel, Redwood National Park Endor (note the tiny speeder bike), Dune Sea Tatooine, Nevarro Red Lava Rafting. Champala Hotel, FISD, Hoth, Aloha Scarif, and Holiday Towers Hotel in Cloud City. I think each of these had 5 revisions. The Champala one was a vintage French beach sticker with an orange lady on it. I carefully replaced her with this blue one and stole the sunglasses. Hoth is an Australian sticker. Greetings from Icerider Stables. And then the bin got stickered and weathered. Top/front. I sized a few of the stickers for specific spots. Others were carefully laid out by my daughter. Front. I love this set so much. Handle side Cladtech Armor Alderaan got blown up. I added a bit more blaster char to get the sticker integrated into that scorch mark. Back end Hinge side EIB and Centurion numbers. This build has been SO much fun. Maybe I went a bit overboard on weathering, but the bin just begs for it. Everything I do to it just makes it look better. I've just gotta print hubcaps and then it'll be a finished bin.

Fantastic!!! That's the happy stormtrooper smile.

On the topic of double snaps, I'd highly suggest you implement them in your shoulder bell tops. Both sides of that strap - the part that connects to the shoulder bridge elastic and especially the snap plate glued into the shoulder bell top. There's a lot of stress and force there and mine (which are indeed double snapped) have managed to break free during a troop. I've found myself thinking about a third snap in that strap! And from one perfectionist to another - your vocoder is incredible. I struggled painting mine, and while I'm happy with it, yours looks far superior.

Then I started weathering it... in front of the tree. I sent the roomba out on a special mission shortly after. The paint chipped off very very nicely. 4 layers of not-quite-cured paint is a fan of chipping. And that's what I wanted. I want the used and abused look. I want it to look like it's been across the galaxy by the time I'm done with it. I used a bastard file for most of this. I wasn't shy. I let my daughter at it too. We got some good damage on there. I really wanted to give the bin a couple blaster marks and I wanted them to be at an angle sort of like my TK was running away at the time. So I propped the bin up at about the right height and went to work. Blaster marks applied. I used the sanding drum on my dremel for this. While trimming and cleaning the inside of the bin lid, I learned how nicely the dremel melts this plastic. At high speed it melts beautifully. I actually blasted a hole straight through in this spot... by accident. But it DOES look good! And then I brought out the airbrush and gave it the business. Plain black to start and transparent smoke around the edges. I'm stupidly proud of my painting. I feel like the angle is right and the blast pattern is pretty nice.