Steaditrooper

I also made snaps for the chest to ab connection. Hopefully this will help keep the chest a little lower and thereby pull the shoulders forward a bit. Same process as before. Lather, rinse, repeat. Glued and clamped to the inside of the ab. One on each side. Never thought I'd be using my laundry drying rack for Stormtrooper armour. Ha! Tomorrow I will make the straps that hold everything in place. Then I can determine if I will need to move the sew-on shoulder snaps forward or not.

I started my snaps and straps to keep the bicep inside the shoulder. Using one of my abandoned 15mm cover strips I cut four pieces, beveled the edges so they won't catch on my under suit, and drilled the holes. Again, by hand, I created a countersink with a large drill bit so the snap sits as flush as possible. Checking the placement and marking it before I glue it up. One on the shoulder. And one on the bicep.

Wow! That's a huge size difference. I'll see how my mods go but it's good to know this option exists. Thanks!

Moving the sew in snaps is easy. The problem is the size of the shoulders vs. the size of my shoulders. They sit snug on my shoulders and naturally move to that position. If they were larger it might work. There would be room for them to move and stay where I need them. The first thing I am going to do is move the chest piece lower. I'll need to install snaps and strapping to do this. That might look after the shoulders as it will move the sew in snaps forward a little.

Nice looking kit. Your button plate could use a bit of trimming to line it up with the rest of the armour. Less overlap would look better. TD looking good. Your chest plate looks nice. Mine is a little small. Keep at it . Good progress so far.

Ron, If I lived closer I'd be there. C'mon peeps, help a trooper out! Snaps and strapping are an integral part of your armour. Do you have a preference of snaps or Velcro? Elastic or nylon webbing? Both have their merits. My TK is mostly elastic, screen accurate, brackets. Different strokes for different folks. Don't be too discouraged. What threads have you looked at? Have you seen the options you have for this? I would like to help but live in Toronto. What can I do to help?

I could also feel where I will need to trim the return edge on the armour. Um, almost everywhere. I have welts on my arms from this first full fitting. It looked worse three hours ago. Didn't even notice this because I was so excited to put the armour on. At least I can clip my fingernails now. By far the best way I found to get rid of E6000 glue run off.

Thanks for the comment. All suggestions and observations are really appreciated. I am using the elastic. Just from wearing it I could tell that I need to tighten those up. Like I mentioned, the shoulders are tight. I gave them both a water bath to 'stretch' them out. Otherwise they would be like wings. Not sure how much more I can stretch them. I will definitely tighten those elastics up. Thanks.

Here goes... I already know a few changes I need to make, just for wearability. I need straps to keep the biceps in the shoulders and tighter elastic between the chest and abdomen. This will help keep the chest plate a little lower. Also, one side of the butt sits wide from my hip. Either a strap or tighter elastic will fix that. I think I might need to bring the shoulders forward but not sure how. They are a little tight on me as well as a little short IMHO. I do think it is an outstanding set of armour. Kudos to Mark at AP. p.s. This is the first time I've put the shins on with the Velcro and I didn't line them up properly. You can see it in the back pic. I will make sure all is good and proper for my submission pics.

Wow! Congrats. I will be following this one. I think I need to give it a while before my wife will understand why I need another trooper costume.

Got home from running around to find out my computer stopped working. I just used the darned thing for my last post. I'm on the old one now, which is old, really old and on it's last leg. Gag. The heat gun showed up...missing the accessories I required to do the work on my armour. Barf. And the green face shield I drove 1.5 hours return to get is way darker than advertised, well, way darker than it looked in the online pics. Will probably work for bright days outdoors. I'll just need to make removable lenses for my bucket, which is ok, I guess. Oh well, Velcro it is, for now, on my calf closures.

The elastic doesn't even come close to closing it. I actually installed them all a little tight to help close the gap but it didn't work at all. If I can't correct it with the heat gun tonight I will be using velcro for now and try to fix it after approval.

If you can afford to raise the left side more then do it. I haven't found anyone here who was my height (5'10") who could get this thing straight without chopping off a bunch at the bottom. Compared to what it looked like before raising the left half (the right hand side of the pic) it was really crooked. I probably could have glued it up differently but then the edge wouldn't be angled or lined up properly for Centurion approval. I might be able to go another 1/4" higher but that might drop the whole piece to a place where it looks weird or worse, my calf would keep it high on my leg and it would look like flood pants on that side.

The calf closure. You can see in the photo how the cover strip as straightened out the calf on those sides. They were much closer to having the same curve before the cover strip was glued on. You can see how straight it is,

Here is the sniper knee. The left side of the shin was raised almost 3/8" higher when gluing in order to bring that side of the sniper knee up. Without doing that it would be considerably more tilted. I could pull it all apart and bring that side up even more but then the whole left shin would be too short on me after trimming the bottom to even it out.

I will post photos tomorrow.

Yesterday I struggled with the sniper knee. Hot water baths to try to shape it and I removed the entire return edge on the bottom. I finally glued it up last night and am waiting for it to dry. It sits at a small angle but that was expected. It is, however way better than before. My calf closures are a different matter. The rear 25mm cover strips are quite thick and as a result have somewhat straightened the calf and now I have a big ugly gap. I've ordered, from Amazon, a better heat gun with adjustable temp control to try to rectify this. It comes tomorrow. If I can't get it to work I will have to go with a velcro closure. That would be fine, I was just really trying for screen accurate. The hooks work really well. It's just that darned gap. One of the contributing factors is the size of my calves. They are 16 1/2" around. The armour is 17 1/2". Any smaller and they will be too tight to wear. They are already snug. My calves push out the back of the armour in a way that it doesn't want to sit. Heat gun! Hopefully this will be done tomorrow and then I submit my application to the 501st!

I believe the return edge is not required for any level of certification. However, that look of thicker armour is kinda nice. I removed most of the return edge in order to keep the bicep thinner looking on my build.

Great thread. Your skill with a heat gun is top notch. I know I was terrified the first time I used one on my build. Your armour looks fantastic.

Hi Daniel. I look forward to getting those certificates and the shirt, well, my local Canadian version. Hopefully soon. Thanks for all your help and advise throughout my build. Long Live the Empire! Long Live the 501st!

Hey Greg. I'm almost done. Thanks for your words of encouragement along the way. It's been fun building along side a fellow Canadian with the same Canadian made kit. I hope I've been able to help you out in some way the way you have helped me. I will be following your progress. Maybe, some day, when I'm passing through Saskatchewan, or even planning a visit, we can meet in person. What a great community we are a part of. Star Wars nerds. Oh yeah! Long Live the Empire!

Hey, I've enjoyed my build so much I can hardly wait to do it again. (please don't tell my wife...Sandtrooper next time) That feeling of excitement and dread when seeing all that stuff and feeling overwhelmed... Sweet. It's so good to have things in ones' life that cause our hearts to beat faster. Enjoy this. I'll be following your progress.

I was able to glue the 25mm cover strips on the calves. The bra hook elastic was dry enough that I wasn't going to harm it by adding the strips. The only thing I have left to do for basic 501st approval is attach the sniper knee. Everything else I want to do is only for me. The S shaped neck trim was ordered from Trooperbay and has been shipped. That's for Centurion approval. I have my under suit. I received the neck seal from Darman a few weeks ago. Thanks. It's perfect. Great price for a custom made costume accessory. The boots came from TK Boots. Really great. I'm sorry to hear they won't be doing this any more. Thanks for your commitment to making great quality, screen accurate boots. I have wide feet and they fit really well. I've been wearing them around the house to wear them in. I've got an Aker amp and the Trooper Talk Ap. It sounds great. I got my E-11 blaster from QuestDesignCanada off of Etsy. I made a few mods and I know there are a few more I want to make but I'm pretty sure it is good for Centurion. The brackets for putting the armour together I first saw on YouTube. TK1636 has so many great vids for armour construction and mods. I made them myself and sewed the elastic straps to join everything. Silicone hand guard glue info came from Darthanael. Oh my gosh. This was my biggest concern, but thanks to this forum I was able to find the answer. A big thanks to Ukswrath for all his vids and build threads. I think I've learned more from him than anyone. I feel confident that my TK ANH Stunt will meet Centurion approval. Up until a few weeks ago I didn't even know what that meant. Stunt? Um...huh? Centurion...What? I really made a huge effort to complete my TK as quickly as possible but I really don't think I cut any corners. I'm self employed and have had the privilege of being able to drop everything to do this. I have a supportive wife who sees my nerdy hobbies as endearing. My kids think this is both cool and kinda weird. What more could anyone ask for? Tomorrow is a big day for me. Tomorrow I complete a lifelong dream, since 1977 at least, to be a Stormtrooper. The best character in my opinion, in the Star Wars universe. What an amazing group of people here on FISD... worldwide. Wow. Just wow.

Alright, hooks and holes. Calf closures that is. First I needed to do a little heat gun bending so the two halves lined up a little better. I marked the three hole positions. Bottom is 25mm from the bottom. Top is 25mm down from the return edge. Middle is half way between the two. All holes are centred 5mm from the edge. I used a 1/8" drill bit for the holes and used my round needle file to bevel the edge so the hook could attach and detach. Without the bevel I couldn't get the hook in. I marked the other half of the calf on the inside where the holes were in order to line up the hooks for gluing. A little E6000... Magnets are your friend. The hook is around 1/4" from the edge. This will give it a little stretch for a nice snug fit. Glue is only on the back two inches of the elastic. Tomorrow I will be able to attach the rear 25mm cover strips and hopefully the sniper knee. Other than that I'm almost done.

Sniper Knee. Oh sniper, how you challenge me. I've read on several build threads that the AP sniper knee is kinda hard to fit. It's true. I trimmed a bunch off the return edge at the bottom of the sniper knee and used my heat gun to somewhat reshape the angles of the sides. Rough fit, heat, bend, repeat. When my frustration started to get me down I moved on to another task. Can't get it to sit level and follow the lines of the shin at the sides. Angle doesn't match the shin. After heating and reshaping I decided to remove the return edge. This makes it much easier to shape and bend the knee to fit the shin. At this point I moved on to other things. Just for a little bit. Ok, for the day. I'll revisit the sniper knee tomorrow.