Timberwoof

I'm heading to Denver for MileHiCon this weekend (2018-10-20) and I'm bringing my TK armor with me. (I intend to roam the dealers and ask them whether they have their operating permits in order. ) Their weapons policy requires that costume weapons be peace-tied. I came up with a simple solution that is obvious enough for con rules but not devastating to the look of the costume. I used orange ribbon and velcro. It goes through the trigger guard so it doesn't slip off, and I'm putting it over the strap because.

My Anovos is from a couple of years ago; they tended to have a lot of overspray. So I went after it with a file and even then I had to paint the outer corners. But that's how these kits are: You have to show them love, make them yours.

Seems legit. The helmet looks like a newer version of mine, with the same way of attaching the green visor on the inside. The dealer has lots of sales and good reviews. If the price is right…

The problem? That starship captain ("Federation", I think) appears to be worried about the crate.

Bin.

I cheaped out and got Rustoleum 2X Paint'n'Cover paint and primer in one. How I'd do it now: Clean the lid really well, perhaps with alcohol. Press the masking tape down really good on the edges. (The curves are hard to get. I used 3-4 straight sections.) Be patient; go easy on the coats. Be patient; go easy on the coats. Yeah. Be patient; go easy on the coats. Filing and sanding overspray is not fun and never looks quiet right. Otoh, no one inspects bins closely. I did not do the sides of the bin because some of the channels are really tricky to mask properly, and unless it was done properly, it would look junky. And it's only a bin. It's already accumulating authentic weathering from being treated like a bin. Not seen in these photos, I made a stencil of my TK number using fonts "Star Jedi" from dafont.com and "Impact". I spray-painted that in white on the sides of the bin and in black on the lid. I think the 3" high glyphs look pretty cool, and no one's going to drag that around without getting noticed. (The other bin is for another costume.) Hm. "501st Legion - GGG - Pen Squad" might be worthwhile adding. Well, no. That's a lot of stencil to cut. If there's an Orchard Supply Hardware near you, they have these bins on sale for $25. Get yours while they last.

I have a bin like it. I painted the raised areas of the lid white and left the lowered areas black.

Go all the way! Thoughtful lines with gentle arcs: Then Dremulate with the cutting wheel and a grinding cylinder, follow up with a file to get the fiddly bits, and sand with a 3M sanding block. These trims are not ugly and they make a huge difference in mobility. I've also started on trimming the return edges on the points of the thighs. More gentle curves on the return edges to the points. I like the idiosyncratic shapes of those points, so I don't want to round them over. Just smooth out the inside edges where they rub. The right thigh in back is going to get a little more taken off. (Yes, those labels do say TK-60361. I only label the parts I want to get back in case I lose them.)

This has already made a huge difference in comfort. Next: the tops of the shins, on either side, get those return edges similarly curved. At the back of the shins, the top edges will get trimmed even left/right. AT the back of the thighs I'm going to fill in those ugly gaps, and I may do a similar thing with the haps in the tops of the shins, if I decide not to trim them down any.

My first "troop" in a while was at WorldCon 76 (the World Science Fiction Convention) in San Jose. The Acys (Stacy and Tracy) and I did a panel on the 501st Legion; after Stacy's spiel, Tracy helped me into my TK armor as a demo on how the armor is on the inside and what it takes to get into it. People were very interested and appreciated seeing the armor close up. I'm going to try to round up some photos I know were taken. Afterward, I went "Trooping" in the Dealers Hall. I'd stop in at various booths, usually if someone called out "Trooper!" or whatever. I'd ask people if they had their vendor permits in order. They'd always say yes, so I'd say, "Keep up the good work." And of course the usual requests for photos. I felt perfectly safe trooping without a minder at a Sci Fi convention: No jerks to try weird stuff, no kids to accidentally run over, and everyone enthusiastic. At the "Cospitality" area they had set up fun backdrops and lights, and I got this cool photo taken: (Credit: David Price) I discussed TK armor and stuff with Tracy and he mentioned that some ANH TKs have the backs of the knees trimmed, mostly so they can climb over dead cohorts. I found some photos; these were done more and less subtly; some of the trims were downright ugly. So I'm going to try this in stages, with what I hope are in-canon subtle trims. This is my proposed Phase 1 trim: The marks are in whiteboard marker, which comes off remarkably well. (Don't use Sharpie!) The leg parts here are angular, and making non-ugly subtly curved cuts is tricky but probably worthwhile. I'm going to do these trims first, then evaluate whether I get enough added knee bendage. Next step will be the same sorts of gentle curves on the corresponding faces, while attempting to avoid the fugly chop jobs I've seen in screen shots.

How long is your parade route? How did you manage logistics for costume bins? I'm looking for ideas on how we can make this work for Golden Gate Garrison.

What the buttons are for:

E-6000 comes in at least two viscosities. The second time around I got some "self-leveling" glue and it just didn't hold as well. On a hardware-store run I wanted to replace it, and all they had was the white kind, so that's what I got for the third tube.

Wow. Please feel free! Addendum: Now that the glue has thoroughly set, I tried the helmet on again. The chin strap isn't super tight; it's "just right". Best of all and unexpected, I can put the helmet on and take it off without unsnapping the snaps. Your mileage may vary. (A "real" Trooper would cinch that thing down so it would not come off in combat. Ever.)

Chin Strap for TK Helmet I was tired of my wobbly helmet, even after replacing the cheesy Anovos hard-hat harness thing with gray foam helmet liner pads. So I bought a chin strap of the type meant for football helmets. UnderArmour makes them; this one's from Shock Doctor (who also make sport cups; what a name!) and a few bucks cheaper. They come in different colors; the obvious choices are black or white. It turns out the snaps are the same size as ever TK builder has more than enough of. The pad in the chin cup is held in with Velcro. It could be removed and washed if necessary. I thought about replacing the inelastic straps with elastic, but these work well enough. I wanted to figure good places to put the snaps, so I did some clever-clever work with a photo editing app. When you cut the straps for length, remember that it's very important to get the Shok Doctor words and logo right side up. The snap clips are designed to connect to snaps on the outside of the football helmet. I thought that would look awful on the TK helmet, so to have the snaps work on the inside, I bent the snap clips to fit the inside curve of the TK helmet. The straps are way long, so cut them down and made four 2" lengths to use as anchors to glue inside the helmet: When you do this, put the saps in the other way so they curl up instead of down. That will match the inside curve of the helmet better. These locations work for the snaps but are a bit tricky to clamp even with magnets. (I have ones vaguely quarter-shaped; I should have got ones half the diameter but twice the thickness.) The straps don't have to go super tight; just enough to get the helmet reasonably snug and not all floppy.

You all look fabulous!

That's venting the work room into the downstairs which contains the laundry and the garage. If I open the back door and raise the garage door a foot or so, I get a lovely clean Pacific breeze rushing through there. When we were three hockey players, we'd do that to air out the gear after games.

I think I annoyed my roommate. I was wearing this: That mask is really good. I could not tell how stinky Plasti-Dip is until I was done and ready to clean up. Wow. I put the helmet halves outside and sent the air-cleaning droids to work. When I checked in on them they had passed out. (They deserve special paint jobs for this work, don't you think?)

I think that Plasti-Dip for the interior is next on the list. I don't want to put electronics and fans in twice.

Oooh, tip screens. On the list. You make correct loudspeaker things for those, yes? When I replace them, I will go whole hog and put those in. And microphones in the ears with the isolation we talked about. I am getting better at seeing the details in TK armor. I was not so good when I started; I figure it's an experience thing. The other day I was watching that fanfic movie that came out about TKs storming a beach. I caught a glimpse of back-of-shin ugliness and I'm going to resist mightily the temptation to look at that frame by frame. And gawd, when I saw those dancing Stormtroopers, I almost burped my evening Trooper Barracks Meal at all the inaccuracies.

I guess they looked okay from far away.

A couple of weeks ago the Golden Gate Garrison hosted an Armor Party where I got to watch Ukswrath make quick work of cutting the edges off a just-unboxed Anovos kit. I reassured the kit's owner that it was okay not to work as fast as ukswrath. Then I got some direct advice on my own armor, and spent the rest of the time polishing my kit, which had gotten a bunch of marks on the arms from my blaster. I showed him my helmet, which I thought looked like crap. He reassured me that in his expert opinion, it looked like crap. I had brought my Lightdremel but as a newbie I felt a bit timid with it; that thing is almost like a Lightsaber through plastic. Almost. Not quite. I watched the Master at work and realized that it was not such a beast. It's not: just handle it carefully and with mindful intent. Turn it off. Let it spin down. Then set it down. … the sort of stuff. It is actually an elegant tool, a reminder of an ancient time. Today I had nice trip to the hardware store for some correct screws, more glue, and some furnace filters. I took apart the helmet and removed the visor. Here you can see the reason for the awfulness: I decided that I should try to practice extreme cleverness in drawing guidelines. The first bit was to use dry-erase marker. (Wipe it off as soon as practical, and hide your black Sharpie. Don't ask me how I know. Also, paint thinner will clean up Sharpie.) I put blue tape on the visor to protect it from further scratches. (It is gonna need some careful polish with the polish kit. Don't try to wear metal-rimmed glasses inside your helmet. Don't ask me how I know. Plastic polish will restore scratched-up BluBlockers.) I taped the visor to the inside of the helmet so its flat edge matched up to the eyebrows, and then marked the eyebrows to its curve. The Lightdremel with the roughest purple cylinder and only about 1800 RPM was a nice balance of progress, not melting the plastic, and not acting like a Lightedremel through butter. The plastic is thin. It helps to think out how you will hold the hemet and the Lightdremel to apply its business end to the work piece. I did the brows and the visor fit tons better. I couldn't figure an elegant way to mark the bottom edges of the eye openings, but had gained enough confidence with the Lightdremel that I cold wing it. I marked with the dry-erase marker and applied the Lightdremel. Initially I was so concerned with the awful shape of the openings that I didn't notice that the right eye outer corner was too rounded. That took careful deregulation with the smallest grinding bit and a shallow D-shaped file. I am pleased with the result. Next I intend to treat the interior to black Plastic-Dip. I had considered just painting it, but after taking the helmet apart and seeing how basically flimsy it is, I think Plasti-Dip is the way to go. I'll probably have to drill one new set of holes in the visor so it doesn't leave a gap at the bridge of the nose. (Not shown here is that I got fed up with the Anovos sticky velcro system of holding the visor in place. Months ago I ripped all that out, gently, and drilled holes in the visor so the ear screws hold it in place. Much better!) Then of course the ears have to go back on and glue back the little velcro circles to hold the pads in. I ordered a Shock Doctor football helmet chin strap which I hope will help stabilize the helmet. (I used to play ice hockey; I was a goalie. I did NOT want my helmet to come off my head, ever. Some attitudes die hard.) I am thinking of gluing snaps to the inside of the helmet to use as fastening points for the strap.

I thought I recognized hat Anovos hardhat harness system! I (carefully) ripped mine out and got some helmet pads on Amazon. They are much more comfortable and now my helmet moves with my head instead of whatever way it wants to. Mine was as walpyjod as yours, and my helmet always wanted to turn to the right.

Mine says Supporter 2016. But yeah. Wait until after the elections before you destabilize the system. ;-)

The deed is done: glossy paint on the nose. Shiny!