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Shoulder Bridge Update... So I was going out of town a week ago and I was eager to get the shoulder bridges glued before I left. They would have several days to dry completely. So before leaving I glued them into position and clamped them down. However, in my haste I forgot to check the alignment to the back. When I returned and removed the clamps, they looked great from the front... But from the rear they didn't exactly align with the back plate... They were a little narrow at the neck and came back at quite a different angle than the rear shoulder pieces. I thought about removing the bridges and trying again but the angle concerned me. It's possible that I could have re-glued everything and still had an issue. It was suggested that I hot water bath the chest piece and gently widen the shoulders by reducing the curve of the neck. This could align the shoulder bridges better at the rear and at the same time it would reduce the angle of the bridges. I ended up heating water in my largest pasta pot and once boiling I dumped the pot into the kitchen sink and was able to submerge the top of the chest piece. Anyway, it worked and the alignment is much better. Next I attached some snaps to the back and chest pieces... And I also constructed a tab and slot system for the side of the ab to the kidney to keep the sides aligned. I didn't have any black ABS so I gently roughed up some white ABS, spray painted it matte black and gave it a couple of coats of matte clear coat. Hopefully it won't scratch off right away. Then I worked of some of the torso strapping... I also did a bit of a test fit and I found that the side still opens up at the bottom and causes the tab to slip out of the slot. Most likely the belt will hold the bottom closed but I think I will add another strap to the bottom to help hold the AB/Kidney closed. Right now I'm only using the "Han snap" at the top to hold it closed. More to come.... Mark

I got a bit more done tonight...this time the shoulder straps. Here's the original AP shoulder straps. I trimmed them up... And following Mark's (AP) instructions I removed one large tab and one small tab from the back of the straps. Next I got out my large pasta pot, grabbed my daughters soccer ball and did some cooking. :-) I heated the water to a boil and dipped in a shoulder strap. I left it in for about 45 seconds then took it out and forced it over the soccer ball. Once it cooled it took the curve of the ball. Next I cut some little strips of ABS to fit into the underside of the straps. This is to fill up the voids so that there's more surface area to grab on to when you glue the straps to the chest piece. And then I glued the tabs in place. That's it for tonight. :-) Mark

Ok, managed to squeeze in a lot of work on the torso over the weekend. I started off by adding snaps to connect the AB and Chest. I used double-snaps in doubled-up 1.5 inch elastic. I made a loop out of the elastic, sewed the ends together then punched the holes and installed the snaps. Next I installed the COD split rivet. I installed a snap on the inside to make it functional. Then installed the posterior snaps. The AP kit comes with a pencil line which shows how the movie suits were trimmed. This is drawn on both the AB and Kidney. I did a test fit and it looks like I'm going to be really close to the movie trim line. I trimmed about 1/2 inch larger than this line and did another test fit. It was way too big. Then I trimmed right to the movie trim line and did another test fit. Still a little big. I had 1 to 1.5 inches at the small of my back. I wanted to keep the seam near the middle of my side, so I stopped trimming the AB and took one last 1/4 inch off of each side of the kidney. I think I'll go with this. I measured and drilled the holes and cut 3 lengths of 1 inch elastic. I found the center of the elastic and punched two holes 1 cm either side of the center line. Next I cut a strip of ABS to use on the inside and then hammered the split rivets in place. Then I realized that I had a small gap where the kidney and AB meet and I had to take the whole thing apart again. Measure twice, hammer once. That's what I forgot. So I took it apart, cut new elastic with the holes 9mm from the center line and put everything back together again. Now it fits good. Then I installed the snap on the right side (Han Snap?) and glued in a snap on the kidney to connect it. No, it's not misaligned. I'm just holding it crooked because there's still wet glue on the kidney. Then I still had a couple of hours so I got the chest buttons done... The stickers that come with the AP kit work really well. It's really thin vinyl. You put them on at the center and hit them with a hair dryer to soften them. Then you can work down the edges with no air bubbles. It's super smooth and looks like paint. Plus it's a perfect circle, something I wouldn't be able to paint by hand. I think that was a fairly productive weekend. I'm feeling more comfortable about my "self-imposed" October 31 deadline. Mark

Are there any guidelines for the COD to Posterior elastic? It it basically just 3/4 in black elastic with line 24 snaps from the COD split rivet to one of the posterior snaps? Thanks, Mark

Alright, I wasn't going to post this........but I also did a quick test fit just holding the AB... Mark

Ok, I'm playing "catch-up" here.... So I decided for now that I would KEEP the hooks that I made for the biceps to shoulder bell straps. If I find I don't like them later I will remove them. I went ahead and attached double-snaps to the inside of the shoulder bell to connect the bicep. Then I sewed the sew-on snaps on to elastic for the shoulders. And finally attached the arm pieces together. I originally used the wider (more screen accurate) elastic to attach the forearm to bicep (close to the inner elbow) but I was getting the same "bunching" of elastic that Wook mentioned when I bent my arm. I used a similar solution by going with narrower elastic and attaching it to the front inner cover strip. This seemed to work much better. Not sure if this issue is specific to the AP armor, but not a big deal. Next up I did a lot of trimming and sanding for the torso parts... That's it for right now... Mark

Ok, I don't have the torso assembled yet so it's quite possible the bells could come down further. I'll keep that in mind. Thanks!!

Well, I'm 6' 1". It looks like I'm going to have closer to a 1" gap between the forearm and bicep with my arm hanging straight down. Mark

Hey all, I've got a question on the arms. I'm working on the strapping between the shoulder bell, bicep and forearm. The shoulder bell to bicep is pretty straight-forward, but bicep to forearm leaves some questions. I think "screen accurate" is having an elastic strap sort of at the inner elbow connecting the bicep to the forearm. However, I read in Wook's build that when he did that, the elastic strap would bunch up and bulge outward when his elbow was bent and create an loop of strapping at the elbow. Is there a better place to strap the two together? I'm thinking maybe the outer or inner elbow at the side? Would that still be ok for Centurion? Thanks, Mark

So, the consensus seems to be to keep the bell elastic, use snaps on the inside and to not use the elastic clip that comes up from the armpit area? Will I still be OK for Centurion if I leave off that clip? Mark

Thanks for the encouraging comments everyone!! They are much appreciated. I've got a question about the biceps. I'm just mocking up the biceps/shoulder bells and something struck me as odd. Normally, you attach the elastic to the bottom of the should bell and that elastic goes through a little clip that is fastened to the underarm portion of the bicep. Something like this photo... Now, I'm fairly tall (6'1") with long arms. I'm going to want those biceps to be almost as low as possible without coming out from under the shoulder bell so minimize black showing at the elbow. If I drop the bicep down, that means the plastic bicep clip is going to need to be longer....and that doesn't look right. See this photo... Notice how long (tall) the elastic clip is on the bicep. That doesn't seem right. How would one handle this? Leave the clip off completely and just attach snaps at the other side of the bicep/shoulder bell? Am I thinking about this the wrong way? I can't see how to drop the bicep without lengthening this clip. Thanks, Mark

So I've made some more advancements: After several hot water baths and the offset mentioned above, I finished the shins by finally gluing on the sniper knee plate. I'm pretty happy with how it turned out. Next I set my sights on the thighs. I decided to leave the slight height mismatch on the front (top) of the thighs (it will be mostly hidden by the cover strip) but the back was a different story. On the right thigh I wound up with about 2.5 cm height difference. The knees lined up well but the tops were way off. I cut this down to about 1.5 cm but any more would have required losing a huge portion of the top return edge to maintain the "swoop" of the leg hole. I settled for cutting off 1 cm because that didn't require that much reconstruction and in the end, I rebuilt the return edge for about 1 inch. I didn't have a heat sealing iron and I didn't want to order one and wait weeks, so I experimented with a clothes iron. And you know what? It worked ok. I played with the heat and finally settled on the "silk" setting. I was able to melt the ABS and roll over a new return edge without making a mess of everything. I had a couple of minor "flat" spots where the iron melted a little much, but after sanding, wet sanding and Novus plastic polish, it looks great. Unfortunately I forgot to take a "before" picture but here is after melting but before sanding. I continued gluing on cover strips... And then again I ran into an issue with the right thigh. This time the bottom (at the back of the knee) didn't line up that well. It had a height difference. It's a little hard to see in this photo but the halves meet well horizontally, but vertically there is a difference. I gave this piece a hot water bath to ease it down to a similar height and then glued a strip of ABS behind to hold it in place. Next I worked on the knee ammo pack. I cut it out (it was untrimmed) and sanded it to square edges. Then used a pipe piece similar to the TD to draw a pencil line to round off the lower edge. (View from back) Then a hot water bath to get it to curve to the knee... I centered the piece around the knee portion of the thigh. That means I have equal space on the left and right halves of the knee but the center ammo rectangle does not line up perfectly with the center of the front cover strip. From what I understand, this is expected with the AP kit and similar to the film. I used two of the included split rivets to hold the knee belt in place. I put a few dabs of E6000 on the inside to hold the belt in place. I still have clamps holding the knee ammo belt in place while the glue dries. Mark

Yes, I tried Chrome and Edge. Then several hours later it all just started working again. Maybe the site glitched out for a bit?

So I'm now working on the thighs. Here's an untrimmed AP thigh: And roughly trimmed... On thing I noticed and I wanted to get an opinion on is that when you align the two thigh halves at the knee, then the top of the thighs don't line up very well. The top-front is a little off but the top-rear is WAY off. Here's a photo of the front... So here I have a couple of questions. First the return edge.....what do most people do with the upper return edge? Do you keep it or remove it for comfort? Looking at the RS reference photos, it looks like there is still some return edge on the upper-thigh, but it's subtle. Reading posts it sounds like a lot of people remove the upper return edge to reduce chafing. Is there a preference? (I'm going for centurion, remember). Pandatrooper is in what will be my local garrison and he's a proponent of building your own return edge using a heat sealing iron to make the pieces line up. That certainly sounds like the best route but also the scariest for a first-time builder. I don't want to end up destroying the thighs. If the return edge was removed, then it would be fairly simple to hide the height difference with a cover strip and sand the cover strip down so that it curves to make the two pieces meet. I haven't noticed this issue with other armor manufacturers. Thoughts? Thanks, Mark

Continuing on.... Next up is the shins. Here's what the untrimmed AP shins look like: The shins were pretty easy to trim up. I used lexan scissors to cut off the extra plastic and went back to the table top belt sander to sand down the curves. Then finished up with a sanding block or dremel if I needed a rounded edge. I did a rough trim first and then sized the shin to my leg. Keeping room for the 20mm cover strip on the front and 25mm for the back. I'll be using velco for the back. I LOVE Cricket's magnet solution for the shins, but I think it's probably not a good idea for a "first-time-builder". When it came to the strip on the rear of the shin piece, I used every clamp I had... I made sure that the rear cover strip attached on the outer side of the shin half and used industrial Velcro with the loops on the cover strip and hooks on the shin portion. I've heard this way the hooks won't grab your undersuit. In this photo I've lifted the outer lip over top of the cover strip to give the adhesive time to dry. Lastly I had to wrestle with the sniper knee plate. I used the "offset" technique of gluing the right half of the shin slightly higher than the left half so that the knee plate isn't lopsided. Then I gave the knee plate several hot water baths to shape the right side (when viewed from the front) so that it better fits the shape of the leg piece. I think it's pretty good. The bottom doesn't really fit snug against the shin but I think all AP kits have this little issue. No one is going to see it anyway because they're never looking "up" at your knee plate. I've started working on the thighs while I wait for the glue to dry. Mark

And as fast as it stopped it's now working again. ???

Hey guys, is something up with Photobucket images again? They were working fine for me this morning as I was looking at Ukswrath's sales thread for Hovi mic speakers and this afternoon all the photos are gone. Anyone else having this issue? Mark

I forgot to mention, I made a little modification to my clamps. I cut small strips of wood and hot glued them to the end of my spring clamps. This way the clamp pushes down on the cover strip with less chance of pressing on the sides of the armor. The was especially useful for the forearms where the large surface area of the clamp would have hit the sides and not clamped down as well. And now on to the thermal detonator.... This is the untrimmed TD from AP.... And here is after the initial trim... As other people have mentioned, the end caps are a very tight fit. I tried sanding down the main tube a little but that didn't really work. The material that the pipe is made of doesn't really take well to sanding. I found it almost "soft" and difficult to sand. Maybe that's just one of the properties of pipe? It wasn't "hard" and wouldn't sand "smooth" after a course sanding. Luckily I only did less than 1 cm from the edge of one end before giving up on the idea. It turns out the caps DID fit OK, it's just a tight fit and any angle at all will cause them to not slide onto the pipe. After a test fit I found the pipe a little long. My understanding is that the entire TD should be 7.25 to 7.50 inches long with the end caps installed. So I needed to chop a little off the pipe. Luckily (again) my dad's old tools come into play. He had this interesting mitre-box style contraption that holds the saw blade level. Perfect for chopping down the pipe. I followed Ukswrath's build for masking off the areas that will be glued before painting. Then I did the final sanding of the end caps and panel to get everything the right size. As I mentioned in my E11 build....I picked up a (fairly) cheap airbrush off of Amazon. One that hooks up to a tool compressor with a pressure reducing valve. It was only my second time using it but after some tweaking with adjustment screws, I managed to get a reasonably nice flow. Much better than the first time I tried. I was getting a lot of "spitting" of larger drops previously. This time after adjusting the needle I wasn't getting that anymore. This air brush stuff is a lot more complicated than it seems. WAY too many adjustment screws with pretty much no instructions. :-) I thinned down some Humbrol #5 Dark Admiralty Grey Gloss and sprayed on a few light coats. Next I glued on the panel... Then I glued on the end caps. I purchased the TD Clips from Ukswrath. I opted for his "version 2" clips. I posted this on my local garrison and PandaTrooper pointed out that the clips look a bit tall. I hadn't noticed that but now that he mentioned it, they do look a bit tall. The "version 1" clips actually aren't as tall, but they also don't have the bend at the bottom for the belt. I'm not sure what I'll do. For now I'll assemble the rest of the armor and see how I feel about the clips. I may end up replacing them if they still appear too tall once everything is complete. Mark

Thanks for the hand guard info. There seem to be a lot of different sizes of guards. The ABS ones that came with my armor are quite big. The silicon ones I bought from JustJoseph are smaller. I guess I'll wait and see. I may have placed mine a little further back. Just a hair before the knuckles when you make a fist, so I don't have any overhang. I'll see how it looks when everything comes together. I can always move them if I have to. Back to the forearms.... The first hot water bath definitely helped, but while gluing on the cover strips I noticed the two halves of the forearm actually don't fit together that well. I let the outer cover strip dry for 24 hours but as I started to remove the camps, I could see the cover strip start to lift. I put the clamp back on and gave it another TWO DAYS drying, then it held. I've come to the conclusion that there is a lot of "pressure" on the forearms for them to spring apart. The plastic is really being forced into shape by the cover strips. I decided on another hot water bath. I figured I could reshape the elbow area to make it better fit my arm and at the same time, maybe the hot water bath would "relax" the ABS a bit and relieve some of the pressure on the cover strips. This time I was a lot less afraid about the hot water. For me, 45 seconds works fairly well. And I have the sink already filled with cold water to harden the ABS again. Success. Also, I read that someone had issues with a cover strip coming off in the hot water. That didn't happen to me, but the forearms had dried for many days before I submerged them. The biceps were much easier.... And with that, the forearms and biceps are assembled. No strapping yet. Mark

Bump...

I've made a bit of progress since my last post. Let me catch up on the gloves.... As you probably saw in one of the previous photos, I picked up 2 sets of silicon hand guards from JustJoseph63 and I have a set of rubber gloves from TrooperBay. I also have a pair of nomex flight gloves from E-Bay. Originally I glued one set of hand guards onto the TrooperBay rubber gloves but then I started not liking the gloves as much. I'm not sure if the rubber is getting a bit old or if they just kinda got squished in shipping but the fingers had several creases in them that I wasn't too excited with. By accident I was at Home Depot looking for surgical type rubber gloves and I saw a pair of Gorilla Grip gloves that looked pretty much identical to the TrooperBay rubber gloves, so I picked up a pair of these that weren't squished. :-) I put the glove on and lined up the hand guard with the flat part of my hand, so that the front edge of the hand guard kind of lined up with the edge of my knuckles when you are making a fist. I used masking tape to tape the location and took the glove off. I squeezed a facecloth into the hand opening, used E-6000 glue on the hand guard and then wrapped it tight in masking tape to hold the hand guard to the glove. And here they are after they dried... Now for my question.....I'm not sure if they are a little too far back? Some of the photos I've seen now show the front of the hand hard actually hanging over the knuckles towards the finger tips. At the time it seemed obvious to me that the guards should sit on the flat part of your hand, but now I'm not too sure. I guess I could always leave them for now since I've got long arms and having them back a bit may help to hide the gaps I will inevitably have at the wrist and elbow. I also know that some hand guards, particularly the ABS ones, can be very large and these silicon ones seem like a more "natural" size. Anyway, I'm babbling. What's the consensus? Should the hand guards overhang the knuckles? Thanks, Mark

Hi, I was just wondering if anyone has had any experience with using white E-6000 for cover strips? I've heard someone mention that the white E-6000 didn't hold as well as the regular (clear) and I was wondering if others have found this as well? It seems white E-6000 might blend in better if you happen to have very tiny gaps on the occasional cover strip. Thanks, Mark

Well, I jumped off the deep end.......and survived.... Very apprehensively I tried the hot water bath. Pretty much boiling water. Slid the pot off the burner. Dipped the armor piece in for 20 seconds.....nothing. 30 seconds.....hard to tell. 40 seconds.....I think it feels softer. Maybe a bit less "spring" to it when it's flexed. Less aggressiveness to return to it's former shape. 40 seconds, hold the armor piece flexed outward a bit, then under cold water. Bingo!!! I did this a couple of times to each piece. The shape looks slightly different, but not much, but the very harsh corner on the outer forearms definitely looks less abrupt. The piece on the left almost looks like it's got a bit of a "wave" to the left edge. It's subtle though and completely disappears once the pieces are taped together. Now from the photo things don't look much difference, but it feels quite different. Looking at the photo from yesterday there is less space now at the top of the arc. The top of the curved arc fits closer to my arm and the sides aren't as tight. WOOHOO!!!!! Thanks everyone!!! I was freaked out about melting the ABS in the pot of boiling water but for 30 or 45 seconds, it just seems to loosen the rigidity and make it a little less likely to return to it's former shape. I really appreciate everyone's help and encouragement. Mark

Thanks, but don't be envious. It's basically a Gladiator Workbench with the power strip and some plastic checker plate floor tile. I picked them both up about 5 years ago from Sears in the US. They were both much cheaper in the US than purchasing from Canada. I love the Gladiator GarageWorks stuff. Mark

Well I trimmed up the second bicep. All went well. And then I cut my first cover strip. This is beginning to feel pretty natural. :-) Then onto the forearms where things got a little more difficult. Here are the untrimmed forearms as they came from AP... And now the forearms "roughly" trimmed.. (I say roughly trimmed because I've left enough material for 20mm cover strips) At this point I was fairly surprised. The biceps fit quite large on me but the forearms are quite the opposite. I don't think a 15mm cover strip is going to work for the forearms. Luckily the biceps were only "roughly" trimmed so I've still got a few mm to play with if I want to go bigger with the cover strip. It's weird, the left forearm feels tighter than the right but they're both a little tight. Particularly closer to the elbow where your arm muscle is. The armor fairly round in shape (at that point) whereas your arm is kind of oval. If I squeeze the armor into an oval shape, it's not tight anymore. I wonder if I'm going to have to do a hot water bath to get the shape a little closer to my arm shape? This is something I've been really dreading. I've read too many horror stories about hot water baths and heat guns gone "wrong". Here's a pic. It's digging in a bit right where the blue tape meets my elbow area on the right side of this photo. You can see the blue tape even wrinkles there as the armor is pulling the tape downward there too. As I say, if I put a bit of pressure in the center of the forearm, causing the sides to flare out when it takes more of an oval shape, then it feels fine. Now a few things come to mind: 1) It's not that bad. Live with it. 2) Maybe cover strips will pull that area out more as the armor does have more of a curve to it there. The rigidness of the cover strips may pull that area out naturally. 3) Swallow my fear and hot water bath those suckers. Thoughts? Mark P.S. - As I mentioned before, I don't have big muscular arms. I wonder what people who do have more muscular arms would do? 20mm to 30mm cover strips? :-)