TheLorelei

Haha, join the club. Gotcha. Riiight, GML. Lemme shoot it over to mine. Thanks!

Man, I'm beginning to not know what to do without your quick replies, Rat! Cool. Rounding corners is easy enough. Seems to me the old suits had real sharp edges though. I mean, look at Luke's suit here. http://s1082.photobucket.com/user/fisd1/media/ANH/bluray/2 cropped/abdetail.jpg.html And his button plate is cut pretty much to the raised part! Argh.

Wow. Great pictures. Gotcha! Thank you again! Ok. Every time I take a picture the button panel seems to grow a cm. It looks well within the raised are from here, though! What say, all? Trim it down more? I know people sometimes get snagged for this on EIB apps.

Yeah, true, I just spent a while poring over Centurion submission posts again too. Down come the edges!

Right ho, Dan, absolutely. I trimmed the arm cutouts before those side edges and decided to fix them before trimming the sides. No real reason. However, I'm interested (and relieved) to hear that I should take more off of the arm cutouts anyway. I cut along the trim lines and figured I'd check sources later, but assumed the trim lines were correct. You know what they say about assumptions - sometimes you're wrong! Thanks for the reference pics. Man, I just feel so weird taking all that off. As for the kidney, there is a little ripple there. It's not just the lighting. It would look better cut along that ripple too. Will modify. Thanks again!

Perfect. I'll give the cod and ab some alignment marks accordingly so when I'm ready to place it vertically I'll know where it goes horizontally. Return edges trimmed... And I made my first significant mistake, overtrimming the side of the chest, so I mooshed some ABS paste on there and will sand it back into a tolerable shape. The ABS paste is dry on the outside, but still wiggly. I'm guessing I should've applied thinner layers. Hm.

Here's what tripped me up! My cod DID come centered. Lining it back up by the little ridge left here - - I get this - - when really, I should be getting this, yes? - Thank you guys again, so much!

It's a weird and wonderful world, Frank.

Oh, my. You know, I *thought* I noticed that the button plate wasn't centered with the ridge on the cod somewhere along the line (perhaps when I cut it off? Sigh) but assumed I was wrong... thank you guys!! And thanks for the advice on the return edges, Frank. I've been avoiding cutting them due to sentimental attachment or something. I'll do that now. Those reference pics help a LOT. But are you sure about the bottom of the chest? It seems like a Hero thing to me, and Stunt should have the return edge. :/ I was even planning on sinking fake screw heads in the return edge to mimic the bracket mounting. Considering it might be nice to take a smidge off the bottom of the chest it may prove necessary to remove it, but I hate to look Hero. Do you think it's necessarily Hero-like? Mind your business Frank. But really, I gotcha - I have no particular love of Delco, given my druthers I'd rather be almost anywhere else barring p****burgh - but that's actually a Pokemon Go raid party jersey, from our Delco group. Whole other level of nerd I'm afraid.

Ohh - that makes sense. Didn't occur to me. Strapping (and the function/form thereof) is definitely what I'm least clear on in this build. It feels like longer than 5 days since I posted. So much has happened. On Monday, I spent hours hot water bathing my armor and did a dry-fitting of my torso pieces to get a feel for how much trimming I have to do. On Tuesday, I left for Disney World to spend a couple days ogling real live (FO)TKs. Now I'm back, and spent today gluing interior cover strips on my thighs, biceps, and one forearm (ran out of magnets and clamps for the second forearm due to coming down pretty hard on a couple cantankerous strips), AND dove into trimming Smudge's eyes and teeth. Highlights reel: HOT WATER BATHING I'm ending up with that same kidney-ab overlap that Cricket did. It makes me feel better to know that she fixed it - it's annoying the beans outta me. I molded all sorts of things with surprising aplomb, but got a bit ahead of myself attempting to head Trooper Dumpy Butt Syndrome off at the pass and definitely over-molded the butt. It's now in the running for becoming the bane of my existence. But anyway. I bent the shoulder bits. Yay. DRY FIT After shifting the ab (I mean the ab this time, I swear) around and seeing how it affected the entire front and back of my torso, I've come to realize that I'll likely just have to pick where I want the middle chest buttons and fit the rest of the torso accordingly. The position above is one I really like - aside from it being off center and me holding the chest a bit too high. As you can see, I've cut the cod off of the ab. That was actually one of the first things I did when I got the kit. I just forgot to mention it. I also gave the entire kit a bath with dish soap to get any mold release off. This concludes my setting the record straight as far as things I neglected to mention earlier. This is AFTER much shaping of the kidney! It was BIG, y'all! Still a ways to go. Also here we see the weird butt situation. I've stopped banging my head against the where-does-the-butt-sit wall, though. I'll fit it all based on the ab. Unless someone says that's bad. DISNEY! I drop about 20 years off my age when I see a stormtrooper. Went with the AT-AT pic to keep the 5-year-old Lorelei face to myself. BUCKET WORK Great time-filler while E6000 dries. Sketched and trimmed bucket back, keeping in mind the asymmetry of the ATA bucket and leaving extra beyond the intuitive cut line on the right side. Dremeled out the backs of the teeth and eyes to facilitate filing. Filed the eyes a smidge to get a feel for it and left Smudge at that for the night - he's looking so very TK-like already! It's so exciting! Time to print out more bucket pics and tape them up all around me as I file tomorrow.

Ha, I was just feeling guilty about not taking pictures of every step. Y'all are great. you're definitely not alone, Craig!

I've been told to leave it a little wider than that, for what it's worth. Add a millimeter to each side for instance, after dividing the appropriate cover strip width in half.

Congratulations!

Right, Rat. Definitely. I wouldn't smooth the seam over or anything, just attach the pieces permanently from behind to prevent the kidney (look! look! I know what it's called!) from sliding over the butt, as I suspect it might without that return edge to keep it in place. Boy. That's a scary prospect. It would be clean, though. Hmm. I'll try it all on and see what needs to come off, then make the call. Maybe a bit off each is called for. So you don't see a reason why connecting the kidney and butt plate would make the armor even less comfortable than it [reportedly] will be though, eh?

Yes, where I have it taped. By ab, I meant kidney. The entire time. Sorry... will edit for those who haven't read it yet...