Bigturc

Paul, I thought this was a screen used armor from ANH!!! Damn .. ok .. well, that's the look I wanna have for my armor! I'll try that after Halloween! Thanks for the tip!

I knew I shouldn't have joined!

OMG, they're back!! I think I'm gonna cry .. What the heck is "the stormtrooper" group anyway! Thanks again Chris! .. but now I know that you're unconsciously switching my forum's right cause you miss our interaction soo much.

Watch ANH again ... See Luke in the Death Star control room getting his helmet off See Han in the Detention block taking it off also .. Once you see and realize this is as it should be, it moves the "feature" from the to-fix-list to the cool-list

Oh no, it's spreading!!!

He has to be talking about enlarging the hole to fit the head straight in instead of sideways

Believe me, I'd have preferred not having to bother Chris so much .. but then, I'm beginning to like it! Haha! Glad Chris and I are making it interesting

I think I can help you on this one. To Subscribe: Hit Options in the upper right corner when you're reading a thread, then Subscribe to this forum. Or you can always hit the "Enable email notification of replies?" checkbox when you add a message and that will also subscribe you! Then, in your My Controls page, on your left side bar, you'll have Subscriptions - View Topics / View Forums that will show you all your subscribed Threads classified by Topic. Is that helping you in any way?

Oh .. just give us some actions!! You guys have great arguments and build your critics (for most parts anyway) with very good points! I love reading about those threads and I think they serve their purpose really well! This is how things move forward, but of course, it has to stay on topic!

Ok, so here's more info and questions I always thought my abs piece was pretty twisted .. I always assumed it was normal and never really bothered with it. I decided to make sure this was normal by taking a few pics of the abs piece and they fitting of the kidney piece with the abs piece. As you can see on the pics below, if I line up my left side to the kidney, the right side will have over 1" of lateral gap, I'm not taking about the side gap here .. see picture anyway, I'm sure it's clear enough. So that gap was what originally made me wonder how I could close the side gap .. Now, may this be normal or not, I assume I could always take away some kidney upper lip width so that the piece would be easier to squeeze closer? How thick is that lip on your AP armor? I guess it does make sense to take some ABS off that lip to make it more flexible? I'd like your input and pics if you have of those 2 pieces closed from top view .. Details to look at in this picture: Middle left : Upper lip shape being more angled on the left side Bottom left: Flat part where the buttons are is more bubbled on the left side Upper right: See gap on right side when left side is aligned Lower right: Kidney lip width reference shot .. is it too large so that it removed flexibility --------------

Great art work Simon, it always amazes me how people will take new helmets and do everything they can to make it look old and used I must not have been in the hobby for long enough Again, congrats!!!

Thanks guys, Paul, if only I had asked and read that answer before drilling my holes ... now I feel sad I didn't ask the question BEFORE doing the drilling .. I hate the idea of having unused holes in my armor .. god I feel stupid for having done that! For now, I'll keep the bolts there while I build myself a canvas belt that will be less inclined to pop out. May this thread serves other with their kit Paul, you should add a picture of your abs piece with the snap in to help with the location and overall look for future reference. Joey, off to reshaping it anyway

Chris, you have to admit, I keep you busy around! Now, it does work (no more minimum character warnings, but it never returns anything .. Try hitting TE, AP, abs etc to see what I mean ... you're my angel! LOL

Well if you would fix me up for real, I wouln't bother you anymore! Back at you .. LOL

I'm currently tweaking my armor to give it a better fit. My belt had always been a problem. The AP kit comes with 2 pieces of white elastic to rivets on each side of the belt. Now, if you do this and use both pieces keeping the length they come, your belt will most likely be loose, or at least not really tight. So, I had the choice, shorten the belt's elastics, or fix the belt to the abs with snaps. After noticing this thing on a lot of pictures and screen grabs, I decided to give the snaps method a GO! So I used my belts end holes to mark where to put the male snaps in the armor. Drilled through, put the snaps in, put 2 female snaps through the belt's holes. Looked pretty neat .. Tried it on .. snapped right out! Resnapped it in .. snapped right out! The belt is way too rigid for these snaps to hold! Now, I'm using the same heavy duty snaps I've used for the rest of the armor. So the snaps is not the issue here. NOW, I'm sorry I drilled through the abs piece .. and realized that perhaps this was working only when the female snaps were NOT attached to the ABS belt, but on the canvas belt which is way more flexible than the ABS. For now, I used 2 bolts going through the ABS belt, then through the elastic, then the female snap, then the male snaps and through the abs piece closed inside the armor... I sure don't wanna keep the bolting solution! Does that all make sense .. input needed on this one.

That's an awesome suggestion .. I don't know why I assumed both sides were glued ... :| Really cool! How much hidden extra len did you have to leave to make sure it wouldn't pop out? Also, did you use rivets with the ABS too? Keep em coming boys! I'd like to hear people using elastic or any soft material too.

Title says it all .. It's already been said in some other threads which I couldn't find back. So I made an official request for it ... Can we have the possibility to make searches for less then 4 letters? Here's why: AP TE TE2 TM FX ABS material COD piece knee PAD GUN E11 blaster LID [...] You see the obvious, it seems that this forum is the perfect place to search less than 4 characters ... it's so often suggested to newbs to use the Search box, let's make it even more useful. Thanks, Al

Chris, it worked for a week, I could delete some images (by viewing my album, clicking the little pink checkbox and choosing the delete image selected combo box in the bottom - is there another way?) But now, it won't show me those options anymore .. so unless I dreamed of it, or I was using another way to "view in edit mode", I can't seem to have the checkbox in the upper/left corner of each image and neither the combo box in the lower task bar .. ? Am I the only one with such problems? Is this a per-user setup? HUGE thanks for your time Al

Here we go again! This has been discussed a lot, but not so much that I had all the details I wanted. I know of all the ways to do it, so no need to develop it here in this thread. What I'm interested in, is the pros & cons of ABS vs Elastic. So your experience is definitely a big plus here. Also, before starting this thing. I've seen enough pictures/screen grabs with rivets to decide I would go this way. Now, what's the real deal with those rivets, what are they for? Is it purely a visual thing? Becaue if you choose to close with ABS/hard plastic, won't it be glued to prevent the sides from opening? Same goes if you use elastic, won't you glue it inside the armor to prevent it from stretching away or to prevent the rivets to tear through? I have about 1-2" of gap on each side, I'm affraid if I use plastic, it will be way too rigid and not practical for storage. While if I choose a 3" wide elastic, the armor will still keep it's flexibility at the side and be white (to achieve Elite status ). All your inputs are welcome!

Oh no! "Just when I thought I was out they pull me back in" Thanks Daetrin!

I'm looking for gloves too .. Until this week, I had the cheapest rubber gloves, but they dried up on my mannequin before even using them!!! I bought another 1$ pair for my halloween party. It's gonna be my first time using them but I'd like something not rubber .. I feel like it'll be disgusting after an hour in those!!! Daetrin, PM Sent

I painted them slowly with a small brush and took my time. I didn't use any kind of template or tape, since I don't trust it .. see bleeding etc ... If I was to repaint them, I'd trace a perfect circle line before on the abs and then paint inside and over it to have the most perfect circle. But from really, really close, you can see it's not a perfect circle, but seriously, did you ever looked at the one in the movie?!? And if you ask me, I wouldn't go any other way than painting them, ie no button kit since we have a really nice plate and buttons on the AP kit. My 0.02$

Thanks Guys! That answers my questions .. I definitely should have specified that I asked these questions to be as close to screen accuracy as possible. Not necessairly as details to attain Elite. Thanks for pointing it out. My logic is, if I'm as accurate as can be in my way of doing it, and might as well make them screen accurate, then it's gonna be easier to attain Elite status. My real problem (and correct me if I'm wrong), is that the AP armor abs and cod pieces don't fit quite right/tightly together. The abs plate is kinda angled/twisted on one side which makes it difficult to close it tight on the back piece. I guess using the extra ABS I got with the armor would do the trick, I'm still affraid to make that side so rigid it's always gonna want to open (unless I heat the ABS stripand curve it before guling inside .. mmm) I'm still affraid that on the other side, whatever method I use to close it, will still open a lot when moving around ... That's really just personal preference though, or more likely a problem I share in case others have seen it too. That's why I was so fund of the black elastic method since it'll leave some loose but keep a strong bond, but then, it doesn't fit with Elite if there's a gap .. mmm

Ok, I have some detailed questions to complete my AP armor. 1. Side gap. We should have no side gap, so I'm using large 3" black elastic to do this. Now, the question is, does it matter if the elastic is black or white? I had always seen black stuff to close the gap before, and a few Elite approved used also black stuff. So is that ok? 2. Side rivets. I've seen 2 and 3 rivets to "close" the side gap, which one is the most accurate? 3. Side rivets location. Is the rivet placement important? You can see in the second pic that it goes in the lower section of the abs plate ... 3. Belt snaps. Was the belt attached on the abs plate with snaps on all ANH TK armor? Never read about that one in the Elite standards. As seen on Han here: That'll do for now, thanks in advance for your answers!! Al

Thanks Paul! What I got with my RomFX kit was the big black speaker below. You're right, it has an excellent output volume but I was quite surprised by Supertrooper's speakers too. And so is everyone who heard them here!!! Plus inside the Hovies, it makes them resonate even more which add to the effect I think. I'm not sure if you're saying that you wanna put that default speaker in your helmet or not, I guess not since this thing just wouldn't fit and the sound would be intolerable anyway so I must have read wrong. I'm sure you already read the other recent thread where people are highly recommending sound from the helmet .. I certainly approve! By the way, I'm still keeping the black one to maybe put it at my belt for my Halloween party, I already have the splitter, which I thought at first would reduce the output volume from the Hovies, but after trying it, the speaker actually output as loud and same goes from the Hovies mini speakers, surprising, so that's a no brainer in crowded places! Anyway, I'm really satisfied with my current setup, an all included speaker system is a must for the costume and I still can't believe how lucky we are in this group where you get from one, the RomFX, the other the speakers and the last one, the Hovies