Yacorp

Today i finally got back to my armor, and got a lot done I've built the dropboxes and started with the poppers on the abdomen and kidney plate. Most importately I've got my left ear finally trimmed to a clean fit, that took me quite a while. There is some material left so that I could still make the entire ear thinner, but honestly I don't thinck that will be necessary.

On the matter of the helmet I used the rivets to attach the two peaces together. I tryd to include your advice Dan, the brow definitely sits a little higher now, so this would have worked. When drilling holes for the mic tipps I found (too late) that the material on the bottom of these two indentations is not the regular thickness, but instead just paperthin, causing it to crack immediately upon drilling.(pic 1) ABS paste to the rescue? Will there be any other part during the actual build where I will definitely be needing ABS past aside from the little parts on the legs that aren't covered by coverstrips? I don't really know how to call these so it put one in for picture number 2. The tiny bit of ABS covering the gap from the inside is just for stability, I am not satisfied with how this looks, so i will definitely put some ABS paste on these places. But other than that I don't see any uses for ABS paste other than of course fixing further mistakes/cracks that are surely going to happen.

Big day today!, without much actual progress though. Wearing that white armour from top to bottom does really look and feel great I must say I learnend that I will definitely have to shorten the Kidney plate, otherwise the armor will be way to big around me. For continuing I think it would be the easyest, to first focus on the three lower torso pieces, and when those are done go on with the chest and back plate. Do you guys think this makes sense, or will I be needing all 5 parts at the same time, for fitting? The first picture shows the gap around my belly, with the kidney plate attached close to my back. Like this I have like 3-4 cm overlap on the sides. The back and chestplate are nowhere near connecting below my armpits, but I believe this is to be expected and not actually my aim, is it?

Amazing detail! I never would have noticed this, but now that you pointed it out for me the version were the face plate is tipped more, and the helmet therefore shorter does look more right to me. I'll definitely apply this tomorrow.

I've take into account the advice and made some photos of the helmet, for a better view.

Thank you for your time and expert eyes eyeryone! I took care of the thermal detonator, and finished that all up. The arms are fully finished as well. The legs are waiting on feedback for the sniper knee before I start glueing that, and my snap setting tool to arrive for the thigh ammo belt (rivets), but other that they are completelly done as well. Today I finally got started working on the bucket, which appears to be less work than I imagined it to be. Working on the eyes I had the truely revolutionary idea of attatching some sanding paper to the front part of a pencil for the finishing touches. The i turned to the teeth and remembered the set of small files i had bought for this. Duh. Felt kinda stupid XD Also I prepared the strapping installation, by cuting a pile of small white webbing straps & puching wholes into them, for the poppers to attatch to. Tomorrow I'll do a full torso suit up with tape, in order to mark where I'll be attatching these. Is the helmet positioned correctely? Cheers

I thought that refered to something like me making my own TD clip and ending up with say 24mm instead of 25mm. Purchasing a piece that a professional created solely for this purpose I assumed the CRLs would be taken as a template for the production of the piece. Given that 3mm is such a round number that clearly wasn't the case, and 30mm instead of 25mm is 20% to much after all. But since you say it's okay I'm quite relieved.

On a different matter I measured my TD clips that I ordered from RWA, along with the rest of the armor and they are 30mm wide, while in the CRL it is stated they should be 25mm. Also the entire tube with the caps on is about 195mm long and it should be 190mm, just the same 5mm to much. While I can cut something of the tube, but there really isn't much that i can do about the TD clips. Have there been some recent changes on the CRLs on this? It just doesn't seem to make sense to me that a part that is created specifically for stormtrooper armor would be this much of in size. Ross has been a vetted maker for a while now, and surely there must be lots of people that are wearing his TD clips?

Thanks for the pictures! The clamps squad is on its way, securing the knee. I've grinded of the top of my coverstrip allmost entirely, which allows me not only to bring the knee plat close to the shin, thus reducing the gap, it also creates a nice area for glueing. All the clamps definitely help to get wider glueing areas on the sides. Glueing would now be possible I think. The gap on the low end of the sniper knee is about 7 mm wide, shortening it any more will bring the top sides out of allinment with the shin tops. Will this placement be okey? I feel like I shouldn't have cut of all the return edge on the down side of the knee plate. If the plate needs to be repositioned/cut any more I need to know where exactly to do this. If needed, do you think a boiling water treatment could help to further bend the side parts?

The arms are more or less done now, and I'm now finishing up the legs. The sniper knee is causing me lots of trouble. The top ends will hardly allign with the shin, and there is an enormous gab between the lower end of the sniper knee and the shin plate. Also the two pieces of plastic only touch each other on three tiny points (down left, down right and the top of the shin) which will make it impossible to creat a stable bond when glueing. All these problems seem to originate from the huge difference between how broad the central part of the shin and the sniper knee are. I've illustrated this in the final picture.

Thanks for the advice Troopers! The right biceps is still a bit loose, bit the forearms fit much better now.

I don't get the restrictions for how big an attached picture on this forum may be at all. they seem to randomly change with every post

hey folks, i've made some progress with the armor over the past days. The rear coverstrips are currently glueing on my shins, and i glued up the missing thigh as well. Thus i've moved upwards, towards the arms. I got the biceps parts all taped together and started with the forearms. These however are quite hard for me to size up. The forearm parts are to long for me, as soon as i bend my arm, these parts will be pushed up the back of my hands. I've tried to get this captured in the second picture. When shortening the forearms, would it be better to cut something of the wrist end, or rather the end that points towards my ellbow?

Leg day!

I've been busy moving out of my old appartement this week, and the new one is still a complete mess, but I got back to working on the trooper today. The legs are now fully trimmed, and I started with some of the smaller parts. For tomorrow, Instead of continuing with trimming I think I'll start with gluing the legs, since I know that there will be lots of time left for trimming, when i'm waiting for glue to dry.

here is the sniper knee and the diaper

Hi all, at least the curved scissores arrived today, so i could get going with my first really busy day in the workshop. I've trimmed all the big torso parts, and already moved on to the legs. I started grinding the cutlines with a sanding block, but i'm not quite happy with the result. There seem to be more tiny pieces coming of the sanding block, than fibres of my armor. I guess i'll learn to use a dremel tomorrow, i'll be needing it for the corners anyways. Hopefully the dremel will help me tidy up those scruffy-looking edges. Or should i try use normal sandpaper on these instead of going in with the dremel? I'd love some feedback on my return edges. Are those fine on the kidney plate? I've tried to go for the thickness i allowed there, on the other torso parts as well. The return edge on the sniper knee probably needs to be smaller doesn't it? Also shall I do a return edge for the bottom end of the diaper?, or just cut it clean and just leave small curves in the 2 corners?

Thanks, for the support troopers! Sadly no store that is anywhere near my area offers lexan scissors. Literally everything else i have been able to aquire, but not the one tool I need for starting -.- Thus i ordered the scissors online yesterday, and spent today with cutting cover stripes. With a little luck my scissors will arrive here tomorrow.

Hello folks, I finally opened that big brown box that's been waiting in my room for the last 2 weeks already. I've been held up by finishing my bachelor thesis and then spent several days in awe of the building process before i dared to unpack all the packages, that have rolled in here within the past month. Ross armor looks really great and I now feel prepared for my first steps in assembling it. Undersuit, boots and gloves have already made their way to me, so the build may begin. Only missing ingredient is the blaster, unfortunatelly doopydoos have been out of order for over a month now, and I can't even order one. I set up my workspace and got a big trip to the hardware store planned tomorrow to get all those fancy tools for working with ABS. Once I get some lexan scissors I feel like I won't be stopped for a while, all thanks to Ross tutorials of course The first and only thing i managed to get done without tools (it's sunday and all shops are closed) are the handguards, I hope the glue on these still holds tight tomorrow. Of course I' ve made some pictures of the entire thing

Hi, Congrats on the building progress! The TK-helmet looks lovely. I sure hope I'll be able to achieve something like this, in like months Since this is an quite active thread about WTF armor, does anyone here know how thick WTF armor is? (in inches/millimeters) I'm still in the process of deciding for an armor maker and WTF's kit is looking really good, but I would like to get something that is at least a bit flexible, so of the thinner kind. I couldn't find this info on WTF anywhere on his website or the vetted makers list. Greeting, Jakob

Which sellers (from the vetted armorers list) offer acrylic capped armor? Is it just RWA nowadays?

Depends, Oberbayern is where I grew up and where I'll be spending the Corona lockdown, but my university is in Bayreuth, so that's where I usally live.

Thanks for the warm welcome, troopers! I'll let you all know once I've decided, and then start a buil thread eventually