CloseTheBlastDoor

Oh shoot, I saw that post before and totally forgot about it!

I took the smallest amount off the sides of the butt plate and was careful to round into the inside corner of the notch. I think it looks pretty good! I’ll probably end up hitting it again later with a file or other fine tool. I also got a few of the snap plates in, and added a few straps. It feels good to see this all coming together! A few snaps, I found very difficult to get in. But it might be because the posts inside the snaps are not all the way down, and are bumping into each other when attempting to push male and female pieces together. With the hand pain I’m having these days, this might become an issue. I’ve not set snaps before, and I’m using this crimp-like tool to do it (no hammer). This tool looked great, but it does not perform too well. It has these tiny magnets that are set inside the die, but are not glued in. When I was pressing one of the snaps, there was a big spark! It turned out that one of the tiny magnets had come out and wedged itself between the tool and the underside of the die, and completely shattered! That was thrilling. Starting tomorrow, I’ll be on vacation for a few weeks, meaning no progress on this, but maybe my hands will recover. See ya soon!

I agree that conservative trimming would be the best approach, thanks! I will keep that return edge on the notch, too.

I’ve been going back and forth between trimming the torso pieces as advised, and getting strapping together. I forgot to order more snaps since I’m using the double-snap method, and I’ve run out of 1” nylon too making the snap bases. I made a crude jig with leftover thermal detonator material to get the hole pairs somewhat consistent, and I burned the holes with an old soldering iron: Positioning for the snap bases: Positioning for any strapping: After a lot of burnt nylon smoke: Snap setting, most of them were straight: I glued in a few snap bases on the chest and back plate to start. That’s about as far as I got. For the kidney plate, looking downward on the top right side, there is this pucker from the pull: Looking at the same side, there is also some lumpiness (photo doesn't do it too much justice): I’m hoping that it won’t show too prominently. I know that I should trim at the red dashed line below, not the blue line or anywhere close, because I'd be digging into the gap between the kidney and ab plates. I'm a somewhat slim trooper. But seems like I need to remove a little bit more than the red line so it’s nice and clean. I see in the CRL that the presence of the notch is optional, but if it’s there, it should be 22mm high. There is no requirement for the horizontal dimension, though. Maybe I’m just overthinking all this.

Thanks, Terry! Would you also suggest rounding those inside corners somehow, as Joseph suggested? I'm not totally sure how to do that without removing some more material at those points. https://imgur.com/wbt1GTb

I got busy setting up for doing bulk strapping and snapping, but I realized that I still had some return edge questions. I read @justjoseph63’s return edge 101 post, but wanted to confirm the following: For the cod, do I take off all the return edge and round the corners indicated by the arrows, or do I keep the edge and also try to put some rounding there? For the butt, same set of questions: Incidentally, I am already faced with cracking on the butt (where did your mind just go? ) because it arrived as such. Honestly, not terribly amused by this. For the top part of the butt, I’m just going to take off the small edge that is curled out, and NOT the return edge (same for bottom edge of kidney): And I’m leaving the top of the kidney with a return edge: Sound OK?

Thanks for those reference photos! Due to an interview, hand pain, and getting ready for a vacation, I've not spent much more time on this, but I hope to have a few more hours soon to plug away at this.

Thank you for the advice, ShaSha! I agree that getting the strapping done is the next logical step. I did already trim the large tabs from the backs of the straps, so we'll see!

I thought a lot more about the shoulder strap issue. And then I didn’t because I kept getting stuck. So I did some other stuff, like trimming the belt, just to feel like I was still making progress. Following the Billgram: I trimmed the length with the 3-5mm margin from the main blocks. I found that a metal straight edge with some scrap ABS sheet to build up to ~4mm worked well as a guide. I’ll do the same with the ammo belt when I get the replacement from WTF. That was a nice aside. The rest of the trimming I will do later. So, for the chest plate, I had a really difficult time finding symmetry so I could find a centerline and would have a decent reference to draw some cut lines. As the left side came up higher than the right, I thought I’d measure the side cut-outs and then use the difference as a guide for trimming the top left. I used this crude method of taping a USB cord along each edge: You can see that I marked the length by wrapping a piece of painter’s tape around the cord. “But wait,” you ask. “The lengths are the same!” Yes, they are. So much for that idea! Upon inspection, I did notice that the left side had a little bit more return edge leftover than the right side. So I trimmed that down too, but only gained maybe a few millimeters. I had a conversation with Walt about this shortness issue, too. He rightly pointed out (and it was pointed out here too) that there is nothing in the CRL about how many shoulder strap ribs overlap, but at the same time I don’t know that he felt that this chest plate was out of spec with his standards. The other WTF builds that Glen pointed out surely seem to have more material to work with. And the chest plate seems angled out where the straps connect. I have neither. I decided that enough is enough, and that I was just going to go forward and see what happens. I had to make some assumptions about what symmetry means here. I placed the chest plate on my table, and put the left side over the edge. I marked and cut: Getting the neck right was where I wanted to ensure some symmetry, too. With initial trimming, it had fit like this, where it was very uneven and biting into my neck: I took some measurements and decided that about a 150mm diameter circle was a good guide for trimming. It seemed to align with my neck and allowed space for the neck seal. A good tracing and cutting followed, and then a go at Glen’s ‘box’ method for fitting. With a 1-big + 2-small rib overlap, this is how it looks: Left side: Right side: I feel like the box is a bit too deep. As you can see, there isn’t a lot of overlap to be had. It was quite awkward trying to dry fit this onto the real me without help. Time to look for a mannequin torso or something. Then I will also be able to work more on shoulder strap shaping.

Yes, thank you, that definitely helps! I guess the WTF chest plate is simply not shaped the way yours is to begin with. Will look at other WTF builds too, as Glen suggests. BTW, who was your armorer?

Yeah, mine looks quite different, and does not have the 'angled out' cut on the sides. I'll have to think on this one a bit more.

Still a bit hung up on the shoulders. I haven't trimmed anything there off the chest plate yet, because there doesn't appear to be much strap overlap: I can only overlap the one large tab and three small ones at most, it seems, and I have yet to trim. I will have to trim some, since there is some lumpiness from forming. I traced the bump-out in the chest plate in China marker just to show how close to the front I already am. Also, I am wondering if I need to trim the sides in the photo to the dotted lines so they taper to the strap width more, which is what I think I see in some of other folks' photos. I am hoping not .

Good advice!

Ooh, good note on the larger tab on the back! I'm not too big, so I can probably get away with removing it entirely. Will check fit first, of course. Thank you, as always! One other thing: I notice that the chest plate's shoulders don't quite align (left shoulder side is higher), so I didn't trim that area yet. Should I trim to the thin dotted line so the sides match up? Or should I trim to a line that follows across the top, so the straps follow more straight over the shoulders? a

I haven’t quite set up to get the snap set done, as I need to order more of the line 24 snaps, and a few other things. In the meantime, I found the Billgrams. What a gold mine! They are super useful! They were nicely gathered here: I decided to trim out a bit more of the armor, namely the shoulder straps, chest plate and back plate. For rough cutting I found it most useful to use a bandsaw to get an initial trim on pieces with a flat surface, and lexan shears for the others. Then for either, a closer trim with Dremel+drum sanding head, followed by 220 grit sandpaper. Shoulder straps: Button plate, untrimmed with Billgram measurements marked: Trimmed: Chest and back plates have a generous return edge on the bottom, while next to nothing on the other edges. On these other edges I left the natural rounding intact, but there’s not much behind it, if that makes sense. I did this by not applying the Dremel perpendicular to the edge, but parallel to the forward-facing plane of my body. Chest: Back: Hoping for feedback, and advice on to what radius I should form the shoulder straps. Thanks!