troopermaster

How small do you want to go? Please note: Warwick is only 3' 6" for reference

Looking good Morten. Now your ready for the fun part - the tube stripes

Didn't I send you the bolts for the ears? I can send you the correct brass bolts on Monday if not.

I think all the drop boxes would have been riveted on originally due to the fact that you have to have the box split in half to get the back of the rivet to close. Any drop boxs that do not have rivets are more likely to have been glued on after they have been pulled off accidently. You can see several troopers in ANH that just have the elastic showing and a missing drop box. Here are two photos of an original belt. Here is a photo showing the original single cap rivet on the knee strap.

Looking pretty good John I just have a couple of nitpicks to point out so others don't follow suit if they are going for screen accuracy. You should swap the knee strap split rivets for single cap rivets. Use these same kind of rivets to hold the drop boxes onto the elastic and also for holding the plastic ammo blt to the canvas. It looks like you have used snaps?

Shoulder straps are made from elastic - not canvas

You can have the tubes line up or have them wonky. It all depends on the look you are going for. Each helmet is assembled slightly differently than the other so go with what you like. Take the ear caps off the one I assembled to see if the tubes line up or not if it helps.

The new pull looks incredible. The detail is phenomenal. Well done guys

This is awesome! Much better than any other HDPE replicas that have been produced so far. Though I suspect this is PP and not HDPE as what was believed to have been used originally (which we agreed wasn't the case). I remember holding one of these when I came to visit you and it was hard to distinguish it from the real deal! The weight and feel of it was virtually identicle to the original when I had both in my hands. This is going to be hard for anyone to beat. Have you tried painting it with regular gloss house paint like Dulux?

You can fill the gap with white silicone or cut a thin strip of ABS and glue it in place.

No more pics now I didn't get the chance to take any before it went to it's new home. The owner may add some photos or start a new thread once he receives it.

Did you move the rear cover strip on the left shin from the inner to the outer part? It looks as though it is still on the inner part.

Here we go. Thanks to meanders for the photo

Looking very nice there Grant! I agree with Mathias. The helmet does look a bit too high on your head so reduce the padding if possible. I can see your knee cap on the top of the shin in one of the photos so you might want to reduce the length a bit. You don't have to take an inch off though. I would start with half an inch first and see how that feels. If you look at some of the original trooper ankles you can see these have been cut short and don't have the original shape to them. If you do cut them, I would do it in a curved way rather than try and keep the original shape. I'll see if I can find a good photo to show you what I mean.

Shorter elastic is going to help as already suggested. You want the top of your bell to be touching the shoulder strap so it just kind of hangs there with not much room to move. And, I believe the bells on your kit are undersized (as most kits are) so I don't think you will totally solve the issue, but the shorter strap should help.

Yes, do that. It's better to ask questions before you go hacking away at your kit.

It's not mine unfortunately

Nice work guys If you want to know where to get the accurate rivets from, just send me a PM

Cheers This suit is finished now and I will show photos later tonight

As harsh as it sounds, that could be said to a lot of guys on here. The armour was designed to fit a certain sized person and anyone who doesn't fit the bill is looking to do minor or major sugery to their kits in order to make it fit depending on their body size. I read a lot on here about sizing problems and it's kind of like complaining your original cast Vader parts don't fit you when you are 5' 5" tall. If you really look closely at ANH and ESB Stormtroopers in the movies you will see that there are a wide range of different sized actors wearing the armour. Some wear it better than others. You can see that a lot of guys are drowning in their armour since it was all built the same. I think that replica armour should be build how it was intended too because when you start to change anything you change to original look. So, the moral of the story is that if you do not fit the bill you can expect a lot of work if you want to wear Stormtrooper armour that is not designed to fit you.

I thought you said you was building it the same as Simons suit which has a Sandtrooper torso?

You might want to ask this question over on the MEPD since you are building a Sandtrooper and not a Stormtrooper.

The problem trying to find the brand is that we don't really have any good clues to follow. There are the odd few HD photos that could help narrow down our search, but to find the exact match is going to be near impossible until a real pair turn up. As far as I know there were no gloves in the LFL archives (according to Matt/TE) but who knows...maybe there are some hiding somewhere just waiting to be found? I think Karin has the best idea of seeing what brands were popular in the mid 70's. The brand I have been using is Maxima flock lined rubber gloves which are great, but I don't know if that is the original brand or not.

Your elastic should not be stretched anywhere until you start to move. Duct tape will do the job of holding the parts together for a test fit. If you are going to use snaps and elastic straps then simply add your snap plates in the correct locations and make the straps long enough so all the torso parts are touching each other. Just make sure the chest to abdomen straps allow for some overlap on these armour parts. I think you will find everything should come together pretty good if you use a strapping system like this one. If you are going for a screen accurate strapping then you don't have a choice of how long your straps are as they are not really adjustable.

I think I read somewhere that it was based on the German WWII Gas Mask Container, so an 02 canister may be a more appropriate term?