Dmian

My mother rightly points me that in Spanish, the loyalty is "unconditional," not ""unquestioned", so in Spanish it should be "Lealtad incondicional." If we translate "Unconditional loyalty" (as in Spanish) to French (another Latin language) it is "Loyauté inconditionnelle."

-----has part of the answer. I think the diameter is between 2 1/3 and 2 1/2 inches (or 60 to 63 mm)

I tried the abs/cod piece with the kidney plate on, and it's short by 1 inch... (well, what can I say, I'm in my mid 30s, but I'm not fat.) I wanted to close it clam style (screen accurate) and was thinking that maybe I could leave 1cm gap on each side. For example, not all troopers in the movie had those parts touching: But that would prevent me from getting EIB status... Is there anything that I can do other than add a piece of extra ABS? Another question is, should I use an orange strap to join the chest and back, like the one on these pictures? (I'm planning to use the small elastic band ) or clearer, from Paul's reference pictures: Or should a white strap be good enough? (BTW, the abs and kidney pieces of the first guy are not touching.) Should I put 2 snaps on the crotch and leave them visible like the original? Or should it be better to make them invisible? Any suggestions? Also, the pouches have some kind of filling: Any idea of what material could that be? I only know that the pouches should be held using a white strap. Should I use a black belt to hold the thighs and leg pieces? Is that the movie accurate way? Which parts were held by elastic and which ones by straps in the original armors? Any ideas? I'll probably have more questions...

I think that's it, Karin! It sounds just right.

And just because, in other languages: Spanish: Incuestionable lealtad Japanese: 紛れもない忠誠 (magire monai chuusei) Portuguese: Lealdade inquestionável (I think the Japanese is right, but I'm not sure)

I don't know why, but I was thinking about translating the Detachment moto to Latin. But as I'm not proficient at it, the best I could come to is "Fidelitas Indubia." But I'm not really sure if it's right. Anybody knows Latin here?

Well, today I bought some materials (30mm nylon straps in white and in black, more snaps, etc.) and started cutting 20mm ABS strips. I also curved the shoulder straps, knee ammo and belt with a hair drier. Edit: Questions moved to another thread.

Well... see it this way: why do you want a blaster for? Stormtroopers can only kill Jawas. A weapon in your hand can only mean you're going to be killed anyway... Or you can grab a club and be the first CavernTrooper.

What do you mean you never heard of Davin Felth?! Then you never went to the "Look Sir, droids!" site... Davin Felth is THE stormtrooper of the original trilogy.

We are around 100 members right now. Very close to the French one. The bigger ones in Europe are the German and the British, then the French (by a few members) and the Spanish in 4th. But I'd like to be the 3rd. (right now there are 4 or 5 future members building their APs.)

Nice lid Armando!

Congrats Shiv!!!! Well, I'm going for EIB, so I hope to add to the number... I'm also planning on encouraging the members of the Spanish Garrison to get EIB level. A lot of them use AP, so it can't be that hard.

Helmet paradise! Nice collection Mark!

Back to my AP assembly. It's time for the kidney and butt part. I cut the parts. Here's another view of that part. I'm going for an ANH style, so butt and kidney need to be separated. And now to the chest. The lines of the chest on the AP are not clear, so I marked them with a pencil. Mark all the cutting lines. I marked even the obvious lines. An then cut the piece. Another view. And a front view. Very nice. On to the back part. This is one of my favorites parts, that's why I left it for the last. Here the lines are visible, so no pencil marking needed. And done, with a clean cut. Another view of the back. And a view from the inside. Now there's only the small parts left, like the belt, knee ammo, shoulder straps, etc. You only need to get rid of the borders, so cut them out from the inside. Use the cutter on the joints, lightly first and with more pressure later. The borders will come off easily. When you finish you'll have something like this. And that's it! I've finished with the cutting part! As I told you, I'm not going to cut the helmet now. I have one ready to wear, so I have no need to assemble the AP. Now it's time for the assembly. I'm going to use strips, in an ANH fashion. And I need to prepare a couple of things first. So even though tomorrow I make work on the assembly I will probably not take pictures of that part, as cutting strips is pretty boring. Keep tuned!

Thansk all of you! Well, as requested by Joey, today snack was jalapeño nachos & Mountain Dew. I'm running out of non-cola flavored caffeinated beverages. By the way, from this picture on, I adjusted the white balance of the camera, so you'll see that the armor parts are now more white than in previous pictures. A little info about my brother's work: He just started making guitars. Here you can see two Tele necks (with and without fingerboard) And here a couple of Tele bodies. And here one of the bodies with partial routing. And a close up of a fingerboard. Back to the armor. I thought that maybe it would be interesting to show a nice way to cut the pieces. I learned this by cutting the armor and by a couple of tutorials (like the one from stukatrooper) that showed this technique. First, find the lines you want to cut. This is a dummy piece, so no real lines here. Next, mark the lines using a pencil. Using a pencil will help you to see where you are cutting. Then trace the cutting line with a cutter. Lightly first. And repeat a couple of times until the trace gets deeper. Try not to run over the piece to be cut with the cutter. If you plan the cutting pattern first you won't make mistakes. After that make a cut on one of the edges. And then cut the other end. Start snapping the piece out from the edge. And then from the center. Fold if necessary. The piece will separate. And you'll have the piece cut without incidents. Sand the borders if you want and you're done!

OK, replicas are a no-no in the Netherlands... But, what about deacs with a licence? What about working guns with blanks and a licence? Say for example that you want to shoot an action movie. How do they solve the problem? Sometimes, for ridiculous it sounds, its easier to have real guns than replicas.

It looks really great Richard!

Thanks Joey! OK, the cutting part is coming to an end. Probably in the next session I'll finish this part and then, the assembly! So, I started with the big parts. Legs first. The lines on the legs are visible, but if you wish (just to be sure) mark them with a pencil. So, I cut the front of the legs... ...And then, the backs. Here a full piece, just cut. I made a test assembly using tape. Here the front of the legs. And here the backs. You can make yourself an idea of how it may end by looking at it. Here the inside. And a detail on one of the legs. I'll use the ANH strip method to join the legs. Now to another important part: the abs/cod piece. You have to be careful here. And cut! By now your experience should kick in and this part might come out clean. A view from the top part. And from the inside. And that's it for today. There are just a few parts left now (leaving the helmet out.) I'm not going to assemble the helmet right now, as I have the SDS, so I'll start with the assembly of the armor as I finish cutting the armor parts. I'm going to use the ANH method, using strips. So keep tuned!

Day 3 of my assembly. I finished the left bicep parts first (no pictures of that, sorry) and decided that the next part would be the shoulders. DANGER Will Robinson DANGER! The shoulders are a very visible part. If you go wrong with them, it will show. You should think about masking the parts, in case your cutter gets loose. As I'm feeling pretty confident right now I didn't mask the shoulders... As with the biceps, I separated the parts for better handling. Look mom! Without masking! A nice cut. OK, next another visible part: forearms. I marked the lines, leaving a small return. The front (outer) part of the forearms cut. If the return is too big I can make it smaller. I'll see when I assemble the whole piece. I cut both back (inner) forearm parts. This part has no return in the bigger opening because that is just in your joint, and it would just be uncomfortable. As you see my confidence is growing and I'm getting slowly better at the cutting. I finished all the small parts. Tomorrow: legs! Cheers.

It's a well known fact that Brian Muir sculpted the armor and Liz Moor the helmet from Ralph McQuarrie's drawings. AA made the original moulds (he had to solve some technical problems) and pulled the original armor. Years later AA decided to pull helmets and armors again. He said he still have the original moulds, but almost everybody doubts that. I've read somewhere he had some reference helmets and some kind of "protective plastic" used to preserve the moulds and used that to make new moulds... but the helmets and armors looks suspiciously like parts of other helmets and armors... To make it short, he started making armors claiming the design was his. Lucas sued in both USA and UK. He lost the USA case, so he can't sell there. In the UK the judge declared that the copyright was the property of Lucas... in the USA. So AA can still sell his stuff in the UK. Lucas appealed, but SDS is still open. As I've said, the UK judge let him sell armor, because the copyright from Lucas applies only to US. But LFL appealed, so maybe in the future he can't keep selling armor, or maybe he can. Nobody knows for sure now. These legal battles are lengthy.

There are legit sellers on eBay. Even FISD members from time to time sell good armor on the site. The problem is that, for the novice hobbyist, it's difficult to tell a good armor from a piece of rubbish, specially when they see the claim that it's "authentic", "501st approved", etc. So, novice troopers should refrain from buying on eBay until they can tell a good cast from a crappy recast (or worse,) or know if the seller has a good reputation within the community.

Buy a good helmet, cry once. Buy a cheap helmet, cry many times...

Stay away from eBay! (can't say this enough.)

Dan, that's a very nice helmet! Cheers.

Well, I truly understand the reply they sent you Vincent. Let's see, because, as you said, our globalized world tend to confuse us a little. * First I want to say that I'm no expert in the field, I just happened to investigate a little and gathered some knowledge about this matter, but it's very probable that I make mistakes and say things that are not accurate or entirely true. Always check for yourselves. The way weapons and replicas are handled in USA, Europe and even among different European countries varies greatly. First of all, we have to make a difference between civilian weapons and military weapons. Self-defense pistols, guns and hunting rifles are usually civilian weapons. Submachine-guns, machine-guns, and automatic rifles are usually military weapons. We also have to make a difference between owning a weapon and carrying a weapon. I believe that in the USA owning and carrying (in some states) a weapon is usually allowed if you have the corresponding licence. In Europe civilians are usually not allowed to carry weapons, that privilege is only given to the police force, armed forces, etc. You can own it, transport it (in a case or suitable container,) use it in a firing range, but not in the street. Though I've seen pictures of people with military weapons in the USA I'm not sure if civilians are really allowed to own working military weapons (maybe depending on state? our American friends may enlighten me here,) but in Europe owning working military weapons is strictly forbidden. Again, you are not allowed to own, even less carry, a working military weapon in Europe. There may be exceptions, but as a general rule, is forbidden. But in Europe you are allowed to own militar replicas or deactivated militar weapons as long as you are a collector and have the appropiate deactivation certificate (in the case of deacs.) But you are not allowed to carry replicas. You can have it in your house, but not to carry it with you. In the USA you are allowed to carry replicas as long as: it has a clear "toy" color scheme (blue, white, red, orange plastic replicas for example) and/or has a fixed (non-removable) bright orange tip with a minimum size. This is only a USA directive. The bright orange tip is not a European directive and (while reasonable) authorities are not obliged to comply with it. Now, anything that does clearly not look like a gun and is in fact a toy may be classified as a toy in Europe and not a replica (like a white Kenner blaster, for example.) It's impossible (or at least very difficult) to confuse what is clearly a toy with a real gun, so there's no problem there. (I wonder why criminals don't spray paint their guns white, bright blue or orange, for example...) Now, the problem here is that we are calling the E-11 blaster a "replica" while it should be better called a "prop". I mean, it's not a replica of a Sterling Mk-4, it's a movie prop. While it's similar to a sub-machine gun in a way, its greeblies indicate clearly that it's not a firing gun, in the same way an orange tip or and odd color scheme indicates that a replica is not a firing gun. The question here is that authorities want to avoid possible accidents. They want police to clearly know if you're a threat or not. If your prop or replica looks like a real gun how do they know if you're a criminal or not? It's not so uncommon for these kinds of accidents to happen. That's why replicas are usually not allowed. But as a legion member, most of your missions will be planned and not improvised. So maybe when you have to, let's say, parade with your props you can talk to the police and warn them of the garrison's activities. Maybe even you can ask them to check the props beforehand so they can be sure that those are props and not real weapons (or deacs, that would requiere a certificate.) I think it's clear that a guy in a white armor with a weird looking gun is not a criminal But talking to the police beforehand is not a bad practice. So, make them clear that this is a movie prop and not a replica. A replica is an object that looks exactly like a real weapon. The blaster is an object that looks exactly like a movie prop. So I think it not quite the same thing. But again, safety first. And talking to the local police might solve things... sometimes. Cheers.