bobojuice

I think rubies now has competition for "ugliest armor"

I've found that the best way to keep from fogging is to put a pair of fans behind the frown pulling from the inside and pushing out. No other combination of placement for me has worked so far. For this I use a set of cheap cpu fans I get at compusa. I wire them in a series with 8AA batteries that I place inside the tube area. This allows my fans to run for MONTHS before I even need to think about replacing the batteries. Not to mention they're nowhere near 30db. I would say sticking 30db x 2 in your helmet is going to create quite a bit of noise. I stuck a hard drive cooling fan in my helmet once and it was so freaking loud I couldn't hear anyone! Here's a couple of pics of the fans I use. They're a bit large for the inside of the mouth, but they blow so much air I've had no problems whatsoever with fogging. I think they're 60mm x 10mm. I'll have to check. --------

Very cool. Thanks for sharing!

That belt piece doesn't show up when you put your armor on?

As much of the details as you can throw in there would be nice.

Can you post some more detailed pics of this? I have a whole garter/suspender thing going on, but honestly it kills my back so I'm probably gonna go with the OG way.

How you set it up is up to you. On my old suit, all I had was a bit of velcro to keep the belt in place.

http://forum.whitearmor.net/index.php?showtopic=18291

These:------------ In a size small fit Olga very well. I would think Isotoners would be too hot.

Armor looks loose on her. Possibly borrowed? (minus chest and cod obviously)

Sign me up!

For Olga's centurion we took a set of small/medium dish washing gloves and painted them with plastidip. I will say though that the plastidip will come off fairly easily, so those gloves are only for show. She troops with a normal set of nomex gloves.

Setting tool and anvil works the best for me. I use it on a vise mounted to my workbench.

Nuts.

^ that is exactly what i was going to say.

Thanks for the positive feedback. If you guys want any more tips or if you feel like I'm missing anything please let me know. I'll also say that if anyone has tips or pictures or anything they want to add, I'll put them in as well.

Thanks guys. Posts have been updated with some info. I'll be getting to the meat and potatoes later (forearms & ab plate).

Any update on this?

Awesome! Those idols ain't half bad either. Wish I could come up with the scratch for one.

Yep.

Moving my later post up here for better visibility.

We went through 2 sets of Kidney and Butt plates before we got this right. Originally I had figured we would need to cut the kidney down to fit her small frame. This gave us two problems. The first is that the kidney now did not have two return edges which helped line up the but and back plates without overlapping. The second was that in actuality Olga's shape pushed out the butt plate so much that we needed the extra material to fit right. You can see on the pics above at how the armor looks misaligned. Once we put it on, it lines up perfectly. Note that these parts will also probably need to be heated and bent into shape. The butt plate was also trial and error. We found that cutting the but plate to the exact measurements of the kidney plate actually made the butt plate too small and it didn't line up in the end. I would suggest marking and cutting these as you go that way you can avoid having to order more armor pieces like I did. To cut the shape we simply measured out the amount of material we had to trim and I drew a new shape freehand to line up with the original shape. Note that both sides of the butt plate are not the same. Here you got some comparison shots of how much material was taken off.

First part that needed to be modified was the Ab and Kidney and Butt plates. We went through some trial and error on this part, as we really had to trim a lot of material off both sides. Note that just trimming the armor was not enough. With trimming so much the parts become almost flat. This had to be remedied by carefully heating each piece and bending it. This took a LONG time to get it right. I will say that you need to be EXTREMELY careful using heat to bend these parts. If you're impatient you will ruin them and need to order new ones. Take your time and ALWAYS wear safety equipment. For some smaller ladies there may be a need to cut the kidney plate down. Originally we cut the kidney plate but found that as long as we lined everything up it adjusted itself to her size. Note the cut I did to the kidney plate. I did this after seeing some of TM's armors. ATA's kidney plate does not come with this feature.

There's been an influx of ladies wishing to join the ranks of the white armored. Seeing this and offering help a few people suggested I post a bit about how I modified Olga's (TK-9061) armor to her small frame to get her to Centurion status. I don't have very many pics of the during phase of construction as I was keeping it a secret from my squad mates, but I do have some. I will also be posting side by side comparison shots of my armor and hers (I'm 6'0 and she's 5'4). Both sets of armor are ATA. I'll also leave this thread open to any questions that anyone may have. I would like to recommend when doing extensive modifications like this that you take your time and measure, measure, measure! Last thing you want to do is ruin a piece and have to order new armor. The following is a list of what was modified and what was left alone, to give you an idea of what WE did. It might be different for your build. 1. Helmet - Unmodified 2. Biceps - Made a bit smaller by a bit more trimming. Not extensive mods. 3. Shoulders - Unmodified 4. Chest - Unmodified (mounted lower than usual) 5. Kidney - Sides were trimmed to fit smaller waist line then heated to retain curve. 6. Back Plate - Unmodified (this is the one piece I wish I could have fixed. It looks quite large on women) 7. Butt plate - Trimmed size 8. Ab plate - Cut and trimmed then remounted 9. Forearms - Return edge completely taken off and recreated 10. Hand plates - Unmodified 11. Thighs - Slightly smaller but otherwise no mods. 12. Shins - Unmodified 13. Shoulder straps - Unmodified 14. Belt armor - Unmodified Torso Comparison Here you can see just how much smaller the torso is for her. Sides Comparison Here you can see just how much was trimmed off of her sides to get it to fit around her. Ab Plate/Cod Comparison Unfortunately I had to glue my belt snaps since they were off by a hair and kept popping off, but you can still see where I modified this section to make the torso shorter. Forearm Front Comparsion Here you can see how I shortened the forearms for her. They were much too long for her small arms. Forearm Rear Comparison Forearm Top Comparsion Here you can see that Olga's forearms are smaller. I'll try and get another shot of them, but they are MUCH smaller. I cant even get my hands in hers. Forearm Front Comparison Here you can get a better idea of just how much smaller her forearms were. These were probably the hardest things to modify in the entire suit. I'll get to that later.

When can we expect this in kit form?