Tee-Bowls' CAP-W ANH Stunt build (aiming for Centurion)

[Comfy Turtle]

love your build so far, is that just regular painters masking tape? i have a new helmet i plan to plasti-dip and last time my masking tape leaked into the teeth even with multiple layers

 

as for your faceplate paint. Mineral Spirits?

[Khazid[TK]]

The crackling you are getting is the accelerrant in the paint. Temperature, humidity and how long you shake the can prior to spraying all come into play. Sadly, once you get this the only way to fix it is sand down the affected area and repaint.<br>

I would suggest a test spray to determine what is going to work, including distance from the piece, before applying more to your actual armor.

[68Brick[TK]]

Hey Tyler, I'd recommend hand sanding all of your edges prior to painting. Your edges are looking a little rough. Your kit will look a ton better with cleaner edges. Just a suggestion.

 

And yes, as Khazid said, you'll have to sand down the crackling paint areas. De-grease. and possibly even prime for better adhesion.

[Tee-Bowls[501st]]

Thanks guys, I'm going to be sanding off the old paint and my edges.

 

Adam, I did the Plasti-Dip first because I figured I could peel of the excess from the front and it wouldn't matter if the white paint spilled inside. I did multiple layers of painter's tape.

 

I've been sick the past few days so no major work was accomplished.

 

Although I did get the dry pieces of the Thermal Detonator put together.

 

Here are the end caps stuck onto the pipe.

 

 

The plate.

 

 

The awesome TD clips from EvilBoy. The non-bent clips.

 

 

Are the clips close enough to the end caps?

 

 

Here it is all put together. I haven't drilled the holes for the screws in case my clips are in the wrong spots.

 

 

So that's all there is for this update. Hope everybody had a good Halloween! Time to get over this cold and get back to work! 

[ukswrath[Staff]]

Hey Tyler you might want to thin out those caps a bit. Looking good trooper

 

Here's a reference pic

 

[Tee-Bowls[501st]]

Thanks for catching the end caps!

 

I trimmed them down and at the same time evened them up to give it an overall cleaner look. 

 

 

My only issue is I had sanded the pipe down for the original length of the end caps but now that is exposed.

 

Is this an issue? I would rather fix my existing pipe before having to get a new one.

[ukswrath[Staff]]

   may I suggest either using some bondo or other body filler to coat the ground areas then sand and repaint.   

[Tee-Bowls[501st]]

Well the time came to remove the old paint and thanks to some great ideas I decided to go with Easy-Off Oven Spray to remove the old paint.

 

 

I read on a model car forum that sealing the pieces up would help remove the paint.

So far the larger pieces I found these 2.5 gallon bags.

 

 

So the first pieces to be sprayed were my ears.

Here is a test of a smaller bag.

 

 

The first up was the Cap and Back.

 

 

Then the Face-Plate.

 

 

The Ears.

 

 

The Shoulder Bells.

 

 

The Biceps.

 

 

The Forearms.

 

 

I also went out and got a new pipe for the TD and I cut it tonight. At least this one is gray from the beginning.

 

 

Hopefully thing will start to work and I can get some pieces finished! 

[68Brick[TK]]

How did the EasyOff work? I've never heard or attempted that before, but I'm interested in the results! Pics!!!

[Tee-Bowls[501st]]

Well it has been way too long an armor hiatus for me. The Easy-Off works when it wants too and it's quite a time consuming process. I still have to sand it off and trying to remove the paint without damaging anything. I've finished the ears and they are ready to be repainted.

 

 

I also ground down my new TD pipe to fit the smaller end caps better.

 

 

 

 

The Easy-Off sticks to the paint and if it works the paint becomes slightly gummy and easier to scrape off.

Here's an Example of it with a shoulder bell.

 

 

The darker sections on this shoulder bell is paint that still needs to be removed.

 

 

This is the other shoulder bell that is ready for paint.

 

 

Now these pieces came out decent from the beginning so no sanding is needed.

 

The shoulder straps that I'm going to sand down a bit to be more even.

 

 

The Butt piece.

 

 

The Chest.

 

 

The last painted piece the Back.

 

 

Now I did repaint the TD pipe completely gray to remove the bar-codes and give it a cleaner look.

 

 

Here is just the TD plate and end caps.

 

 

A test placement of the clips. I know they are suppose to have little to no gap between the clips and the end caps so I think this looks good. ignore the plate, it moved when I was attaching the clips and it isn't glued on yet.

 

 

An underside shot of the clips.

 

 

I couldn't really find anything about the screws to attach the clips so I found these at Lowes and figured they would be ok.

 

 

A top shot of how the screw fits into the clip.

 

 

A side shot of how the screw head sits in the clip.

 

 

I'm still unsure about the screws and the placement of the clips but if both are alright I'll go ahead and finish off the TD completely.

 

It feels good to get back to work after the holidays and things are progressing slowly but rushing is how I ended up with the paint issues.

 

As always thanks for reading and any helpful comments are appreciated!

[ukswrath[Staff]]

Looking good Tyler 

 

May I encourage you to use slotted pan head screws like these seen here used on the actual movie prop.

 

[Tee-Bowls[501st]]

I found some pan slotted head screws on amazon and go them in the mail today.

 

The screws are plastic instead of metal as well.

 

 

 They look a lot better from the front than the old screws did.

 

 

Last but not least the side shot of the screws.

 

 

If these screws work better I'll glue the plate on and attach the clips right up against the end clips like so.

 

 

 

Hopefully finishing of the TD will give me the confidence to get some of the torso pieces finished.

[justjoseph63[Staff]]

Great job so far, Tyler!  I would definitely think about smoothing/evening out all of the edges on your TD caps/plate, shoulder bridges, biceps, etc. before painting again.  The tool I found best for this is a half-round file.  The curved side is great for, well, curved parts, and the flat side works awesome on flat edges.  Just take off a little at a time until they are even/smooth.  I followed this up with a sanding sponge for final smoothing, and it worked out well.  For the TD caps, like Airborne Trooper (Jason) mentioned, you can lay a piece of sandpaper on a flat surface to even out the edges,, and this should work well with the shoulder straps as well, (you can take the edge almost all the way to the bumps).  

[68Brick[TK]]

Or tape some sanding paper on a board and sand away. I agree, sand those edges! It will look a ton better.

[Tee-Bowls[501st]]

Well I was in the middle of sanding the face-plate last night when my hand slipped and I ended up puncturing the area behind the mic tips on the left hand side looking at the helmet.

 

Here's a close up of the damage.

 

 

And it from behind.

 

 

A far away shot and some process on the vocoder.

 

 

A shot of the sanded portion against the old paint.

 

 

I might be able to fix it. I know it'll be covered up but I don't want to lose a mic tip.

 

I've been working on sanding my edges down and it seems to be working out. I'll post pictures of that soon.

[Tee-Bowls[501st]]

So even with the accidental hole punch I decided to get back to sanding parts down and I have to say things look much better now that they have been sanded.

 

Here's a shot of the TD plate and end caps sanded.

 

 

Trying to figure out the best location for the plate and this is what I came up with.

 

 

After being content with the location of everything I decided it was time to drill some hole for the screws!

All the screws from the bottom.

 

 

The clips attached from the front.

 

 

Now for the bad news during my drilling one of the clips moved a tiny bit. It created a small gap between the bottom of the plate and the top of the clip.

 

The Gap.

 

 

No Gap.

 

 

Should I re-drill the holes and move the clips or is the gap small enough nobody is going to notice? Nothing is glued down yet so it can always be adjusted. I also contacted Scootch about replacing my arms and parts of the helmet, the Easy-Off oven spray was working great but it takes forever and their are still pieces I've haven't gotten too.

 

Thanks for checking this thread out. Any and all help is greatly appreciated.

[ukswrath[Staff]]

 

Should I re-drill the holes and move the clips or is the gap small enough nobody is going to notice? Nothing is glued down yet so it can always be adjusted. I also contacted Scootch about replacing my arms and parts of the helmet, the Easy-Off oven spray was working great but it takes forever and their are still pieces I've haven't gotten too.

 

Thanks for checking this thread out. Any and all help is greatly appreciated.

 

You're fired! 

 

Seriously, you're cool Tyler. Don't sweat the mm. I do have to say though the pan head screws are gigantic. They should be quite a bit smaller

 

Here's a reference pic.

[Tee-Bowls[501st]]

So I think i went a little screw crazy at Lowes last night. I purchased 3 different types of smaller pan slotted screws. It's all I can really focus on at the moment so might as well go 100% into getting the TD made lol.  

 

I'll start with the smallest size of screw I purchased. I'm keeping the screws in the bag so I can take back the ones I don't need.

 

 

The medium screw head.

 

 

The largest screw head.

 

 

I'm going to be painting the screw heads black as well as drilling new holes for the smaller threads to fit and hopefully I'll line the clips up evenly .

[Tee-Bowls[501st]]

So I went ahead and added the longer of the slotted pan screws and realigned the clips.

 

 

Here's a front/top view of everything lined up.

 

 

I wanted to get started on the drop boxes so first up was trimming the inner boxes. I hope I didn't cut too much off.

 

 

Here's how one of the inner drop boxes fits from the back.

 

 

The drop box from the top.

 

 

I'm not sure how to fix the drop box without ruining the shape of it. Is there a rule on the depth of the drop boxes?

It seems very oddly shaped when looked at from the side.

 

 

I then needed to paint the new screws. It was pretty easy and I used the Humbrol paint for the helmet just to save some paint.

 

 

 

The two drop boxes from the back.

 

 

Drop boxes from the top.

 

 

I'm going to try and get a lot more work done this week. 

[lucnak[TK]]

Drop boxes should be 15mm deep. Looks like you still have some to shave off their from my guess.

[Airborne Trooper[501st]]

Use a belt sander or tape down some strips of sandpaper on a flat surface so you can get your drop boxes smooth and evenly trimmed. 

[Tee-Bowls[501st]]

I went back and measured the drop boxes and realized they were about 17 mm instead of 15. I also sanded them both down quite a bit but i may have gotten a bad pull or somthing because these boxes are just shaped weird and no amount of sanding/trimming has fixed them.

 

 

They look decent enough from the front but when looked at from the side they look off.

 

Here's one:

 

 

Here's the other:

 

 

One of them from the front:

 

 

I then turned my attention to the belt which I purchased from Rob/TKittell. 

 

Well my armor belt already has the rivet covers so I'm trying to figure out how to attach it to the canvas belt.

 

 

Here's a back shot of the belt if it helps.

 

 

This is the belt and I've got an idea of where to set the middle of the belt so I've got that going.

 

I'm thinking of adding snaps but I'm not sure if that would work probably work.

[Airborne Trooper[501st]]

That's weird to have the covers molded into the belt. I wonder if Chicago screws would be better to use instead of snaps. It would definitely stay put much better to the belt itself. You will still use snaps to attach it to the the ab plate. 

[Tee-Bowls[501st]]

Well I went to Lowes yesterday and picked up a few of these babies.

 

 

I figured I can place the screw posts on the inside of the rivet covers and then run the screw from the back of the belt in. I feel like that way I can get everything secured tight.

 

 

 

The screw post is quite a bit smaller than the rivet cover indent so I'm going to have to make sure everything is centered properly before i even attempt to make my holes through the canvas belt.

 

 

A top down view of what I'm planning to do. Of course I need to center everything and line it all up on the belt.

 

 

I do worry that the screw/screw posts are too long and will cause the screw to scratch my ab plate when i try to wear the belt. It's one of the main reasons I haven't excluded the idea of using snaps.

 

As a side view on the thickness of the belt along the armor with the screw in the correct indent.

 

 

I have plenty of snaps and I have the correct amount of screws if I decide to go one way or the other with this.

[Airborne Trooper[501st]]

Once you got it through the belt, put some tape or even a bead of E6000 and it won't scratch your ab plate.