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AM Thigh Re-Shaping.


gazmosis

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Hey Troopers!!

Armor master has made great strides in recent months to improve the look of their armor so more kits come EIB and Centurion ready out of the box. One thing that has bugged me about AM kits are the thighs. When cut and trimmed, the top of the thighs have a generous flat spot on top:post-12041-0-96170800-1441938848_thumb.jpg.  Now it wasn't until a fellow future Garrison mate, Chris Ward, asked me for assistance on his suit and when I found out he had AM thighs I rubbed my hand in anticipation begging him to have a crack at re-shaping them to look more accurate. Here is the inner left of an RS thigh. This is my goal.post-12041-0-02477700-1441939308_thumb.jpg

The first thing was to make sure I had enough thigh to play with. I just happened to have a set of RS Props on hand and placed one half on top of the AM thigh aligning the cover strip ridges. I made sure the bottom was matched and as you can see, there was plenty of room for adjustments at the top:post-12041-0-94203900-1441939102_thumb.jpg

After tracing the lines, this was the pattern I was going to follow. What I found was that the adjustments were only necessary in the front and sides. The trace pattern blended perfectly into the back.post-12041-0-56526800-1441939172_thumb.jpgpost-12041-0-22104800-1441940241_thumb.jpg

I trimmed out the pattern leaving about 1/2 inch (12MM) to use as return edge. I planned to fine tune the look later.

Now when it came to heating the plastic to create the return edges, the hobby iron was JUST TOO SLOW!!! You can't turn it up past 2 1/4 because it will melt the plastic on contact rather than heating it though. AM plastic is really sturdy stuff. I set my propane torch on the lowest flame possible and worked in 2 inch increments.post-12041-0-63064800-1441939851_thumb.jpg I heated both side evenly and the plastic will just become soft and not warp or melt out of shape! The other cool thing is that the plastic stays hot longer allowing you to mold it without too much waviness. Anyway, all went well and Chris now has much more accurate thighs. All pics are side by side with RS thighs.post-12041-0-54385000-1441940292_thumb.jpgpost-12041-0-29740300-1441940299_thumb.jpgpost-12041-0-90520200-1441940305_thumb.jpg

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  • 3 weeks later...

Excellent work, Steve! Have you ever thought of creating a template troopers could use to trace the trim lines if they wanted to reshape their thighs?

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Cool idea with the torch. A template would be a great idea. Man, yours look so much better than my old AM 1.0 thighs. I just had to eyeball them back in the day!-----------------

Edited by gmrhodes13
link not working, removed gmrhodes13 2020
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