fragarock's RS Stunt build - Not to scale

[Chopper857[TK]]

Congratulations Trooper

[Gwithian]

Congratulations Frank , all your hard work has paid off

 

 

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[Mworm1974[TK]]

Hi Frank,<br><br>

Your build is awesome to follow, I have picked up a lot from it including Christine's and Diana's. <br><br>

Just wanted to know did you have enough of the RS spare ABS to do the inner cover strips or did you end up with nothing left over.<br><br>

I have just started my RS build and I received the same spare ABS that you did.<br><br>

I am ordering some extra stuff from RS and if there isn't enough of the ABS that I received already I will order some from them so it's the small colour even though it will be out of sight.<br><br>

Also where did you get the hockey mask repair kit from.<br><br>

Matt

[fragarock[TK]]

Hi Frank,<br><br>

Your build is awesome to follow, I have picked up a lot from it including Christine's and Diana's. <br><br>

Just wanted to know did you have enough of the RS spare ABS to do the inner cover strips or did you end up with nothing left over.<br><br>

I have just started my RS build and I received the same spare ABS that you did.<br><br>

I am ordering some extra stuff from RS and if there isn't enough of the ABS that I received already I will order some from them so it's the small colour even though it will be out of sight.<br><br>

Also where did you get the hockey mask repair kit from.<br><br>

Matt

Hi Matt,

 

I didn't use the ABS sheets from RS to do my inner cover strips. You won't have enough if you try this. I ordered some extra ABS sheets from Amazon. They were white, 12"x24" 0.60" thick from "Sibe Automation". One side is smooth, the other textured which is OK since they're hidden plus the textured side was good for gripping the glue. I got (2) sheets for around $16.

 

I got the hockey repair kit from Amazon as well. it was called A&R Sports Helmet Hardware Kit. Cost around $8.

 

Good luck on your build!

[RebelBassPlayer]

Congratulations on your approval.  I've been following your build, along with Cricket's since I am on the vertically challenged size myself.  Now I'm inspired to get building on my kit, which has been sitting to the side for about half a year.

[fragarock[TK]]

Off to my first troop today with the Great Lakes Garrison at the Motor City Comicon. I'm so excited! Luckily the giant armor bin I bought just fits in the back of the car.....whoooh.

 

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[Cricket[TK]]

Woo hoo!!!!  You're gonna have a blast (even if you can't hit much with that blaster...).  Looking forward to reading your troop log!

[fragarock[TK]]

Hi Troopers, I'm back!

 

It's been several weeks away from the boards due to serious deadlines at work, kids soccer, tennis, and tee ball practice and occasional sleep. So last time I had received my TK number and my EIB approval. Along with the EIB approval came some suggestions for my Centurion approval which will be coming some time in the future. I definately plan on making the Centurion application but it will be a little ways off because I'm pretty busy now, especially with the weather getting warmer. Lots of yard work to do!

 

I did take some time to fix a few things that were bothering me and start some of the simpler corrections for Centurion. When I first put on the whole kit for my submission photos I was swimming in my helmet. I had placed padding in the top but because of the way the bottom of the helmet sits directly on the chest piece it was pushing it way up. I could see out of the eye holes fairly well but when I turned my head, the helmet stayed put. I also realized I needed to cut down some of the bolt heads around the neck which were scratching me when I put on the lid.

 

To fix the head turning problem I bought a hard hat liner. In case you don't know what his is, it's a plastic ring that is adjustable to clamp around your head to make a tight fit. I figured this would secure around my head and because of the way it has to mount, it would be down far enough from the top of the helmet to actually reach my head.

 

Here it is. The gray padding piece goes in the front.

 

Here's the top. The (4) metal tabs normally clip into the hard hat. To mount them to my bucket I cut some ABS tabs, glued them to the helmet tabs, then positioned the whole thing inside my bucket and glued it down with E6000 and some magnets.

 

 

 

 

Here's the placement in the bucket.

 

You'll notice I lined much of the bucket with industrial Velcro. This is how I positioned my electronics. I moved some of these pieces around for a better fit. I have a monstrous USB battery that I packed into the left hovi-mic area. I placed my cooling fans up high to blow on my lenses which keeps them from fogging up. I also took several people's advice and ditched the push-to-talk button and went with a wireless USB receiver for my microphone.

 

 

Another suggestion from EIB was to bring the shoulder bells in a bit closer to the chest. Previously I had already shortened the black elastic that connects to the shoulder bridges so to make further adjustments I trimmed down the return edges at the bottom of the bells.

 

 

The other tweak was to the ab button panel. This was something I had never read about before. Originally I aligned the raised center edge of the button panel with the centerline of the ab ridge (above the panel). The correct way is to align the ridge of the button panel with the side of the ab ridge. The picture explains it better. I pried this off with a screwdriver and cleaned off the E6000 residue. Then trimmed down the edge around the buttons and glued it back in place. I was going to trim the edges on the smaller button plate but couldn't get it off without cracking it so it's gonna have to be good enough.

 

 

There are some other fixes I have to make for my Centurion application but the ones above were pretty simple and got me ready for my first troop which was last week. This was with the Great Lakes Garrison and we partnered with the Great Lakes Base of the Rebel Legion. This was a three day event but I was only there for the first day which I'm told was a good idea as it was the calmest day. Saturday was supposed to have 20,000 people in attendance. Yikes!

I'll post a Tour of Duty thread but here are a few pics of that day. All around I had a blast and met super nice people in the Great Lakes Garrison and other fans at the Comicon.

 

 

[Gwithian]

Your costume is looking great Frank and I like what you have done in your bucket, oh and thanks fir the tip re the ab buttons

 

One question if I may, are the right and left greaves on the RS armour the same? Or have they given me two sane greaves by mistake?

 

 

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[fragarock[TK]]

Your costume is looking great Frank and I like what you have done in your bucket, oh and thanks fir the tip re the ab buttons

 

One question if I may, are the right and left greaves on the RS armour the same? Or have they given me two sane greaves by mistake?

 

 

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Correct, they are the same. I think the RS suit only had one so they just duplicated it.

 

 

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[Gwithian]

Thanks Frank

 

 

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[fragarock[TK]]

Hi Guys,

 

It's been a few weeks of summer time activities and actual work....boo! This week I had a few extra hours on my hands with since my son has been staying with Grandma all week. Kids summer vacation does have its advantages.

So I figured I'd make the necessary fixes to my kit for Centurion application as well as repair a few areas from my first troop.

 

The next thing I tackled had me worried because I'd already taken this left side connection apart at least three times already. The comments I got during EI were to tighten up this connection. This was a fair comment as their was too much gap at this joint. To make sure this joint wouldn't open up even a little I decided to use 2" wide nylon webbing that doesn't stretch rather than the original elastic. I pried apart the split rivets with some needle nose plyers and scrapped all the old hardware. Then I cut the new nylon strips and installed new rivets (thanks Trooperbay). This was much easier than the other times when I had to cut the rivets off. The whole process only took about an hour. I also discovered my new favorite rivet tool, a crowbar! This is a small one but works perfect for getting into tight areas like inside the shinn when I reworked the ammo pack.

 

 

 

 

Next up was trimming down the edges top and below the boxes on the shinn ammo pack. I removed the rivets and sanded the edges down on my belt sander then reinstalled with new rivets. Easy-peasy.

 

Here's the original.

 

Here's the trimmed.

 

Original

 

Trimmed.

 

 

And don't forget to paint the new rivet heads white again. I won't bore you with photos of that.

 

My kit took some damage after my troop which I didn't realize until a couple weeks later when I pulled the pieces out of the bin. Some of my magnet on my shinn closures had come in-glued and joined up with their magnet buddies on the other side of the shinn. Originally I used CA glue on these which may have been the problem. I reset them into their proper places and re glued them. if they come apart again I'll try the E6000. Other than this glitch they performed perfectly during the troop.

 

I also had to repair the shoulder bell snaps. The threading started to come loose. This was the original threading from RS. I reattached this, sewing the hell out of it, hoping it will hold up a bit better. Pretty easy fix, just takes more time than you think. At least it did for me. Here are before and after shots.

 

 

That's it for tonight. I'll have to re-take some photos for my Centurion application this weekend to get that process started. I'm also going to try and re-organize this build thread with links at the beginning to make it easier for folks to navigate to specific areas.....similar to what Tony did on his Anovos build but much less impressive. Thanks to Christine for showing me how to do the links. Fingers crossed that I don't screw it up.

 

Take care!

[Gwithian]

Good luck with your centurion application Frank and thanks again for all the tips

 

 

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[68Brick[TK]]

Good Job on the repairs!

[Gwithian]

Thanks for the index younplaced in your first post, it's made navigating your thread so easy, just been reading up on your magnetic closures, that she my next job Hopefully it will work

[fragarock[TK]]

So I've been doing a little trooping and contemplating a new costume build, maybe a scout. Not sure yet but in my ever expanding need to get more Star Wars references I just got the Star Wars Costumes book which has the major costumes from the OT. It's really an amazing book. I was stunned by the incredible detail, color and texture that all the costumes have. The movies really don't capture the quality of these pieces. It's also has a bit of history on the costume makers and variations over the three movies. Here are a few images for your viewing pleasure.

 

 

Below is one of the Hero helmets from ANH.

 

Here's the Luke torso from ANH.

 

Here's the ESB storm trooper. Note the lack of exposed screws on the ears and the painted frown.

 

Here's the ROTJ suit.

 

 

Here are the ANH vs ROTJ helmets. ANH is on the left and Looks so much better than the others.

 

 

And for you Rebels out there, some sweet pictures of various helmets. The detail and weathering is incredible.

 

 

Finally here's a group shot from the Detroit Maker Faire last weekend. I'm the short guy in the back row to the left of the sandy....literally can only see part of my head. This was an awesome event. I went to this event last year and it's what inspired me to do my build. So glad to be part of this great community of people. Photo by Shawn M. Scott.