Sha Sha's (Slow) KB FOTK Build for Short Troopers

[shashachu[TK]]

I'm beginning to see why the FOTK forearms seem to be the bane of everyone's build. The 4-part KB forearms just don't have much gluing surface to hold everything together, and the fact that I've sized them down probably doesn't help.

 

I was kind of able to glue the elbow side of the flat inner forearm piece to the rails (which are not flat so really don't provide that much contact surface for glue), but the wrist side (the box) just had nothing to adhere to. So I ended up making little gluing brackets out of scrap ABS to try to hold everything together:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Would you believe this single forearm took me 3 hours? :'( And it's still full of gaps. I'm hoping that the filler with help hold things together some.

 

One detail that I left out was that I've decided to do my build with E6000. It might be something I'm kicking myself over later, but it's just the adhesive that I'm most comfortable with, and with the amount of disassembling and reassembling I've already done, I just don't see this build working for me with a more permanent adhesive.

Edited October 7, 2018 by shashachu

[gmrhodes13[Staff]]

Nice fix with the brackets.

 

E6000 is great on areas that need to flex but for anywhere that will require bondo I like to use JB Weld as it can be sanded but does not move.

 

Coming along nicely, keep it up.

[shashachu[TK]]

Took the clamps and magnets off the forearm this morning and it looks...okay? Haha. It's pretty wonky. I think it should be okay but it'll need a lot of filler and sanding.

 

 

 

 

 

[lucnak[TK]]

Nice idea with the brackets!

[shashachu[TK]]

1 hour ago, lucnak said:

Nice idea with the brackets!

I have no idea how it's supposed to be glued down...or do most people leave that area unglued?  My hands are small enough to glue the whole thing. Or is it easier if you use a stronger adhesive? Who knows!

[lucnak[TK]]

I built up an area of E6000 in layers to give more surface to glue to. I have 4-part and not 2-part forearms though.

[shashachu[TK]]

11 hours ago, lucnak said:

10 hours ago, lucnak said:

I built up an area of E6000 in layers to give more surface to glue to. I have 4-part and not 2-part forearms though.

 

I have the 4 part as well. I feel like I just did something slightly strangely. Oh well will probably work.

[lucnak[TK]]

Oh, my bad! I liek your solution! I found assembling these to be weird as well.

[shashachu[TK]]

Now that I have the right arm pieces assembled, I decided to try them on (with the proper gaskets and gloves as well.) I have to say that it doesn't look too bad in my opinion:

 

 

 

 

 

And a test to see if I can touch my helmet

 

Here's a side by side of now vs my initial fitting. I'm pretty happy with how I've managed to size things down, although the bicep is still pretty big:

 

I also started work on the left arm pieces:

 

 

Edited October 20, 2018 by shashachu

[gmrhodes13[Staff]]

Looking good, the gaskets do take up some of the room  

[Soulart[TK]]

Looking good ShaSha


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[shashachu[TK]]

A bit more progress.

 

Finished assembling the left forearm. It went a bit more smoothly than the right, but still had to do weird brackets. I'll likely need to add more, or I might use a bit of milliput to fill some of the seams and help hold things together. 

 

 

 

 

With all arm pieces together, I tried the arms on with the shoulder gaskets. It was all right, but I think I'll need to take in the shoulder gasket a bit, because my bicep piece circumference is pretty small.

 

 

And a shoulder bell for good measure:

 

Moving along, I decided to go ahead and assemble the back and yoke. (Forgot to take many photos.) It actually wasn't as bad as people had made it out to be. I'll definitely have to do some heavy seam/gap filling, but overall it was relatively straightforward. I started by gluing the yoke to the connector piece, let that dry overnight, then glued everything to the back.

 

 

I know the chest/yoke/back is going to be one of the most challenging parts of the build because it is just *so* big. KB claims it's meant for average sized people, but it's really quite barrel chested. 

 

The first thing I did is trim off a bunch of excess material from the...wings? I don't know what they're called:

 

Next up, a *lot* of heat bending with my trusty heat gun. My goal was to wrap the wings more tightly around me, and greatly reduce the width of the back and chest. As with my TK, I set the heat gun around 450F-500F and slowly heated up the areas I wanted to bend. When the ABS just starts to lose it's springiness, I'd turn off the heat gun. Incidentally, the KB kit is much thinner than my WTF original TK, so I had to be careful not to overheat.

 

Back before:

 

Back after:

 

No individual photos of the chest, but here's everything on me:

 

This whole build has been kind of a rollercoaster for me - I flip flop between feeling really encouraged and being totally convinced it's impossible to fit this kit to someone my size, especially with how tough my GML is. For now I'll soldier on.

Edited November 3, 2018 by shashachu

[ukswrath[Staff]]

You can do it Sha Sha. Your size should NOT! be a factor at BASIC! 501st approval if built relatively close to what a movie trooper would look like. L2 and L3 are for the higher details and the more accurate looking applicants, and even those people can make it happen with some work. Don't let over scrutinuzing stop you from your dream. Remember this is about basic entry costume approval, NOT screen accuracy. 

[Frank75139[501st]]

Wow this looks really good. The work your putting into this should make you proud, it’s true dedication. Your gonna get approval with no issues at all.


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[shashachu[TK]]

Thanks for the encouragement, everyone!

[lucnak[TK]]

Wow I'm impressed at your reshaping that back! It's even big for me and I'm definitely bigger than you! Though you will have an ab and TD to fit under the chest/back. I find I have a lot of extra room on the sides but less so on the front/back of my FOTI.

[TheSwede[TK]]

It might be hard work but it looks great - no GML should have a problem so far

 

Just a thought - looking at your shoulder bells they seem bigger then the ones I got and also they have a straight cut at the ”ends” where as ”mine” and Anovos are rounded, although I’m much bigger I still think KB made new and smaller bells, we talked about it briefly on my thread, Point beeing that maybe they need to be trimmed down/remodeled some

Of you know someone with an Anovos kit you could just trace that shape onto the bell and with some sanding make it look like there’s a little return there

[shashachu[TK]]

10 hours ago, lucnak said:

Wow I'm impressed at your reshaping that back! It's even big for me and I'm definitely bigger than you! Though you will have an ab and TD to fit under the chest/back. I find I have a lot of extra room on the sides but less so on the front/back of my FOTI.

Thanks! Tbh I kind of forgot about the TD until I was looking at someone else's build the other day... But yes it's primarily the width I'm worried about. 

[shashachu[TK]]

5 hours ago, TheSwede said:

It might be hard work but it looks great - no GML should have a problem so far

 

Just a thought - looking at your shoulder bells they seem bigger then the ones I got and also they have a straight cut at the ”ends” where as ”mine” and Anovos are rounded, although I’m much bigger I still think KB made new and smaller bells, we talked about it briefly on my thread, Point beeing that maybe they need to be trimmed down/remodeled some

Of you know someone with an Anovos kit you could just trace that shape onto the bell and with some sanding make it look like there’s a little return there

That's a good thought - I hadn't really noticed the difference in shape, but looking at the CRL image, the shoulder bells do seem rounder. I'll probably give that a go - they are definitely large on me.

[shashachu[TK]]

Ahem. tap tap tap... Is this thing on?

 

Ummm... well it's 2025 now and I still haven't finished this costume, but I have had fits and bursts of activity on it as I go through the rollercoaster of highs of "I can do this!" and lows of "THIS COSTUME CANNOT BE MADE TO FIT SMALL PEOPLE." Most recently, I got re-inspired by @zediyeti's incredible 3D printed build. I acquired a Bambu X1C last year and actually did already start working on 3D printing some of the parts to fit me, so it was really inspiring to see Zediyeti's completely 3D printed and incredible-looking build. I'm going to go ahead and try to recap my periods of progress over the past almost-7 years.

[shashachu[TK]]

In early 2019 I was feeling pretty discouraged by the huge size of the chest and back, so I decided to do some work on the rest of the armor. I started with the ab. It's a pretty standard construction, where I cut the front and back pieces down to size, added an inner cover strip, and glued them together. I'm actually small enough that I can slip it on and off without splitting the back at all. I think I will eventually split it and just add some elastic between the halves to make it slightly easier to get on and off.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Like other folks, I used a small triangle of ABS to fill the ab squares on the edge.

 

 

Edited July 27, 2025 by shashachu

[shashachu[TK]]

The thighs were fairly standard as well. Just cut to size, and glue. I cut the overlap in a curve to try to match references.

 

You can see by how much material I cut off how much I had to size them down.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Edited July 27, 2025 by shashachu

[shashachu[TK]]

Sometime in 2019 I also acquired an 850 Armor Works kit during a super sale, hoping it would be smaller. Unfortunately 1) it wasn't that much smaller and 2) the quality of the pulls was really not great. The plastic was extremely thin, and had a bunch of orange peeling and weird deformation.

 

 

 

You can see the back is significantly smaller than KB:

 

 

But still quite oversized on me:

 

 

 

 

[shashachu[TK]]

Out of frustration, I put the build down for about 4 years, until after I got a 3D printer and I realized I might be able to 3D print some pieces of armor. I actually bought 2 sets of files, this one from Etsy and this one from CGTrader.

 

Edit: I think the chest is from CGTrader and the back is from the Etsy files. I wish I took better notes. :)

 

I also decided on PETG for heat resistance.

 

I scaled the back and chest down (I can't remember how much; I think it's at 90% scale) and did a few test prints:

 

Two different sizes. Left is 100%, right is 90%.

 

 

A partial print:

 

 

A comparison of the KB back and the 3D printed back:

 

 

Test prints of the back and chest:

 

 

The final back:

 

 

The final chest. It turns out zip kicker yellows PETG. Who knew!

 

 

The fun thing about 3D printing is that you can also modify the files before printing. I don't actually know how to use any modeling software, so I did everything in the slicer. Some simple mods were:

 

Cutting slots in the yoke, and I also shortened it so I could better fit my arms through (not shown in this pic).

 

 

Lowering the neck of the chest, and slightly shortening the tips:

 

 

Lengthening the 'wings' of the chest so they overlap the back more:

 

 

Here's the result of that. I'll fill the extra square:

 

 

I printed the yoke so that it will flex with the layer lines, but with the back being in 4 pieces, I'm worried about the flex, so I backed the seams with some extra ABS:

 

 

 

Here's a sizing check. Some tweaks for comfort and fit, but I was much happier with the size:

 

 

A comparison of the KB chest on the left and the printed chest on the right. You'll notice that the smaller chest reveals a new problem, which is that now the helmet looks too big...

 

 

Edited July 27, 2025 by shashachu

[gmrhodes13[Staff]]

Great to see you back at this, looking forward to seeing the progress