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Re: TK advice

Posted: Tue Apr 19, 2011 2:35 pm
by Culvan
Ok, so the next question. Does anyone have good information on the screen used ANH holster. I can find a ton of information on what people have made, but I'm having trouble finding out what thickness of leather was used, was it chrome tanned or vegetable tanned? Were they pop rivets, hollow core or jiffy rivets?

I made one from the diagrams on whitearmor.net and it seems to small for my hasbro blaster. I thought I'd try for something a little nicer than the one I made out of stuff I had in my basement. If I'm going to go for accuracy I'd like to know what would be accurate.
the dark knight wrote:not to rain on your party andy, but i did have a set of AM armor. im 6' 2" and it fit me like a glove. anyone shorter, and it will require alot of trimming. personaly i would have gone with ATA's new ABS armor that is far more accurate and sadly, still around 100 bucks less than AM and comes with the helmet. sorry i made it here too late to help you out.
The extra trimming has me a little worried, but I'll give it a shot. There was a very big difference in lead time between the two. I'm hoping to have this done by early June and an extra 3-4 week delay could make that more difficult. I hope I don't regret going the faster route, althought I've heard that's the path to the dark side. My box should arrive on Friday (according to UPS).

Tyran wrote:Be sure to get a Droopy Doo's kit for the Hasbro blaster. I bought one and it works and looks great. I wasn't fortunate enough to get the kit after he added the the additional side rails, so thats one less thing you'll need:

http://cgi.ebay.com/STORMTROOPER-E11-HA ... 35b0e852f5

If you're trooping in the summer I highly recommend getting a fan or two. I use the squirrel cage fans on whitearmor and love it:

http://forum.whitearmor.net/index.php?showtopic=10211
I'm going to have to take some measurements of my Hasbro blaster. If it's too small I'll probably scratch build one that's a little closer to the right size. Since the blaster isn't part of the base requirements I'm pushing it out to "phase 2".

I've got some leftover fans I was going to use in my clone helmet, but I didn't need them because the conversion hasbro helmet has very good ventilation. My experience with the MRCE helmet leads me to believe that it will need fans.

Andy

Re: TK advice

Posted: Tue Apr 19, 2011 5:05 pm
by Tyran
I personally troop with an MRCE and yes, fans will be needed. It gets pretty stuffy in there, not to mention major fogging issues before I got the fans.

Re: TK advice

Posted: Tue Apr 26, 2011 10:50 pm
by Culvan
I got my kit and I'm starting in on it. I got a little too enthusiastic on my first piece (the right forearm) and trimmed it about a 1/4" narrower than is really comfortable. That's got me a little gun shy about the thighs and calves.

The thighs are huge. I know I have to trim for diameter, but they're so long I think they will interfere with my hip and my knee at the same time. I compared to my clone thighs and they are 2.5" longer. What's the best place to take out some material? The two that I've read about are behind the knee area and the top. Anyone have any experience trimming these for length? Can anyone impart any wisdom from their experience or suggest other good options I haven't found yet?

On the plus side, I've got the forearms and biceps done. I'm doing a lot more research than building at this point.

Andy

Re: TK advice

Posted: Wed Apr 27, 2011 5:07 pm
by Tyran
Troy and I had to take a LOT out of the top of the thighs on my AM armor. I'm about 5'-10" and we still had to take a good 2.5" out of the top. Yea you lose the returns but whats the point if you can't even bend your knees? Besides after trooping in the armor I think returns are overrated. All they do is dig into your skin and give you scrapes :)

When we first made them they were pretty big. Just before my last troop we split them in the back where we glued them and cut out a wedge that was about an inch wide at the bottom and tapered up narrower towards the top. This was to allow us to close it up tighter than before.

As always be sure to have plenty of tape (we used painters tape) to pre-assemble the pieces and try them on before doing any fine tuning cutting or gluing.

Oh another thing that I've recently noticed that I need to do - dremmel out the returns on the bicep piece to widen the throat. When the piece is constructed its actually kinda oval instead of round, so from my own experience I recommend taking a hair dryer to the plastic (once its assembled) and gradually widen the piece to a more circular shape. I can't remember who but someone at Planet Comicon suggested this to me.

Re: TK advice

Posted: Mon May 16, 2011 10:17 am
by Culvan
Anyone have any insight into making TK shoes? I've been pinging tkboots for over a month now and he doesn't have any in stock. He seems to believe that they will be in "any time now," but if they don't come in soon I won't have them in time for my next troop. I'm getting nervous about this.

I recently purchased the parts to remake my clone shoes. The soles are white (like ROTJ) and don't have a heel like the TK boots do. Still, I think I can use the parts to get it together. Might be worthwhile for a one time troop especially if I can remake them later into my clone shoes.

I checked the CRL and this is what I see:
White leather or leather-like, above ankle height, with a flat sole, and small U-shaped elastic sections on both sides of the ankle with no buckles or laces. Jodhpur-type boots or an equivalent style. Elvis or Mariachi boots are not acceptable.

For Centurion: There should be no seam on the front of the boot (e.g. CABoots are not allowed).
Boots should be lightly scuffed.

Thanks for the advice, Tyran. I'd like to put the returns on it, but all may practice hasn't worked out to well. I'm definately going to have to cut. Hopefully I can figure out the returns on the thighs. I'm hesitating right now to give myself a chance to read some more.

Andy

Re: TK advice

Posted: Mon May 16, 2011 9:18 pm
by Terry19d
If you want the boots to look just like what was used on-screen, then you would want to go ahead and buy the Jodhpur boots and use white shoe polish, as that was how it was done. I don't know the pricing or availability of these boots, although I do know that they are still made. It's a shame that TKboots might fall through - I remember it took me several months to get a pair of size 10 boots from them.

Re: TK advice

Posted: Mon May 16, 2011 10:59 pm
by the dark knight
i will dig up some links to you of what we used on moms TX. they are identical to the screen used boots, and they are even black. i would try the shoe dye method. it will look authentic.