Fistful of Energon

Well you are at the right place for advice and help with this. Lots of talented, knowledgeable scouts here to help you along. I look forward to seeing this helmet build.

That looks like a fun project, lol. Did you not know it was in halves buying it?

Looks awesome. Wish I would've applied decals before attaching the tank to the backplate. Made it unnecessarily complicated lol

A XS you say!? you really are living up to your name, lol.

more progress. fired up the sewing machine. finished tank

Decided on the middle.

Is there a common preference as to where the black button greeblie gets attached inside the oval opening on the right of the tank topper? or is just just personal preference? Ive seen them installed in the middle, the right and the left side of that opening.

here is the progress. TD has been done for awhile now, a good place to start. The tank and topper wasn't without some headaches. first was finding out the pre drilled hole that came in my topper was incorrect, I contacted Jeff who told me I must have gotten a seconds topper by mistake, he offered to replace it but I decided to fix it myself rather than have more time lost that I could use building. I ended up filling with Apoxie Sculpt and painting it flat black. You can barely notice it. After that I got excited and rushed too much and accidentally drilled too big of a hole and had to go back and again use Apoxie Sculpt ( I love this stuff) to fill in the hole through the entire topper and tank assembly. After it fully cured I drilled the correct size and riveted with no problems, looks great! I ended up using some styrene from a yard sign for my bracket, works fine and bends without needing heat. I will be finishing sanding and final shaping the rest of the armor pieces hopefully over the weekend. I also will be on the hunt for the correct 1" black elastic I need to continue. after that it will just be finishing the chest and back armor strapping and finally the belt, Im honestly dreading this one so any advice will be much appreciated. Oh and according to CB my flight suit and bund shipped on May 3rd so after I get that, whenever it finally arrives, I hope to be finishing everything up this summer. Its been a long, solo ride but even after a year I am still determined.

Even though those specs are for lancer it's still very helpful. I need to post some pictures of my progress tonight, I've attached the tank and finished the TD. I was moving on to the arm/knee armor today when I ran into the elastic issue. I still think I got sent the wrong width, I have no need for 73 inches of 1.5 inch elastic lol.

How have I missed this? Thank you

so I should have been given 73 inches of the one inch elastic rather than the 1.5 inch? Also, what did you need the suspenders for?

I've run into a issue. I've been attempting to sort all the strap and Velcro strips into which part of the build they belong to. And according to the instructions I am to use 1.5" black elastic for all the arm and knee armor parts of which the kit included 73". But the cuts for those parts that the elastic will go through is just 1". A 18" piece of black elastic was included but not mentioned in instructions. To me it seems I should be using the 1" black elastic. Can anyone else tell me what's going on here? Lol

when did you order soft parts from CB? have they shipped yet? I was told 5-7 days to make everything then 2-3 weeks shipping. ordered 4/14, as of 4/26 he's still working on it. Have gotten used to the waiting game in this hobby, still sucks though.

polystyrene is more brittle than ABS, I want to avoid using it if possible. Jeff from SC sent me some scrap pieces for free, nice guy. Also I broke down and got a sewing machine from someone on craigslist today, for half the price of the one i was eyeing.

thanks again everyone for the help. I am moving right along and have my final piece, the soft parts, on order from CB. my only issue is the sewing parts, i can use a sewing machine, i sewed banners all day at my last job, i can also hand sew pretty good but its a huge pain. I've considered getting a sewing machine from Amazon ($80 i believe) but if i can avoid the extra cost i will. I've asked around and no one can help me with one. so what i want to know is, can i get away with gluing instead of sewing?? how many of you have done this?