Harbinger

…and now for something completey different! Well, it is sort of related to my build. Cut some vinyl and mounted it to a 10-1/4” x 5-7/16” sheet of Lexan for the recess on the top of my Home Depot tote: PS: Added a mini table of contents to post #1 for some of my more relevant posts (and edited some of them for grammar/clarity) to others on their TB journeys. Pathfinders lead the way!

That's a good question. I know for basic clearance you can have either style (for now, so I assume at some point it'll get phased out). There are usually grace periods for bigger changes like this one though. Unless your flight suit has a really wide opening at the neck though I don't think it would be very difficult to cut off the mandarin flap closure and restitch it into an open collar.

I've seen a few questions on here and in my unit's Facebook group wondering how this affects Lancer. Open collar only? Grace period?

Lancer status - achieved! Thanks to each and every one of you who stuck with me the past 3 years. But wait, there's more! I am by no means done here. I got to troop our local MiLB Star Wars night on Saturday (troop report coming soon!), and 5 hours in armor gave me a lot of things I'd like to tweak. Plus, there's some stuff I already had in mind. In no particular order: Dial in cod strapping better (elastic probably needs to be shortened 1/4" or so) Add a counter-weight to my chest plate and/or some sort of attachment method to bund. My chest rides up as the weight of my back armor + tank pulls it down. I'm thinking a hunk of steel epoxied to the armor, and velcro/snaps/some other method to keep it and the bund loosely connected. Replace the wire (cord) on my detonator with (ideally vintage) gray wire. No more paint issues. Weathering - will try to replicate the 4-bar TB on screen, because accuracy. Modify my mandarin collar. Thanks @BikerScout007for more work! No real timeline on these. My buddy is going to let me borrow a mannequin for weathering which should help quite a bit, I'm hoping to get that done this summer before the wind arrives.

Thanks everyone. COVID slowed me down but did not stop me. Thanks to everyone who helped me on my build, it was a team effort if you ask me. @Chopper, thanks for being there for every question I had in my build thread. @AradunFF, I feel like we are TB brothers-for-life. We started our builds around the same time, both aiming for Lancer out of the gates (because, I can only assume, we are insane). You may have beat me to Lancer by a year but, glad to join the ranks. @mickeymark34 I blame you for this entire journey, thousands spent and sleepness nights sewing and cutting plastic. I am not done on my TB journey. I must still weather my armor, make a few post-troop tweaks and, apparently, redo my collar. Pathfinders lead the way!

Oh man! I know @Whiskey will be super happy to hear this. Maybe we can talk him into providing some better photos of his vintage Avirex suit. Tangential, but what balaclava are you using in that video? That looks far more comfortable than my $5 Amazon P.O.S. one. Great to see you in the TB again!

Maybe try cutting a curve into the back vs. attempting to curve the whole thing?

Definitely interested in two!

Smart! Report back on comfort!

You want 1/8”/3mm pop rivets. Not cap rivets or any other kind. There’s a lot missing (or incorrect, like the toe strips) in this tutorial, from an accuracy/info/L2 standpoint, FWIW.

One final tweak I made yesterday, before my troop today (and updated Lancer photos) was to sew my cod to my vest, to reduce the fiddliness when suiting up: The elastic in back has hook velcro on one side and loop on the other so I can sandwich it in the vest closure. My understanding is the film costumes were constructed this way, so a nice accuracy boost as well!

Pre-production scout CRL? 😜

Chest armor shoulder bridges trimmed down ~3/4"-1", the shoulder bells are now parallel with my arms and biceps, front/sides/back below: Sure thing. Here you go: There was a white line, yes. I dyed the edges as requested (I did not dye the top of the buttflap, as it is covered by the belt): Right again - I totally spaced on this one. I even quoted the CRL in my application. D'oh! Lower knee straps redone to 3/4": Dogbones trimmed to end at/above the toe strip per the CRL:

Got the new knee elastic sewn up! An update on the blaster screws: the ones I bought online are backordered, so I cancelled my order and bought some #8 1-1/4” oval head phillips machine screws at Hope Depot. I filled the original head in with JB Weld and used a Dremel tool to cut out a slotted head, then painted them with the same flat black paint I used on the scope screws. Reference: Total cost, $1.08, no waiting.

On my boots I used some heatbond, but YMMV - I used leather vs. sign plastic. I imagine E6000 or a flexible CA glue would work too.

Forgot to post this one up, but I trimmed down my shoulder/chest over the weekend the rotate my shoulders forward and bring my back armor up. Here was the test fit: I ended up taking off about 1" from the chest side on both sides.

Lancer updates! Had to trim down my dogbones on my boots - unfortunately they were glued on with CA, so when I removed them some of the vinyl was damaged. Nothing a $10 3M vinyl repair kit couldn’t fix: A little cleanup and you can barely even tell. Trimmed down and redid the stitching on the dogbones and got those glued back down - this time with E6000! Now to redo my lower knee straps, somehow I brain farted and made them 1”…

Another familiar face. Good luck!

There appears to be some stitching on the boot here to the left of the toe strip, right? Anyone done this on their boots?

Thanks! Will do. Yep - totally goofed there. 😅

No issues with the suede then Mickey?

Congratulations! See you there soon!

Always nice to have more options, I’m looking forward to the finished helmet!

You need to use a third party hosting site like imgur/flickr etc., you probably ran out of room on your forum account.

Looks good. Welcome!