Jae and Mike's KT builds

[miqt]

Im sure itll turn out great DR!

A little more work on the visor this morning. So far I sont have that much time into it. There was one good "wonk"

on one side of the visor which i took out with a little heat. Overall I like how the visor is coming together.

[miqt]

1st coat of filler. This part will sit till tomorrow now... and so will I i think.

[miqt]

Heres the humble beginnings of the KST fatigues. Same cut as xwing or tie suit. I found a material

that closely matches the mocha-esque background color on the suits. The camo will be applied in

fabric paint later. The legs, collar, and belt are actually cut, just not sewn or attached yet.

[miqt]

So Jae got us our base gloves. We have brown leather for the tops and tan leather which will be misted

with grey eco flow leather paint and rubbed down to a SA finish (i hope) for the hand back parts the

belt and the 'buckle'. Used a contour guage to refine the shape of the tank back cuts a bit and have the

2nd tank ready to mount. I used an angle guage to set the angle of the plastic L brackets and will

plastic weld them into the tank.

[Snapper15]

Great build day yesterday ... Sand sand sand.. Cut cut cut.. Some minor imperfections on the bucket but otherwise all in good order

[miqt]

Yeah Brother- we got some pretty serious work and planning done!

So it looks like the gloves wont be tooo hard, but very time consuming. Here is the first pair, opened right up to allow the knuckle pads to be sewn on. On the best pic we have (which IS one of the renders, not scrren) you can see a stitch line around the knuckle pads which is good. You cant see a stitch line around the thin belt... which is bad. I do have leather contact cement, but we'll see, its crap to work with. I may just sew the thin belt on. Ive cut the 'buckle' out of leather but it doesnt look right so it will end up being a slip of .060 or .040 styrene. You can see a difference in texture beteen the 'belt' and 'buckle' at least i think so. The ruler is sitting where (approx) the black will be folded under and sewn and the brown gauntlet will start. Both knuckle pads need final shaping to look good on the glove and all edges need leather edge treatment. The knuckle pads will be masked and misted with leather paint.... or rubbed down with cotton balls and a bit of sye, we will see. Then the whole thing get flipped inside out and sewn back together.... hopefully by machine, but maybe by hand.

[miqt]

So now our glove bits are grey. Airbrushed with ecoflow leather paint thinned with distilled water. Next Im going to just mist them with a bit of a dark taupe acrylic left over from my armor paint experiments (which are far from over btw). That way they should look a lot like that glove closup we all stare at so much- the one that shows the 'buckle'. If Im lucky, if i hit them before they are totally cured, the acrylic really stick to the leather paint. I do have 2 test chunks so i dont screw up the nice sized pieces. Lots of paint left over for touchups when the strips get their little final shaping.

[miqt]

A bit of that taupe/Khaki green takes it there. I just wonder if i should put more? The weathering will be rounded out with pastels powders and fireplace ash/charcoal.

What do you guys think of the color?

[Snapper15]

Dude... I just left your place... Haha.. Geez this is going fast

[Grumpy]

Gloves are starting to look good, guys!

[miqt]

Finally got some decent melamine board remnants to make up some mould boxes. One for glove greebs, and one for a kids size clonetrooper belt. Progress is progress. Also finished handstitching the leather handback details on the first pair of gloves.

 

Ok, so I was relying a buddy with some renos, and I snuck the melamine board onto the table saw between laminate floor boards. I had to guess at the sizes, we will see in the morning how close I got but I think I can assemble the mold boxes and get ready to pour rubber.

[miqt]

Just have to do some clay work around the edges, cut a few holes, fill the box with rice to see how much rubber

is needed, and I can pour. Mucho thanks to Grumpy, a troopers trooper, for being such a help with this step. The box

setup is a little overkill for this mould maybe, but I just cant get the idea of casting in foam out of my head. I may mod this box a bit and try it at a later time.

The masters have now been mounted. Just gonna add some Lego bits to the box to suck up some space since as it stands now its a 38 oz pour and that's a bit much.

And.... While the box sits with Lego bits curing on, I'm using Tandy leather contact cement to slowly add the thin strip detail.

No way on earth that I'm hand stitching that thing on.

[Snapper15]

Bro.. That looks amazing... Can't wit or my rdos.. My time next week.. I'll play hooky

[miqt]

Cant wait to build under the same roof again. Soon! In the mean time.....

[comm tech]

Your glove greebs came out awesome dude.

[miqt]

I wish! Those are the masters (which are borrowed) mounted on the backer board. I'm hoping to pour the mould tonight. We won't be able to pull copies until we get a tint that will work. The rubber is amber so i may be able to add a hint of white tint (which we have) to get a taupe ish colour.

[miqt]

Jae and I worked today. 2nd tank mounted, Jae's bucket starting to come along. Shins all trimmed out and plans to put together started. Glove greeb mould finally poured (lost our can of mould release, so Jae had to bring a fresh one). Jae's drop boxes are backed and biceps put together and filled- great work bro!! Lots of good. Pics if we get a chance.

[miqt]

Poured our first taupe coloured glove greebs.

[comm tech]

Looking forward to some of your update pics mike.

[miqt]

[Grumpy]

Sweeeeeeeet!!!!!

That looks real clean.

[miqt]

A few tiny bubbles. If I wasn't rushing to move it along, they could have been avoided. Oh well no biggie. Thanks Grumpy... Pretty happy with the color. Ill mark up some plastic cups and start making more copies tomorrow. I like the cure time of resin better than rubber. I have to wash up some test scrap I poured out on the table to see what bonds this rubber to the leather well. I wish the leather contact cement (barge) would do it but I kinda doubt it. Mucho thanks from Jae and I for your help along the way Grumps. Ill be in touch after I get some more pulls.

[Death Recon]

Those look awesome, great color and very clean looking as grumpy said

[comm tech]

:icon_bow: Those came out great.

[LENOX61]

Nice!