Larcwide's Squad Leader WIP

[Larcwide]

Hi all! Been lurking for a while until I had enough ready to make my first post. I'm going to be making my first 501st costume, the Squad Leader, using Mr Paul's printing files and Nico's helmet. I'm hoping to be able to go for level 2 certification, but we'll see how things look as I go!

I've been collected some bits and pieces over time and started printing the helmet while the workbench is in use as I am finishing some props for my girlfriend's current project.

 

I have made a few costumes previously, including a screen accurate Star Trek uniform and a self drafted Loki costume, amonst others. From this I have a fair amount of experience with sewing and pattern making, so I plan on making most of the soft parts myself.

 

I've finished printing the pieces for the helmet (stuck together with some lovely tape for sizing test) but can't start welding the pieces until the workbench is clear. I've edited the snout piece to have a cut out for a speaker for a voice amp system I am hoping to make.

 

For the voice amp I have the starts of the pieces needed (hopefully). I've not done electronics in any of my projects before (short of simple lights) and I always try to do something completely new to improve my skills, so this is it for this project. I've also got a couple of small mics and padded speakers to make an external amp system too if needed (and assumes I can make the voice amp work in the first place!)

 

My collection of purchased parts include Orca Bays in Havana, lens and straps from Mr Paul, gloves from Endor Finders and the correct chin strap.

 

Lastly we have a nice collection of fabrics for the soft parts. Some custom dyed duck cloth for the breeches (I couldn't get the fabric in a colour I liked so just bought beige and then tested a few swatches with Rit dye until I got what I was happy with), waxed canvas for the kama, light grey jersey for the non-ribbed parts of the undershirt and the mesh parts for armpits and the ab section.

Finally some dark grey jersey for the ribbed parts of the undershirt which I am slowly, ever so slowly, going through and creating ribs in. 

 

Next up some progress on drafting a pattern for the undershirt...

Seb.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[BikerScout007]

Welcome Seb!

Wow that's some great work you've done so far.  A few folks have taken the plunge and made their own soft goods, but it's definitely not all that common.  Good to see!

@KOtrooper and @Minimo are our resident ST experts so they will be sure to weigh in.   And I'm an L2 Shoretrooper Captain so I'll be happy to help where I can.  

Best of luck on your build.  Looks like you've made a great start. 

[KOtrooper]

Hi Seb - I made my own soft goods and got approved for L2 so it's doable! Hit me up with any questions but it looks like you're off to a great start already. Have fun sewing those ribs!

[Minimo]

Welcome! Looking fwd to seeing what you come up with!!


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[Andy88]

I’m in the process of building with Mr Paul’s files as well with his resin molds so feel free to hit me up if any questions on slicing the big pieces apart! Also will say his resin buckets needed trimming, particularly the chest pieces that fit into the recessed spaces.

Looking forward to your progress!


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[Larcwide]

Thanks for the warm welcome everyone!

As promised progress on creating the pattern for the undershirt. Taking a basic long-sleeve pattern I used as a base for a previous costume, I took to drawing, cutting, sticking and repeating until I had something that looked right against the references. 
 

Then it was time to cut out some test fabric to make sure my Frankenstein’s pattern actually made something wearable. I had plenty of green test fabric from my last project so glorious green undershirt it is…

I’ve tried to match the screen used, going with the full romper fun. Dark green will be ribbed, light green the plain jersey and white the different types of mesh.
 

I had made a mistake with forgetting to add seam allowance where the ribbed piece under the armpit met the plain bit on the front, so they aren’t connected here, but that was a simple fix on the pattern pieces. I was also an idiot and managed to sew the cuffs on backwards so the thumb holes face the back instead of the front. Whoops!

 

Under the armpit I have the ribbed section of the back coming round to the front so there is no side seam on it, which is what I could see on the references. The mesh was interesting - as I had made the ribbed section wrap without a side seam I didn’t want the mesh to go straight down. It’s been tricky to get a clear look at how it goes, but I’ve done it as a curve which I think matches some of the references, but I would be interested to hear others thoughts on how it looks.

 

While I continue to work on stitching all of the ribs, I have started to work on drafting the pattern for the breeches. Here’s a quick look at one piece…

[Larcwide]

The first mockup of the breeches is complete:

There are some edits to make, but it all went togtether perfectly, which was very nice. The biggest change will be to the depth of the crotch as it is more than a little tight. There's a reason the pictures are of them on a hanger and not on me! I also want to reduce the width of the "wings" as they stick out a little too much I think. Otherwise everything seems to be good (just excuse the poor stitching, I'm just throwing these tests together).

The knee diamond:

Front just above the eyelet area:

Eyelet area:

Back of the knees:

[Larcwide]

Hi all, 

a long time with no update, but myself and my girlfriend had our first con post-lockdowns at the weekend, so a lot of time was spent finishing up costumes and props for that. Finally got to wear my Loki costume which was great to see together at last!



The sewing machine was in use for my girlfriends costume and most of my time was spent making her prop, so not much progress on the trooper, but I have been able to print all of the left side arm pieces:



I want to get these all connected and checked for sizing before doing the right side. Everything seems to be good so far, but the forearm looks like it will be quite tight to get over my wrists, I will definitely need to to flex a bit, so will be interesting to see how that works once the two parts are permanently connected. I want to do most of the finishing of the two parts first as it will be a pain to try and paint under the overlap once put together.

 

I have also been able to slowly weld all 15 pieces of the helmet together, which has then had a two part epoxy resin covering to remove the layer lines and add strength, which was then roughly sanded and primed. Looking pretty good with virtually no layer lines showing (mostly on the "mandibles" you can still see the infill pattern). A couple of the seams between parts are visible still, but should clear up with a bit more sanding on it.

Spending money is also too easy to do even when busy so I've been doing plenty of that, mostly getting the paints ordered in. Got some RAL8022 for the base layer, Toyota Red E5S and the yellow are all in. The sahara beige is on order and just need to wait for my local Halfords to restock their nordic blue. 

With the con out of the way its back to full steam ahead with the trooper so hopefully I can provide more frequent updates.

[Minimo]

Grats on the con, your Loki looks great! The pieces of your bucket looks to have come together nicely. I would also recommend a bit more treatment to smooth it out!!! Grats on getting back on the horse, keep us posted!!!

[Larcwide]

Oh yes, plenty more work had to be done on it from there! That was a 40 grit sand to get rid of the majority of the seam lines and then first coat to see where still needed work. After some more sanding, filling, sanding, priming etc I've got it much better and a final thin coat of resin going on to just fill out the last bits:



One final sand after this and I should be good for the final primer coat

All of the paints are now in too:

And finally I got a great deal on a Hot Toys to give me some armour to look at while I make armour!

[Larcwide]

Some good progress this week, I think. While the printer continues to churn out the parts (left shin parts are now all printed) I have been able to continue with painting the helmet and hand plates.

Final coat of primer and light sand

I did have a strange issue on one part which I ended up having to sand right back, then fill and build back up. I'm guessing there was some grease on this section that the paint didn't like:



Then the dark brown base coat went down (you can see I didn't bother trying to smooth the face shield spacer as it will be virtually invisible):





Then this morning I got some Sahara Beige on the first of the parts:



In some of the downtime waiting for paints to dry I even got to look at wiring up a speaker and designed a box for it to go in so it wasn't just loose in the helmet:



Due to the speaker being so small to fit in the snout part it isn't very loud and needs testing with me wearing the helmet to check you can hear the speaker over my actual voice, but the small size (and therefore not great quality) I think makes it sound great. I do have a slightly larger speaker if needed, but it would need to sit behind the snout rather than in it, so we'll see how it goes. 

I didn't like the thought of a plain black box, even inside the helmet so thought I'd bling it up a bit by designing an embossed Shoretrooper helmet to the top of the box:

 

[Larcwide]

Hi all, another good week of progress this week.

The helmet was fully painted with the Sahara Beige and had the black areas painted too:



Once everything was glued together I cut out a stencil for the emblem on the Cricut and then painted with the red orange:




During all the drying times on the helmet I weathered the handplates and added the velcro to attach to the gloves:



Then it was onto weathering the helmet:






I would love to get some feedback on what people think of how it looks and any advice for things that may need changing or ways to improve!

For now I'm starting work on getting all of the inside of the helmet sorted, with the chin strap, padding, fans and voice amp positioned and fixed in.

[Minimo]

Looking good!

[Larcwide]

Not too much to report this week due to other commitments, but progress still being made.

Most of my time was spent sorting the helmet inside out:


As you can see I have added the correct chin cup, some fans and the voice amp (my printed box was too big, so a foam clamshell it is!). I need to sort a solder joint on my fan switch, but otherwise all is working. Then some more cable management once I am happy with everything. However I have a frustrating issue with the voice amp - it picks up the airflow from the fans when loud enough to cover the volume of my actual voice. I've moved the fans so that they are further away, but it still picks up the air circulating around the helmet. I've tried a different mic and even put a foam and blu-tack shell around it to try insulate it and make it as uni-directional as possible, but it still picks up the air. 

Does anyone have any recommendations for this? Currently I have three ideas: 
1) Put up with the fact that there will always be "static" coming from the speaker that would get lost outside/in crowded areas
3) Have the volume lower and speak louder (kind of defeating the purpose)
4) Buy an expensive mic and hope its better

In the mean time the ab sections are printing and slowly being pieced together:


And I have just started the first set of filling and preparing to sand the chest piece:

[Aradun]

If you decide to get a more expensive mic, you want to make sure it is equipped with noise cancellation. It’s an expensive solution that may help filter out the fans. I say “may” because looking at your current set up (which looks amazing btw) the proximity of your fans to the mic may still be too much for even a mic with a noise cancellation feature.

Another less expensive option would be to remove the existing mic and use an ear mic that will position the microphone on the side of your mouth rather than directly in front of your mouth. That may create enough distance between the fans and mic so as to dampen or eliminate the fan noise. You might even be able to borrow a mate’s mic to test it out.

[Larcwide]

Thanks for the ideas AradunFF. Some things to consider there, but for now I've stopped worrying as ultimately it won't affect approval so I can leave it for now.

 

I've been working on the chest piece, once the sahara beige was applied, it was time to mask off and apply the Ford nordic blue. 

I then tried to put a light dusting of black over the top, but I ended up with thick black spots from the can on two attempts, so I sanded it back and reapplied the blue. Then I used my airbrush to put the black and grey dusting over the top which came out a lot better.

The yellow "u" was done the same as the emblem, with a cricut stencil with extra masking and then a nice yellow spray.

Then a bit of sanding to tidy up some bits of paint creep/stubborn stencil adhesive (and accidentally start the weathering) I am left with this:

Just the weathering to go (the recess under the "u" has been painted black since this photo), but I wll probably wait until I have the side kidney plates printed, painted and glued on before so it can all get weathered together.

 

Not much else has been printed this week as I noticed one of the thermister wires had come loose and had been catching on the prints, so had frayed back to a bare wire. Not wanting to risk anything, the printer has had a well earned rest while a replcement (and spare) were on order. I got it replaced yesterday and took the opportunit to do a service on the printer too.

 

I finally finished the ribbing on the first of the sleeve pieces, so have put that together with other parts of the sleeve to start looking at getting it sized correctly. With this I will also be able to test fit the arm pieces I have printed to make sure I am happy with continuing with the work on them and printing the other side. Here it is roughly pinned together with other pieces while I check the sizing:

 

I also managed to source the Talon sling swivels ready for when I get started on the E22

[Larcwide]

Hi all, sorry for the lack of updates. After the thermistor change I had multiple failed prints, normally a block in the PTFE tube that needed to be replaced. 

Even after replacing the PTFE tube I still had blocks forming and causing the hot end to look like this:

With the hotend looking worse for wear a final blockage caused me to decide it was time to replace the nozzle and heater block. So another disassembly of the printer was in order. Unfortunately it looks like the number of blockages had caused too much filament to get around the hot end. No amount of pushing, pulling or proding could free the heater cartridge from the block and no amount twisting would free the heater block from the heat break. 

Well that's good news, that means I have an excuse to upgrade to the Revo Six! Unfortunately all of this messing around has taken away much of the time I would have had to work on the armour. But I got the Revo in yesterday and tried the first print this morning:



Well, guess I'll be spending a bit more time getting my settings dialed back in for the new hotend! At least its not a blockage!

I was able to do some more work, getting the scratches into the chest piece:



One thing I did notice here was that the sanding the blue has caused the black and grey dusting to be rubbed away - did people go back over with the dusting after doing the weathering? 

Otherwise I've been working on getting the ab section smooth, filled and smoothed. Due to the flex needed to get in and out of it, I also reinforced the vertical joins on the inside with strips of worbla on the inside and a healthy layer of resin on the oustide.



And finally I finished another ribbed pattern piece for the undershirt. This is for the back section and wrapping around the side under the armpit mesh:

[Minimo]

Hopefully you can iron out the kinks on the printer soon!!! For the blue, i would recommend going back at it with the oversprays. In my case, i did the overspray after the “scratching”. Ran into the same issue you did on the shoulder bell. 

[Larcwide]

Printing issues are (hopefully) finally resolved! The issue with my first print after the hot end change was due to the new one needing a cooler temp to print, it was too hot to stick to the bed. Brought it down 10C and first layer went down lovely. Got one small print done to test and it was time to get back to printing the back. 12 hours into the next part, thermal runaway kicks in and shuts down the printer. After investigation, there was a fault with early Revos where the thermister stopped reading properly. It instantly read 50C cooler, even though it wasn't, so the heater kicked in, thermister then read temp correctly and it rasied over 100C instantly. A good advert for fire safety for printers! E3D support were great, I explained the issue and they sent out a replacement the next day. Thats now installed and the last 2 parts of the back are finally printed!

 

While this has been going on I have been able to make a bit of progress on parts that are printed. I got the kidney plates attached to the front armour and the weathering process has begun:



I finally got the ab armour smooth and it has now had its brown base coat, ready for a laquer before the sahara beige goes on:



With the printer fixed I can spend more time progressing now  and hopefully get back on track!

[Larcwide]

With the printer issues all out of the way I have been able to make some real progress on the build this week.

I finished the chest piece off, with weathering completed and postezote added to the arm holes:

 

The ab armour got its coat of Sahara Beige and the weathering started:



Then I realised something was missing... Oh yes, the black parts.




Meanwhile I had finished off the ribs of front panel of the undershirt, got everything sewn onto the main panel pieces and added the mesh sections:



Which when combined along with the earlier completed sleeve, gave me half an undershirt!





I would love to get feedback on the shirt and get confirmation that everything looks okay for level 2 certification? I really (really) don't want to stitch the rest of the ribs if there's something wrong!

[KOtrooper]

Shirt looks great. Might be a bit too loose in the arm area but hard to tell without the armor.

Sent from my Pixel 5a using Tapatalk

[Larcwide]

Thanks for the feedback. Its tricky to get a real idea at the moment due to only being the half, its always trying to fall down my arm as there's nothing to hold it up! I slapped together the arm armour to give a better idea (with the neck clipped to my tshirt to try and pull it up):


I think you’re right. Definitely a bit of bunching due to being loose, especially at the top. However with this photo I can see the top of shoulder seam is not on my shoulder, which won't be helping. I'll need to get the whole thing finished up so I can see if this pulls up when finished and where any other adjustments need to be made, but making it smaller will be fairly simple once I know where needs it. 
 

[KOtrooper]

On 8/15/2022 at 8:42 AM, Larcwide said:

Thanks for the feedback. Its tricky to get a real idea at the moment due to only being the half, its always trying to fall down my arm as there's nothing to hold it up! I slapped together the arm armour to give a better idea (with the neck clipped to my tshirt to try and pull it up):
 

I hear you. I battled the same thing when I made my undershirt. 

[Larcwide]

I've had a couple of weeks of holiday, so not much progress to report since my last update.

The ab armour has had half of its weathering done:


The back plate is almost ready for final paint and the back piece just needs a couple more sanding passes until it too is ready:


I've also received the back box greeblies and belt boxes from Mr Paul ready to finish off the back and get started on the belt (also the belt slider not pictured):


Now it'll be back to my normal amount of time spent working on it, which still isn't a lot, but I am in no hurry! Once I get the shirt finished I'll be able to work on the arm armour, as I don't want to do too much on that until I know it fits correctly over the shirt.

[Larcwide]

Only a small update for now. The back piece has taken a lot longer than expected to get as smooth as I wanted, lots of dciifferent angles and directions on it. But I finally got it where I was happy and has had its brown base coat and sahara beige:



I also completed another piece of ribbed fabric, so the second back piece is now finished. While the machine was setup for single stitches I thought I would get the belt stitched up so that its ready for when I get to it.