Sha Sha's TB WIP

[shashachu]

I'm leaving tonight for a 2 week vacation, so for my own bookkeeping, here's the things I think I have left before submission:

• Repainting the visor
• Shortening the vest sleeves
• Moving inner velcro on the boots (so they're not so droopy on my calves)
• Tailoring the flight suit (probably not strictly necessary, but the torso is a hair too short on me, and I think bringing in the legs will make it look a lot better)
• Adding velcro to flight suit to keep knees/biceps in place.
• Fixing the velcro on the collar closure
• Adding thumb elastic to the sleeves so they don't bunch up when I'm adding the arm armor/gloves
• Curving the TD more (unsure if this is possible, but I think it'll look better and will be easier to put on my belt. Will probably hit it with the heat gun.)
• Weathering (haven't decided 100% whether I'll do this or not)

I'd originally targeted submission for the end of August, but now that I've decided to tailor the flight suit and fix up the boots, that might be a bit aggressive. 

[Harbinger]

1 hour ago, shashachu said:

Curving the TD more (unsure if this is possible, but I think it'll look better and will be easier to put on my belt. Will probably hit it with the heat gun.)

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

[shashachu]

2 minutes ago, Harbinger said:

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

Yeah I need to study it more but I think it's actually the tube that's not very curved vs the ABS panel. The clips are attached to the tube itself so they kind of pull at the belt, if that makes sense.

[Chopper]

If you're talking about bending the whole det box @shashachu, I can't see that working well and would avoid it.

The det tubing tends to curve a bit once you cinch in it with the zip tie. Have you tightening it there yet?

[shashachu]

3 hours ago, Chopper said:

If you're talking about bending the whole det box @shashachu, I can't see that working well and would avoid it.

The det tubing tends to curve a bit once you cinch in it with the zip tie. Have you tightening it there yet?

Thanks. I'll take a peek when I get back. And no, I wasn't planning on trying to curve the box, just see what I could do with the tubing. 

[shashachu]

Had a great 2 weeks with my family! Now that I'm back, I went ahead and shortened the vest sleeves last night. Although I don't have everything 100% dialed in, I'm confident enough in the positioning of things that it felt pretty safe to do it. 

Here's the new sleeves length, which I'm pretty happy with. I think I'll need to lengthen/loosen the shoulder armor elastic strap a bit it order for them not to bunch the sleeves, but otherwise I like the way they look.

[Chopper]

Looks solid.

[shashachu]

More soft goods work. I started to feel bothered by how baggy the flightsuit was on me, so I did some quick and dirty tailoring and brought in the legs and some of the butt/lower back area. I failed to take full before pictures, but you can see in these that the legs are pretty baggy:

  

And here's the suit after. Definitely not perfect but I no longer feel like I'm swimming in the flightsuit, especially in the lower legs:

. . . 

[Aradun]

Great work. Things are really coming together nicely!

[shashachu]

So, I slightly impulsively decided to submit last night! I looked at my TODO list and realized I considered the remaining items 'nice to have', not required, so I went ahead and asked my wife to take my submission photos.

Overall I'm feeling really happy with the way things came together. I didn't have to do much with the armor, but this was my first time doing any kind of significant work with soft parts, and I ended up doing a lot more than anticipated. Looking at the photos I realized that the soft parts came out very very dark (white armor against a white wall) so I just DMed my GML a couple closeups showing that I do indeed have the riding patches and butt flap. Fingers crossed!

[shashachu]

Here's a side by side of when I put on the armor directly after unpacking it from the box vs submission:

[Chopper]

I think you should be just fine for clearance. Good luck!

[shashachu]

1 hour ago, Chopper said:

I think you should be just fine for clearance. Good luck!

Thanks, Corey! Appreciate all of your help as I worked on this costume. One area that I definitely think needs reworking is the right boot, especially when the blaster is in it. I took your advice and put a boot blouser, but it's elastic and I think the elastic is not strong enough to keep the boot from sagging with the extra weight. So I may replace it with nylon webbing and see if that helps.

[shashachu]

An interesting night. I decided to tackle some of my TODO items while I waited to hear back from my GML.

First, I added thumb elastic to the sleeves and stirrups to the pants:

. 

Then I was fiddling with my right boot and....the rivets popped out.

They were backed with thin plastic (looks like a for-sale sign) instead of washers, and the plastic cracked.

In some ways this is the universe helping me out, because I'd been thinking my boots were too tall, but I didn't want to deal with drilling the rivets out, so this was a bit of a blessing in disguise.

After some measuring, I decided to take a full 1 1/2" off the length of the boots. It was a bit of a challenge to sew since the vinyl was already glued to the boots:

Do not recommend.

I also repositioned the inner velcro to make the boot circumference smaller. Here's the left boot after resizing, next to the original right boot:

  

I know that the boots should be stitched in white thread instead of brown for the greatest accuracy, but since the stitching was already in brown, I decided to stick with brown rather than restitch the entire boot.

And here's both boots after resizing:

I also took this opportunity to sew in the boot blouser on the right boot:

Finally, since the boots are shorter, I decided to shorten the holster as well:

I didn't take too much off because I didn't want to risk making it too short and not having it cover the old lower rivet holes.

I have some rivets on order from Amazon and they're not arriving until Sunday, so I think that's all I can do for now.

Is a washer enough to back the holster rivets? Or is there something else that people usually do?

[OnkelPaschulke]

You did amazing job! Basic clearance shouldn’t be a problem at all.


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[Chopper]

Yes, a washer is the best way to keep the holster rivets from popping out. Don't worry too much about the brown thread, if you ever want to cover it up, you should be able to do so with a very thin paintbrush and some white acrylic paint.

[Aradun]

To add to what Chopper has said, I recently used a sheet of .08 ABS to make 4 large washers roughly the size of a quarter and used that with a metal river washer on the inside of the boots to serve as a backer for the holster rivets.

I’m not climbing trees or battling Ewoks when I troop, but I’ve had my rivets tear through the vinyl on two occasions while trooping now, the most recent of which was last week. The first one left a nasty whole that needed to be patched because there was no way to re-secure the new rivet to the boot. The large ABS washer will provide additional strength and its larger size will ensure that it doesn’t happen a third time.

[shashachu]

1 hour ago, AradunFF said:

To add to what Chopper has said, I recently used a sheet of .08 ABS to make 4 large washers roughly the size of a quarter and used that with a metal river washer on the inside of the boots to serve as a backer for the holster rivets.

Thanks! Thanks a good idea. I have lots of scrap ABS to I'll probably do something similar. I actually did the same with my TK belt because I had problems with the rivet tearing through the canvas belt. 

[shashachu]

So, I was approved! 

I did let my GML know I need to repair the boots before I can troop. Thanks again to everyone for all of the support and tips!

[Harbinger]

Congrats Sha Sha! You made a ton of progress quite quickly.

 

Now just have to go forth and troop, just make sure to watch for trees.

[shashachu]

1 hour ago, Harbinger said:

Congrats Sha Sha! You made a ton of progress quite quickly.

 

Now just have to go forth and troop, just make sure to watch for trees.

Thanks, Brien! And yes once I actually got motivated to work on it, it went pretty smoothly. 

[Chopper]

Congrats on your approval.

[Aradun]

Congrats! You put together a great build with the mods you did to the original armor. Well done!

[shashachu]

I was looking through my old TK building supplies and I actually found some 1/8"x3/8" aluminum rivets and 1/8" steel washers so I don't need to wait until the Amazon delivery tomorrow.

I took @AradunFF's advice and backed the rivets with a small piece of scrap ABS as well as a washer. Unfortunately one of the washers didn't stay on, but that rivet seems secure enough for now. I have a feeling I might be fiddling with the holster for a while. Hopefully I don't have any issues while trooping.

The blaster I have has a magnet embedded in the grip, and I was planning on riveting the other magnet to the boot since it had a hole in it. Unfortunately the magnet broke in half when another magnet hit it, so I ended up just gluing a new magnet on the top of the boot with E6000. As luck would have it, if needed to be exactly where I sewed the boot blouser, so I had to reposition that as well.

I also noticed that the front of the blaster has another magnet in it, so I glued another magnet on the underside of the holster.

Here's the finished boot (with a clamp holding the magnet in place while the E6000 dries.)

 

 

[shashachu]

I found out yesterday that my Scout can fit in a 25 gallon Husky bin, even with the helmet in a helmet bag. I'd originally bought a 40 gal Sterilite/Home Depot bin, but someone in my garrison mentioned he can pack his scout in one of these. I use this one for my TK, so I tried it out and everything fits! I much prefer this particular bin because of it's slim profile; it can fit in the trunk of our Civic.

I'll probably refine my packing strategy over time, but here's a way I can currently fit everything in, and close the lid with no resistance:

The boots (especially the right boot) and the helmet are the most problematic to fit, but it's not too bad. All the small armor parts are inside the chest/back armor, and the cummerbund is folded up next to my helmet bag. The holster is just kind of sitting in the gap between the bottom of the back hump and my helmet.

I'll probably add a blanket or something to line the bin, but I'm pretty pleased everything fits.