Alternate methods for shoulder bridge & Belt assembly/adjustability

[Darth Voorhees]

So i have had 4 Scouts in my 15yrs in the 501st, previous to my current build. Most were almost Lancer and i got lazy and never did the last thing or 2 to apply lol. Over the years i have come up with creative yet useful ways to do some things. Partly because my weight goes up and down like a yo-yo lol

So one thing i recently came up with was a way to attach the shoulder bridges so i can just glue a strip of elastic over the seam on the top/outside and it NOT wrap around. This is something that our DL Mickey has discovered evidence of and although thus far it is NOT in the CRL for basic or L2, i still wanted to do it for my personal goals of accuracy. So this is not really anything new so to speak, but i wanted to still be able to attach the chest/back bridges with a 1" wide piece of nylon webbing but with velcro sewn across the entire length of the strip. This usually keeps everything lined up nicely, and that will be crucial if i want to put the bridge cover only on top/outside the armor.  The "issue" with this is that i also want to use the zip tie method to attach the bells and would need a zip tie anchor/guide on that strip. So i came up with basically a simple slide adjuster with the anchor/guide built in and 3D printed them and they work perfectly. I should probably print them in black, but this actually works so you can see them better for detail purposes. The holes are for the option to sew it in place, but the strap with velcro attached in it fits pretty snug so you likely wont have to do that. The reason the velcro goes all the way across the webbing strip is because it loops through the slider part and will then still have velcro exposed right at the join so the "slider" also keeps it stable and it doesnt over bend at the join. Now i should be able to glue the elastic strip on top and it look neat and stay put. The files are on thingiverse! https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:5929971

 

For the belt, this is something i did on my last build...but then 3D modeling/printing wasn't really a thing yet, so i did it with all scrap ABS pieces and although it worked well enough, it wasn't flawless and also looked kind of sloppy. So this time i 3D modeled and printed the parts i needed to accomplish my goal. The goal was having the belt adjustable with no visible slide adjusters. I created "belt loops" and stops along with slide adjusters to accomplish this by putting all of it in the front part of the belt. I forgot to take pics before i added the nylon belt for the parts to mount in the belt but i think you get the basic idea. The rivets in the belt become "mock" rivets as they wont actually hold the belt. I cut down the rivet body and glued them in place.

Basically these are the pieces, the rectangle "boxes" mount under the parts with the cut corners and attach in the inside of the boxes on the belt front

So mounted they go like this. 

You can then slide the belt under the "belt loop" on the end and into the slide adjuster. this way you can adjust the size of the belt or even the length of each piece indefinately without having to unrivet and re rivet the belt. thsi also would prevent the belt from pulling off the rivet since the rivet is just visual. As a bonus, you can use the flat part of the parts with the cut corners to add velcro to attach to your jumpsuit to keep your belt in place.

So yea thats how i did it lol. Hope some of you like it! Again, if you want the files, just ask! These were made to fit the MonCal/FAC belt so you may have to fiddle with them if another makers belt piece is taller or shorter.