Keith's Acolyte Build and First Troop

[TK Keith]

 

Although my Sith Acolyte was approved over the summer, I’ve been wanting to get an after-the-fact build thread posted here for a while, so here goes. Since I kept a journal of my build to help motivate myself to move quickly, I am going to use my notes to try to re-capture what took place during my build. I will try to add to this thread over the next few days as I type up my notes and gather some of the pictures that were taken along the way.

 

My interest in the Acolyte armor began in 2012 when I saw the video of the flash mob in Times Square promoting the release of the upcoming video game. I was hooked! I immediately started looking into the costume and even got in touch with the person who made the armor for the Times Square video. Of course, being a new costume, it hadn’t yet been approved by the Legion, so there wasn’t a whole lot to go on.

 

It took me a while to complete my Kevin W armor. A long while. I wanted to upgrade my TK and so I bought a new set of TK armor during the summer of 2012 and put my effort into building it to Expert Infantry standards. I didn’t feel too bad about putting my Acolyte on hold, since it hadn’t been approved yet by the Legion and I didn’t feel confident enough to be the first person to try. By the time I was ready to submit my Acolyte to the LMO, it was early 2014, and there were several Acolytes who had been approved.

 

 

My first Acolyte was made up of Kevin W armor with a few Kevin B pieces, a version 2 Mynock mask, an ultrasaber, and a robe that my mom and I spent hours laboring over. (We made it before the CRL came out and ended up having to redo the hood, since the original had a visible seam. We also inserted a metal wire into the brim of the hood to help it retain its round shape.) Unfortunately, the LMO had decided that the KW armor was not detailed enough, and so it was declined when I submitted it for approval. I was really bummed, but I loved the look of the Acolyte character, so in March I purchased the Wolfgang armor. While I waited for it to arrive, I started keeping a journal to help me during my build. I took notes on the reference images and the Acolytes who had been approved, downloaded a bunch of reference pics, and started reaching out to other approved Acolytes for advice (especially on what paint to use!)

 

Since my son Marcus had been born in February, and I knew that I would not be able to work on the armor for long periods of time when it arrived. Instead, I wanted to be as prepared as possible and work on it for up to one hour each day. I didn’t want to drag this build out forever, like my first Acolyte build, so I was really determined to make a little progress every single day. The big brown box from Germany arrived in May, and it was Go Time!

 

[DarthBrute]

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[TK Keith]

Week 1

May 10:

I decided to start with the simple tasks first to motivate myself and make noticeable progress. I painted the buckle and finger armor with my brighter shade of gray (Rub n Buff Silver Leaf) and attached the claws to the hand plates using the screws Wolfgang provided.

 

 

 

[TK Keith]

May 11

I painted the hand plates with my darker shade of gray: Dupli Coat Perfect Match Dark Shadow Gray. I had a hard time deciding on what dark gray to use, and I think this one was recommended to me by Dan Bergeron, aka Thalizar. I actually wanted to keep the shiny silver of the claw tips, so I covered them with tape while I painted the hand plate and the base of the claws. I also put a clear coat on the finger armor and buckle.

 

 

 

May 12

Mask time! The mask looks awesome and I was excited to get started on it. Primer first, then I applied a few light coats of the dark gray paint, which was almost the same shade as the armor itself.

 

[TK Keith]

May 13-14

I did a little touch up to the mask, and after letting it dry for most of the day, started to apply my bright gray Rub n Buff to the raised edges. I used a paint brush at first, but then I remembered a hint that my garrison mate Brian Munger had shared with me- put a little paint on your finger and then lightly trace along the raised edges to apply the paint. This worked much better, and much faster too. Thanks Brian! I worked quickly but carefully for two days and was able to finish the mask much sooner than I had anticipated.

 

 

 

[TK Keith]

May 15

Moving on to the ab armor. The ab arrived with a small crack in it. I glued a spare piece of abs onto the back to give it some support and used caulk to fill in the minor gap in the front. Then I used my dremel to cut out the belt loops. I was a little nervous because this was my first time using a dremel on the armor, but it went really well. Phew! I also spent a little time working on the gloves: attaching elastic straps to the glove plate, and attaching the finger armor using a combination of E-6000 and hot glue to hold the armor in place while the E-6000 dried.

 

 

[TK Keith]

May 16

With some of the little things done, I moved on to some of the medium pieces. I primed and painted the boot armor, ab, shoulder bells, elbows, and biceps. Since my spray paint experiences in the past have not always gone well-- I tend to rush the application and get drips—I really tried to apply the paint in light coats with the recommended wait time in between applications. This method seemed to work well and I was pleased with how the paint job looked.

 

 

[TK Keith]

Week 2:

One week into the build, and I felt great! I was able to work a little every day of the first week when I got home from work without totally abandoning my wife, daughter, and 3-month old son, and I felt really proud about that.

 

May 17

The end of my consecutive day-streak. I traveled out of town to troop the Big Wow Comic Fest in San Jose, so no Acolyte armor today! It was a fun troop; Dave Filoni was in attendance and joined us for our group picture. (I am the officer on the left.)

 

 

May 18

My wife is awesome! She was fine with me spending several hours working on the Acolyte after being gone basically all of yesterday. Lots got done: touch up paint on the mask, a few small armor pieces, and the ab caulking area; trimming the shins with the dremel so they wouldn’t look ridiculously large on my skinny legs; and applying a clear coat to the mask and a few smaller pieces.

 

[TK Keith]

May 19

I wasn’t happy with the placement of my thumb armor. Being a perfectionist, I tried to remove the armor in order to re-apply it. This caused the gloves to tear slightly, and in trying to fix things, I made them worse. No worries- Home Depot had 10 sets the last time I was there. Wrong! Home Depot somehow completely sold out of the size I needed in the span of a week. Result: new gloves ordered online. Sigh.

 

My dad came over to help me with my dremel work. We trimmed the thighs a bit and the chest too, which was too large and would have hung over my chest. My dad is an architect and has a great sense of vision which I sorely lack, so it was good to have his help in determining how to keep the look and proportions of the armor while making things smaller. Thanks Dad!

 

 

 

May 20

I re-cut the loops in the ab armor for the belt to slide through so that my pouches would have room to fit on the belt webbing. Then I attached the belt buckle to the ab using E-6000. I also worked a little today on cutting nylon to use behind some butt-joints in the thigh and forearm armor, and ended the day by gluing black mesh behind the eyes and mouth of the mask.

[TK Keith]

May 21-25

I used E6000 to glue support strips of nylon webbing behind the edges of the thighs, forearms, and shins that will eventually allow the pieces to butt-join. (Spoiler alert: I shouldn’t have done this with the shins….. they need to open in order to fit around my legs!) Due to my limited amount of work time, this was a slow process with only a few interior support pieces being glued each day.

 

 

 

[TK Keith]

Week 3:

May 24-25

In addition to working on the butt joint support strapping I got a few odds and ends done: attaching elastic straps to the elbows and biceps, and attaching the elastic strap to the back of the helmet. Now I am able to wear the mask though, and it looks sick!

 

[TK Keith]

May 26

Lots of painting today: two primer coats, three light coats of dark gray, and two clear coats of paint were applied to the forearms and thighs. This meant I was constantly running in and out of the house, but my wife and kids were great sports about it. I also used the dremel to trim down the shin buckles, which I attached to the shins with E6000.

 

 

 

 

May 27

The new gloves arrived today! I mean, the wrong size of the new gloves arrived today. I spent some time on the phone with Home Depot to re-re-order them. Sigh. This ate up a lot of my available work time for today, so I ended the time by adding some foam padding to the inside of the mask.

[TK Keith]

May 28

On a whim, I decided to see if Home Depot had re-stocked the glove I am using. I found multiple pairs in the correct size, which made me regret my phone order from yesterday. I purchased a pair and will keep the pair that I ordered on the phone as a backup. Now that I had the gloves in the correct size, I attached the finger and thumb armor using the same method as before.

 

 

Panic! I tried to put on the shin armor and discovered that attaching them completely together was a mistake. They don’t fit past my ankle. I disassembled the shins (thanking my luck stars that E6000 is so forgiving!) and sent a text to Dan B (Thalizar) asking him for advice.

 

 

May 29-30

More painting today, so more running in and out of the house. I painted the chest and shins with several coats of primer and dark gray spay paint. I also realized that caulking doesn’t go well with spray paint, so I did a little Bondo work on a small crack at the bottom of the shin. A little touch up work allowed me to more forward with two clear coats on May 30.

 

[TK Keith]

Week 4:

May 31

Just a little glove-work today. I attached a piece of black Velcro (the soft side) to the glove to cover a cap near the wrist where my skin could show. I also spray painted the logo on the gloves black.

 

June 1

I heard back from Dan B about how he attached the front and back of the shin armor in a way that would allow them to come on and off easily. I call this the Thalizar Method

1. Glue rare earth magnets to the inside of the front shin and the outside of the back shin near the ankle. Line them up so they will connect to each other when you put the shin on.

2. Attach the shin buckles to the shin using velcro. You’ll need to take these on and off each time you suit up.

3. Attach about 3 inches of Velcro to the interior/ top of the shins- front and back. Half of the Velcro on the front shin should hang over the side of the shin- this is what will attach to the Velcro located on the interior of the back shin. It’s kinda like how TK’s attach their shins, but there is no cover strip used here.

 

 

June 2-6

Assembling the boot armor was another slow undertaking, but Dan B had sent me several pics of his assembly strategy, so I felt pretty confident about the process. I placed the sides and toe armor around my boot to see how they would fit. Luckily I didn’t need to trim very much armor. Then I used wider pieces of black elastic and E6000 to start hooking them together and cover the gaps between the individual armor pieces so that none of my boot will be visible. I attached a small piece of foam under the toe armor so that it would stay level with everything else, and finished off by running a strap from one side to the other underneath the boot. This will help keep everything in place when I walk around.

 

[TK Keith]

Week 5:

June 7-8

With most of the armor done (or close to it) I decided to tackle the latex neck seal. Again, Dan B was a great help and sent me several pictures showing me how he attacked the neck seal. First I cut along one of the back seams to open it up. Then I attached Velcro to the underside of both edges, with one thicker piece of Velcro extending past the edge to catch/hook to the Velcro on the other side. (Similar to the way the top of my shins attach.) The biggest challenge was finding a glue that would adhere to the latex. I tried E6000, hot glue, and a Loctite super glue. In the end, I found that the Loctite seemed to work best.

 

 

[TK Keith]

June 11

Happy Birthday Mom!

I salvaged the chest strapping system from my previous build and placed new snaps on the chest armor that would align with the snaps in the chest harness. Then I went to my mom’s birthday dinner.

 

 

[TK Keith]

June 12-13

I set up the shoulder bells with straps that would connect to the chest harness assembly- very similar to my TK build. Then my mom helped me sew name badge magnets into the chest of the robe which will attach to magnets under the armor and help keep the robe in place. I don’t recall if this was my idea or someone else’s, but it works great!

 

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[TK Keith]

Week 6:

June 16-17

After a few days off and with everything basically ready to go, I decided to test out all of the pieces together to see how things worked. There were a few final touches that needed to be taken care of:

• My dad helped me add some padding to the shins to help them look balanced around my legs

• I added some black tape to the shin magnets to help keep them in place when they are trying to attach to each other. (I still need to improve this attachment method. I am planning to roughen the magnets with some sandpaper to give the glue more of a surface to grip to, and will use a stronger glue to attach the magnets to the shin armor.)

• I added some padding inside the forearms. I can squeeze my arm into it fairly easily, and once they are on, I have a little bit of cloth padding that I insert to take up the extra room and prevent them from sliding around on my arm.

• The Loctite used to attach Velcro to the neck seal isn’t perfect- the Velcro has a tendency to pull up at the edges when taking it on and off. My solution was to run a thick bead of hot glue along the edge to help keep the edge from peeling up.

• The final step was to attach snaps to the bottom of the latex midsection to correspond with snap pieces on the underside of the ab piece. I used snaps because I wanted to make sure it attached to the same spot each time. I secured the top of the latex midsection underneath the chest armor using Velcro. I plan on leaving these two pieces together all the time, but I want the ability to separate them if they ever need adjusting.

 

 

 

[TK Keith]

June 20

Finally- it’s time to take the submission pictures! The whole family got into the act: my mom babysat the kiddos, my dad acted as a handler and kept an eye out to make sure all of the pieces stayed in the correct spot, and my wife took the pictures. It was really fun to wear everything at the same time. I noticed that my robe was cooler than I had anticipated, even in the summer sun. After the pictures were taken, I reviewed them before taking off the armor just in case we needed to reshoot any of the pics. The last step was to send everything to my GML and request that he pass things along to the LMO. And then the waiting began.

 

 

 

[TK Keith]

June 20-July 2

Playing the waiting game. Sometime after I submitted the approval pics to my GML and requested that he pass them along to the LMO, the CRL was changed; now the Sith Acolyte could be approved by the GML. It took me a little over a week, but when I realized the change had been made, I emailed the LMO and asked him if he wanted to look over my application, or if my GML should do it. He told me that my GML could do it, so I emailed him to let him know it was okay to proceed.

 

July 2

I was on vacation with limited internet access when I finally got the news…

 

Hello Keith,

I am writing on behalf of the Golden Gate Garrison of the 501st Legion to officially thank you for your additional costume submission.

I have reviewed your photos and I am pleased to APPROVE your Sith Acolyte (SL) costume.

***Your photos will be processed by the Garrison Website Liaison and then uploaded to the 501st and GGG websites.

 

I am now a SL; woo-hoo!!!!!

[TK Keith]

First Troop

My first troop in the Acolyte was at the Marin Country Fair in July. The day before the event, I did a fair amount of trimming to the toe armor in order to prevent them from clacking around when I walk. This was a little stressful because I was afraid of trimming too much, but in the end I just went for it and took off around half an inch in some places while having the cut follow the bottom edge of the boot sole. I was pleased with the results: looks good and no noise when I walk.

 

I trooped with it one two separate days at the fair, once with the Wolfgang mask and once with the Mynock mask. I actually like the Mynock mask a little better even though the paints are a little different. I think it is a little slimmer and looks a bit more balanced. I was very pleased with the appearance of the armor and was excited to finally be able to troop in it!

 

 

 

[TK Keith]

The SL merchandise

Once my Acolyte was approved, I wasted no time in getting my TFE patch sewed onto my patch jacket. Thomas Spanos reached out to me about putting my pics on the TFE Facebook page, but it took me a while to get the right pictures to send to him. I was really happy to see them get posted on the group FB page though.

 

I was also extremely excited when the Sith Lords Detachment started producing more trading cards, and I immediately sprang on that opportunity. Michael Capell and Chris Greene did a great job turning my images into an amazing card.

 

 

 

 

[MaxiTrooperARC]

hello my name is Maxi and I am from Argentina Buenos Aires !!

 

I'm working on a sith armor acolyte too !!

 

and oregunta is: where I can buy Sith neck for my armor?

 

from already thank you very much for your time !!

 

your armor is excellent

[TK Keith]

hello my name is Maxi and I am from Argentina Buenos Aires !!

 

I'm working on a sith armor acolyte too !!

 

and oregunta is: where I can buy Sith neck for my armor?

 

from already thank you very much for your time !!

 

your armor is excellent

 

Thanks for the compliment! I will send you a PM.

[Bubonos]

Wow, looks awesome man