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hikuro1983

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Wanted to start getting this thing going as stuff is in the works on arriving so I thought I'd just mention all that's going on right now.

I'd been a big fan of Bioware's Acolyte for years, and since I'm hitting the 2nd year anniversary of my 501st enlistment I felt it was time to start a new project. I've gotten several costumes done since I joined in 2017, 2 tie pilots, a clone, a Tanker on the way, but I always wanted some kind of a force user character. I wanted originally to do an old republic jedi....but, I've got some beef with the Rebel Legion and how they handle things, and after 3 costumes having such a hard time passing because of "opinions" of the judges, I decided to switch and get all Sithy cause it'll be fun.

 

My armor is arriving from Mynock's Den....i was very impressed with Mynock's attention to detail and accuracy....lets face it, he really seemed to of been the best choice out of all the research I could find, and it wasn't a lot out there.
for future purposes for anyone wanting to build his kit, https://vadersvault.com/armor/

My mask I purchased from Saberforge back in February, I really dug how it looked and it fit the price range I wanted to go for for the time being. Eventually I'll upgrade to Mynock's full helmet...but this'll be fine for now. https://saberforge.com/collections/masks-helmets/products/acolyte-mask?variant=12315978530896

Neckseal I purchased on etsy through Darman Props. https://www.etsy.com/listing/533452618/sith-acolyte-neck-seal?ref=yr_purchases
I've had a few purchases from him over the last year like a holster for my blaster to go with my Resistance Pilot in time for TLJ premiere with my crew....so I know he's pretty reliable.

Gloves were purchased on amazon at a fairly decent price and they don't have any markings to worry about so there's not gonna be any need for modifications, and tthey breathe so that's a plus! https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07GBWBM81/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o00_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

Boots I'm taking cue from First0rder and his purchase from overstock.com https://www.overstock.com/Clothing-Shoes/Genuine-Grip-Footwear-Mens-Slip-Resistant-Twin-Gore-Boot-Black-Leather/7936018/product.html

Robes will be coming from Mystik Merchant as she seemed to of been the best price wise and length of time. While I'm not in a rush at all, I don't wanna get this kit completed by the fall when we start getting active again in my garrison. https://mystikmerchant.com/AcolyteRobe

Undersuit though.....this one is tricky, and I'm hoping for some recommendations. I'm at the heavy set side, gained some weight after a very stressful move recently putting me at around 54 inches on my waist. I really don't want to use something like a TK or Clone undersuit, being one piece is alright, but I wanna feel comfortable at the same time...honestly I feel a little casual baggyness is more acceptable than skin tight. So any ideas on what to do like examples would be appreciative.

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Hola,que buena información has dado!Yo estoy con mi proyecto un poco parado por  mi trabajo pero espero terminar este verano.El  traje interior lo he comprado en una tienda de deportes,un dos piezas transpirable y una talla más grande.En las pruebas con armadura(para medir la capa) deja moverse muy bien y no te sientes apretado.Un saludo y espero ver terminado tu traje pronto!!!

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Hi!  Congratulations on your two year anniversary in the Legion.  You’ve picked an amazing Sith costume- the Acolyte!   (Be prepared for fans to debate whether you are Vader or Kylo.  Haha)

It seems like you have made a lot of progress in finding your materials.  The Mynock’s Den armor is beautiful.  I don’t have any advice on the undersuit- I just use my TK suit.   

One question for you- did your order the robe with the red stripes sewn onto the sleeves or will you be painting those on yourself?  The sewn on stripes are able to be approved, but I personally enjoy the appearance of painted sleeves myself.   Here’s the paint I used, on the advice of others in this group.  

F1D2321C-ACBB-4033-9D94-95492B5C52DF_zps

159CD312-90E2-47AC-903A-35B1D4847D9E.jpeg

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On 7/8/2019 at 1:14 PM, Sicario said:

Hola,que buena información has dado!Yo estoy con mi proyecto un poco parado por  mi trabajo pero espero terminar este verano.El  traje interior lo he comprado en una tienda de deportes,un dos piezas transpirable y una talla más grande.En las pruebas con armadura(para medir la capa) deja moverse muy bien y no te sientes apretado.Un saludo y espero ver terminado tu traje pronto!!!

Thanks maybe I'll get lucky with the suit somewhere....I got to travel an hour or more to another town to find anything good for things to build these kind of costumes.

 

34 minutes ago, TK Keith said:

Hi!  Congratulations on your two year anniversary in the Legion.  You’ve picked an amazing Sith costume- the Acolyte!   (Be prepared for fans to debate whether you are Vader or Kylo.  Haha)

It seems like you have made a lot of progress in finding your materials.  The Mynock’s Den armor is beautiful.  I don’t have any advice on the undersuit- I just use my TK suit.   

One question for you- did your order the robe with the red stripes sewn onto the sleeves or will you be painting those on yourself?  The sewn on stripes are able to be approved, but I personally enjoy the appearance of painted sleeves myself.   Here’s the paint I used, on the advice of others in this group.  

Thanks Keith! Sith Acolyte's been something I wanted to do for a long long time but could never figure out where to get the armor....closest was 3D printing or EVA foam...like I have the files for an EVA Foam build but I never have a lot of great luck with that kind of building. But I'm also quite use to being called Vader in my Tie....god that was annoying.

As for my robe, I asked for the red to be sewn onto the sleeves, my biggest fear is that the size won't be correct and end up being to big. Worse case scenario will have to rip the seams off and paint it by hand.

But that undersuit is gonna kill me, I just dunno what is gonna work for me being a bigger guy around the middle.

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Okay so I haven't said anything as of late cause it took a lot longer than I expected to get my goods. My neckseal from Darman arrived first and was pretty disappointed that it's nothing more than dickie like a TK neckseal....not sure how I'll work with this or if I even can. Worst part was that it doesn't fit, it's really off the mark so I'm going to be ripping the zipper portion off and creating a velcro closure variant in the back cause this is an area that will never been seen thanks to the cloak.

Next was the cloak itself....I gotta hem it a bit. It's far to long touching the ground and then some when it needs to be 1 inch from the ground, I'm not even at that. Sleeves might be a bit to long as well...overall it feels rather baggy. So....that's something I might need to fix.

Well 2nd week of august kicked in and was scratching my head wondering what was going on with my Armor kit and I contact Mynock and found out he had to do new molds for the 3D printed parts as they had deteriorated to the point of being unusable.  Took a little extra time but the good news was he shipped it a few days later and it practically came next day.
Sadly my job situation has still be really crappy....haven't landed any solid work since my move to Texas and it's been a downer. So bvwvJXm.jpg when this arrived I felt a bit cheered up and quickly started to getting to work.
ObVe7ow.jpg However I haven't gotten far. I can't from my corded dremel tool only my battery operated version which can only get me a part and a half in at a full charge which is stupid. With my belt sander helping me out I got a rough trim of the chest, gauntlets, shoulders and 1 whole leg. So Tomorrow I'll be working on getting the other leg done and hopefully the thighs trimmed. I destroyed a pouch -_- but I was gonna replace them with something more authentic down the line.
So that'll leave abdomen, hands, belt and greeblies left which is still a ton! I got a lot of work ahead of me to finish this by halloween which is when I wanna do the first fitting and try it out. Hopefully there's kids around my neighborhood or my favorite holiday is gonna blow.

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I just could not find that blasted dremel tool of mine so I went down the road and picked up a new one. Had to use some of the parts from my battery operated one on the new one in order to continue trimming out the remainder of the parts. Which.....I dunno how but I ended up slicing my thumb open and I NEVER even noticed it happened until I started wondering why something that looked like my red spot putty was smeared all over the shin piece as I was sanding it down on the belt sander. Luckily it clotted pretty easily and just moved on.

cGoUWsf.jpg

Rough trimming is done minus fingers and hand plates. Those are gonna be as last as last can be cause of how small they are. I'll probably take a break tomorrow to work on assembling some furniture for my mom and do some job hunting and Tuesday I'll begin sanding and cleaning my parts. It's been a really long time since I've assembled anything which is causing a lot of doubt. But I think once I finish cleaning up all the parts and refining those edges I'll call it quits for a while. I need to research my options on an under suit and start collecting fabric pieces of strapping and securing.

I mean all in all I think it was a productive day and things are turning out fine.

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Glad to see you are making progress.  Hope your thumb is ok!

I always feel doubt when I start assembling too. I like to have a garrison buddy or even my dad sometimes help lend me an extra set of eyes and hands when it comes to that stage.  I usually use e6000 which is forgiving if I make a mistake.  The only build where I didn't primarily use e6000 was my TK-FO build. I used zap-a-gap but had an experience garrison mate with me for most of the gluing, and he convinced me that since we were going to paint it anyways, it didn't matter if we had a few drips that we needed to sand out.  What a different experience that was!

 

Great job so far. Keep at it!

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On 8/31/2019 at 12:38 PM, TK Keith said:

Glad to see you are making progress.  Hope your thumb is ok!

I always feel doubt when I start assembling too. I like to have a garrison buddy or even my dad sometimes help lend me an extra set of eyes and hands when it comes to that stage.  I usually use e6000 which is forgiving if I make a mistake.  The only build where I didn't primarily use e6000 was my TK-FO build. I used zap-a-gap but had an experience garrison mate with me for most of the gluing, and he convinced me that since we were going to paint it anyways, it didn't matter if we had a few drips that we needed to sand out.  What a different experience that was!

 

Great job so far. Keep at it!

I've never really used e6000 except on my old Sean Bradley ODST suit....everything I've used has pretty much been some sort of epoxy which work rather well but now that I'm on a meager budget, can't afford. Heck I don't even know where my blasted clamps are these days.

Yeah it's frustrating....I've cleaned the forearms, shoulders and thighs but it's not clicking in place in terms of how I want to join these together. Mynock's instructions say to just velcro it all together in areas but doing so feels like it could lead to gaping issues and while there's specific instructions saying seamless or anything on the CRL and the way things are looking is that I will need to shim the thighs to be a little bigger in terms of depth. I'm not sure how well that'll be accepted.

Sad truth is there's no one really in my garrison who's close by I'm kind of in the middle of no where and my whole team is sprawled out to various reaches. Having a helping hand is just a struggle at this point. Only thing I can do is continue cleaning edges and just thinking.

I'm sort of using Andrew Tanski's build as a reference to go off of.

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Not a lot to report, I've been very busy trying to find steady work that pays what I need to survive and its been very difficult. Plus the garage got rearranged and it would seem I'm missing two pieces so far in my build which are for the left boot. I know they're around, somewhere, but not in the damn box I was using or the box it came in. I might have to bug mynock for replacements at some point.

qiB902T.jpg  So far this is as far as I've gotten. I had to significantly trim the heel area to make it fit better...I'll need some EVA foam to fill the left and right portions on the sides and just velcro the toe area to the boot but I think I got the area down decently enough.

 

I doubt I'll have this thing done in time for halloween to give it a test as I can not find ANY of the ABS sheets I took with me, nor do I have anywhere near enough glue, clamps and magnets to do the job and just about broke. So that's just how things are gonna go for a while.

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Okay so I did make some decent progress. I still can't find those damn missing pieces for the left boot but I played with my gauntlets, belt and abdominal. I do have a big concern over the thighs though.....they don't fit, at all, not even close to getting them around my leg they're maybe 3 inches to short. The thought is crossing my mind to doing a shim extension but I dunno if that's gonna hurt me or not cause the two ends should be but joined and contain details.

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On 10/21/2019 at 6:44 PM, hikuro1983 said:

Okay so I did make some decent progress. I still can't find those damn missing pieces for the left boot but I played with my gauntlets, belt and abdominal. I do have a big concern over the thighs though.....they don't fit, at all, not even close to getting them around my leg they're maybe 3 inches to short. The thought is crossing my mind to doing a shim extension but I dunno if that's gonna hurt me or not cause the two ends should be but joined and contain details.

 

I don't believe the two ends of the thigh need to be butt joined.  I would think adding a shim in the back part of the thigh and then using bondo or a similar product to smooth out the line where the pieces join should be ok.  You can also ask your local GML for their thoughts.

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It's been a while, sorry about that. I've been very busy after getting a seasonal job in november just to help pay the bills....but now I"m 3 weeks unemployed and no changes.
Digging this sucker out and looking it over, I think I just need to do a little fine cleaning and can begin cleaning and painting most parts. I'm still having issues with the thighs...

I'm not sure what exactly you mean by back part of the thighs...from what I've seen is that the lower parts of both front and back have raised detailes, if the back was just smooth on the sides I'd be adding extensions to it no questions asked. I guess I'll have to figure out who ever does the SL judging and ask them what my options are.

 

With any luck I'll be spending some time on this suit tomorrow.

On 11/5/2019 at 5:13 PM, TK Keith said:

 

I don't believe the two ends of the thigh need to be butt joined.  I would think adding a shim in the back part of the thigh and then using bondo or a similar product to smooth out the line where the pieces join should be ok.  You can also ask your local GML for their thoughts.

 

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I hope you’re able to land a job that you love soon!  I hope you’re doing ok in the meantime... I would imagine that’s a lot of stress to deal with.  
 

Regarding the thighs, I have the Wolfgang armor which doesn’t have any raised elements, so I was picturing that adding a ship here (see pic) would work.  It sounds like your armor is going to be trickier though.  Reaching out to your GML for advice is a great idea too. 

94F791D0-C40F-49CD-8631-9ACBEBDC89A3.jpeg

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Hi Lee,  it's been a while since you've posted so I wanted to check in. How have you been doing? Any recent luck with finding work?

 

And of course, if you have any progress or questions on your acolyte build, please share!

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using the dark side of the force to necropost the snot out of this! 

On 7/9/2020 at 2:52 PM, TK Keith said:

Hi Lee,  it's been a while since you've posted so I wanted to check in. How have you been doing? Any recent luck with finding work?

 

And of course, if you have any progress or questions on your acolyte build, please share!

Yeah it's been a few years hasn't it? Things have actually gotten a lot better. Sadly it would seem I've been placed on retirement status after some issues with my garrison like there being little to no activity anywhere near me without a 2+ hour drive, covid of course occurred during these times even catching it myself,  and I had significantly gained all my weight back and then some. But things have balanced out quite a bit now and I'm going back at it and been losing weight.

 

I've recently gotten bit by the cosplay bug after so long of doing nothing after a co-worker and I went to a con in February and we started talking about all the things we'd been wanting to do. With that, I started going back to old shelved projects and got back into the flow of it all. I actually had just finished my old Halo ODST suit that had been sitting around since 2014 and had about 70% of it finished. WIth that being done, and my vacation starting up I wanted to do something else on my backlog and decided to revisit the Acolyte. 

In the last 48 hours I've actually been really hot and heavy on this build. I first went and took an account of all my parts realizing I had 4 pieces missing. 2 of them were the pouches for the belt, if I remember right I completely destroyed one of them during the trimming process thinking they were a different part and ended up throwing it away. The other 2 pieces were for the boots. I was going to contact Mynock's Den and see if I could get any replacement parts but it would seem with him becoming a parent he's pretty much just stopped. So as of right now I could really use some suggestions on getting the boot parts and pouches replaced. I found EVA foam files for the pouches on etsy but then I discovered upon inspection I need 11x17 paper and that's incredibly difficult to get ahold of in my area. 
The boot parts, I have jedi KOTOR armor, and I just need the two side pieces not the entire area....I'm not sure if it'll be appropriate to do just print my own or whatever.

343347253_962046661893713_4978378412056093349_n.thumb.jpeg.a76d9098beeaa96ef912814d86fcc57e.jpeg

Yesterday I did quite a bit of cleaning by softening the edges to everything so there's nothing poking me and decided to start off using gunmetal this would help me out in getting a really nice metallic look, I used Rustoleum's Matte finish Gunmetal...it's a little more costly compared to normal gloss variants out there though and I got this problem where either the nozzles are clogged or the pressure is to high and I'm getting drips all over the can so of course remember to wear gloves!

Now because Gunmetal is so dark I decided to brighten it up with a light coating of Metallic Silver....the trick for me is to just do quick passes at around 8 or so inches in all directions. Trying not to get to much silver on there but just enough to look sort of oxidized in a way so I don't have to do a lot of weathering to this.  I think it actually works really well!  Before silver, just with the Gunmetal....after applying a coat of silver. 344025898_144357485134457_6323727936013839965_n.thumb.jpeg.f7fa7c3ab88b960b661517dbd86367e2.jpeg343945318_634973458496605_1314497094038523233_n.thumb.jpeg.478001e176b35963e244cf6c0cf28672.jpeg344269349_1656821431438314_1692179568485593625_n.thumb.jpeg.856ef20b71cc58611421c3437b8bae84.jpeg

Boots were treated in a similar fashion and I think they came out awesome! 343957008_9019678361435743_1089487963755552177_n.thumb.jpeg.576d5c4c11fe6b7bdf44f36da239ed13.jpeg

This morning I'm starting my day by cleaning up the legs while waiting for replacement stuff to arrive. I've got some more velcro on the way after running out after completing my ODST suit....and I seemed to of lost those gloves I purchased 4 years ago which are no longer available so I went with a new option I'll share when they arrive. My focus has been to get the thighs ready to go.... Now there's nothing on the guide that says they need to have some kind of return edge like TK armor does, so to help eliminate wasted space and get these things a little closer together I'll be shaving away the return edges but leaving the sides alone so they need to sort of overlap or join together in some way. 
Sadly the idea of cutting and shimming from the back side won't work on this due to the raised area down low. I mean I could completely cut that off to eliminate the issue but I don't think that's going to fly well in the end. 

344236560_254540990362326_2893885900212241075_n.thumb.jpeg.f7d399a9ae316726d33a776425a69cb2.jpeg343970224_623608283135909_7054343135886824156_n.thumb.jpeg.c94790cef533b87fbe94bd7fe8652fe3.jpeg

That's about it for now...I'll certainly have some more updates either later tonight or tomorrow as I keep cranking along. Hoping to have a lot done today! 

Edited by hikuro1983
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Alright, I think today is a good day for me to stop where I'm at due to the warm weathering making it difficult to work in the garage.

 

Gloves and extra velcro just arrived and sure enough I should had ordered a size smaller, I freaking hate sizing charts with a passion. Originally the instructions called for you to hot glue the armor bits onto the gloves....and I hated it! I said to myself, "Man I got a lot of extra velcro here so why don't I use that instead?!" ST7AErX.jpgYeah that actually worked really well and I think I might rip out the parts from the other glove to do the same method...they feel way more secure using my method....wm0Qpyr.jpg

 

I of course had to do a test shot! iRfCHKD.jpg

This is of course my Mara Jade 2.0 saber I got from Saberforge about 7 years ago or so. It's honestly the only sith saber I got besides Malgus. Which brings me to an important question. Do I HAVE TO get the Vader's Vault Acolyte saber https://vadersvault.com/acolyte/, or can I go with whatever I have that has a red blade and realistic looking? Or can I go with Saberfoge's Acolyte https://saberforge.com/collections/apprentice-sabers/products/acolyte which costs way less? Personally I'd rather go with what I got cause I got it, it's Sith looking and highly functional. 

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Welcome back to your acolyte build!  It’s good to see the progress you’re making.

About your missing pieces.  I have seen a few different types of belt patches get approved. I just picked mine up online as I recall. So hopefully you’ll be able to find some thing small that looks close.

 

For the boots armor, are you able to 3D print some armored pieces for that area?

 

lightsabers- remember that these are optional. You can always submit your costume for approval without it. I doubt anyone would notice the difference if you used yours during a troop.

 

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30 minutes ago, TK Keith said:

Welcome back to your acolyte build!  It’s good to see the progress you’re making.

About your missing pieces.  I have seen a few different types of belt patches get approved. I just picked mine up online as I recall. So hopefully you’ll be able to find some thing small that looks close.

 

For the boots armor, are you able to 3D print some armored pieces for that area?

 

lightsabers- remember that these are optional. You can always submit your costume for approval without it. I doubt anyone would notice the difference if you used yours during a troop.

 

I know Darman Props has made pouches for the Acolyte, but it's a pretty expensive for two even if they're functional.....40 bucks and I'd go for it, but not 100. Other than those and the EVA Foam templates I've bought, I'm not finding much out there. 

 

I do have a 3d printer(s). I bought SW Props.com's jedi armor 2 years ago...man that was not cheap lemme tell you. I'd really hate having to go and buy the Acolyte variant just for shoe parts though. Looking it over the best that I can I don't see any difference between his Acolyte and Jedi foot parts. So I think I'm gonna go for it and hope for the best. 

 

As for the light saber, I think for now I'll keep what I got, that's true though I don't have to have it present for approvals, and yeah no one outside is gonna notice it unless they're totally A-holes about the entire thing. Besides it lets me save up till I'm ready.

 

I tried to fiddle around a little bit with the build some more. The chest piece is velcroed to the abdomen though I will admit I don't really like it. I may though add an elastic strap around it since there's some locations for that on the side of the torso.

My elbow parts are strapped and feel good, just letting the glue cure on that overnight. Hands are totally done, no more to do there. I have coveralls, very tight coveralls coming in tomorrow to try out. The abdomen, chest and neck seal will cover up the flap and zipper just fine and I'll get a seam ripper for the upper pockets and get those removed. 

 

This leaves me now with the leg parts....I'm not to sure how I should approach this. There's no line definition in the parts to help guide me to a smooth and accurate finish to help meet both sides of the shins or thighs. All the definition there is completely gone and the cavs are larger than the shins. It's making me wonder if the Shins overlap the Cavs at all. I'm not sure. It sorta just feels like almost everything there overlaps but I don't think that's right. 

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Sheesh I just can't quit this thing! I broke out my big daddy sander and I just gently went over the edges on the shin/cavs, they're mostly meeting up together but some areas from previous sanding attempts made it gappy...not a lot I can do about that! 

I dug around in my garage and I actually found not only my mask but my neck seal from Draman's Props.....and it fits! Not like choking me either so that is awesome! 
The lower legs are curing right now from their paint job and I'll start the thighs tomorrow and see what I can do from that. 
I looked over my 3D printable boot armor parts.....pain in the butt, lots of supports, but I'll give them a shot. Sadly all I got is PLA so I better not go outside to much if I wear this....well this is Texas I'm living at so better not to go outside in this thing freaking period!

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Definitely not having an easy time with this....I really just hate enclosed thighs and that's all there is to it!

a1M1Vdl.jpgThat is roughly how much I need to shim....good 3 or so inches. The first draft of this was to just shim the total 3 inches from both sides, but it didn't sit in a really good spot so I ripped the shims off, and made them wider. 3rd round in and I go "Why don't I shim both sides, but enclose the outside sealed and velcro the inside?!"  That way I could get it around my thigh just fine and keep it secure. The idea seemed plausible, first attempt saw it as being somewhat a tight fit and the right thigh listed at an angle to the left. Ripped the outside end apart and pulled it further forward. This is gonna be stupid gappy I think...but maybe it'll look fine with the undersuit.

n72Bvu7m.jpg the boot covers were going alright last night and then drastically failed after 3AM. I had to reprint again entirely and change it up on how I wanted it done. With 30 minutes left to go till finished I come back and saw that one of the plates had pulled off the bed. The rest of the parts came out fine, but it's a plate that is 3 plates in 1.....why 3D Props designed it this way is beyond me....and there's a lack of placement examples for it. I'll have to research around here to see what I can find.

 

But hey, my undersuit showed up, and I had to give it a try...it's 2 inches larger than my current Mandalorian suit cause it was super tight on me. I need to use a seam ripper to get the pockets off the front, and I need to adjust the collar area so it seals up better to hide the fabric of the neckseal. But I think this is very promising! I think the robe looks great in the end, but I need to hem the bottom up a couple of inches.

v07JYKx.jpg

 

The lower legs are looking okay. I'm using Mynock's method to seal them up which takes up a lot of velcro....I think I need to trim the return edge at the bottom cause it rides up over the boots and doesn't look great. I'm gonna try and finish those tonight and try the thighs again tomorrow. 

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Hm today was pretty light and not very fruitful. I'm having difficulties getting the plastic belt to bend to shape, that's giving me a headache, no matter what I do it just goes back to its original form even after applying heat. 

sUjfale.jpg I added some thick foam under the bottom of the chest piece, this is to mount to the abdomen when I feel like I got the right placement. I've also added a 2'' elastic strap to keep it more secured and adjustable incase I need to move it around a bit to get the best height or angle. 

beAkHUd.jpg The thighs have been shimmed...I must of redone this 5 times now and pretty much ran out of ABS, I'm not even sure if I'll have enough to do the other leg to even the plastic out....The right leg has 1 velcro enclosure going to the inner thigh while the left will have both inner and outer velcro enclosures. They honestly make me look a little knock kneed but without physical help to adjust these properly to the right shape there's not really much I can do.

oPSFA89.jpgOMjdVNE.jpgI'm also playing with the shoe armor parts, I'm not sure how well this is going to work.....I'm not even sure if the heel should be at the bottom or at the position it's at in the photos. I feel like it should be at the very bottom so I have more room to play with the alignment of the parts. I have a strip that will be printed going to the middle, I'm sure I will need to put heat on the PLA to make it to shape. I also have the missing piece to the other end of the foot in placement along with a backup heel just in case.  

 

I've tested out my lower legs and the fit is very tight and difficult to get off more so than getting on. But I can't get the armor to stop riding up away from the boot. I haven't tried it with the undersuit yet, I'm hoping it'll help lessen this a bit. Otherwise.....eh, I'll be pretty bummed.

 

Also sorta wondering about my shoulder parts....so in Mynock's photos, they're positioned differently from others I've seen online. Some use them as actual pauldrons, while his depiction is sorta like football shoulder pads. I'm guessing because these are covered by the robe it really doesn't make a difference? 

 

That's about it for now, not much I can do until those thighs and the remaining parts are printed. Truthfully I'm already on burnout with this and ready to move onto something else. So I think tomorrow I'll be working on another project for a day or two to kind of get away from this.

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Things are progressing but slower than I would like.

BNwQmdw.jpg Thigh armor has been assembled and painted, omuAhOc.jpg I had to redo these 5 times and I'm still not happy with them. However I just pull them apart to put on or take off and that's better than just sliding them on in my opinion. I tried to clean up the seams but the glue has just been problematic and in some cases hasn't been staying on very well. Same issue when it comes to my lower legs as well.I glued 1 inch elastic to the thighs to hold them in place and will be finishing those off tomorrow to complete that area of the build.

 gMVZF3t.jpg These have also been adjusted and redone multiple times but I can't get them to seal properly. They're also a pain in the butt to get on and off....the leg greeblies don't even want to stay on and I'm now resorting to the strongest glue I can get my hands on to keep them in place. 

p1onbMA.jpg I applied various EVA foam into the belt to help the velcro stay more secured...it's helped a bit but I still can't get this thing to conform to shape even after applying heat towards it. I'm sort of at a loss on this one and really wanna find a better alternative for the belt. 

3JnjISv.jpg With that being said, we do have pouches now! I applied a new smoothing method on these and tried to give them a slightly distressed look for being plastic. Sadly they're non-functional which is a bummer. I may replace these in the future with real pouches but for now these will serve their purpose as decoration just fine.

 

FZH2U1l.jpgm3OraLG.jpg The boot armor from 3D-PROPS are done, I had to shrink them down to 95% to get them to fit onto my boot. The main nose had to be heated to shape the contour of the boot but they work fine. Though the front end does annoy me a bit as it doesn't go all the way down on the boot toe area. I did slip in the original Mynock version and doing that made nothing fit properly. I'm not entirely sure what I"m going to do but for now I"m just gonna keep adjusting it till I find a good spot for all the parts and go from there. My only issue is figuring out how to get them to stay on the boot. 

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Your progress is looking great!  I like the robe but you’re right that you should take it up a little.  The CRL says:

 

“The length of the robe should fall no more than 1 inch from the ground.”

 

 

what glue are you you using that is giving your problems on your thighs?

 

For the shoulder pauldrons- since those are under the robe they really just help add to the appearance of some armor and bulk beneath the robe.  

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On 5/26/2023 at 10:28 AM, TK Keith said:

Your progress is looking great!  I like the robe but you’re right that you should take it up a little.  The CRL says:

 

“The length of the robe should fall no more than 1 inch from the ground.”

 

 

what glue are you you using that is giving your problems on your thighs?

 

For the shoulder pauldrons- since those are under the robe they really just help add to the appearance of some armor and bulk beneath the robe.  

I was at first using what was a really strong epoxy that was supposed to handle 3500 psi of pressure and sets within an hour....but it wouldn't do the job. I ended up using a combination of e6000 and velcro. It works, it's just not pretty.

 

Since my last post I had to put everything away so I could focus on a friends cosplay for a game convention in july and to work on my Boba Fett. However all the paint work and strapping is fairly done minus getting the thighs strapped. I'm currently having issues with the belt, I'm not using a tactical belt as recommended but just a standard 2 inch webbing. However I can't get the belt to take a rounder shape at all even after heating. it up and taping it down with weights and clamps, it just won't hold and ends up warping in some spots.

 

I'll eventually figure it out but now the suit's finishing touches are sort of on the back burner until probably late July or end of August. 

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