Armor attachment

[danguf]

I have my soft parts and getting my armor this week. What is a good way of attaching the armor to the Vader suit?

[Allfather]

I'm not 100% sure of what you mean. As far as I know, none of the armor actually attaches to the suit. Most of us build some sort of harness system and all the armor parts just kinda hang off each other. I use a LOT of velcro. I have seen others use different methods. I even have the "cap plate" the covers the top of the cape tied on with leather thread.

 

On my kit, I plastic welded the front and back armor pieces together at the shoulders. This allows it to "clamshell" over my upper torso. The sides have tabs with velcro that you overlap and let the velcro do its thing. Shoulder bells are connected to each other with, you guessed it, velcro and the combo piece that forms is connected to the main armor with straps and, yet again, more velcro. I made a long strip of black leather (I'm lucky as I made the tunic and had some of the matching leather left over...but it shouldn't matter as none of it is visible) that is attached to the chest plate and hangs down the front. The ab plate and the groin protector plate are attached to that with a 5 inch gap to allow for the belt between. As you have probably guessed, those are all fastened with velcro.

 

The hand plates are fixed to my gloves. Once again, velcro was my go-to. The bracers are a different story. Mine are a bit tight, so they actually stay in place by themselves for the most part. I made a couple of plastic straps for each side that I painted the same color as the armor and they just push up under the bracers and connect with yet more velcro.

 

I'm not sure if this works, but here is the link to my Imgur album for the IK. It shows some of the parts and how they are connected.

 

https://imgur.com/gallery/imperial-knight-gYeir