The Thigh Re-Re-Master Pt 3:Sew What? and the Re-Shim

The belt was done in time for the Southern California Garrison Orange County Squad photo shoot, which was fantastic. 62 out of our 90+ current squad members were in attendance and it was the biggest squad photo shoot to date, thanks in no small part to ANOVOS and troops who signed up because of their kits. Certainly, the majority of us new to the squad are TKs as you can see.

I was even able get some close-up shots for use with trading cards and for my listing on the 501st site.

One thing that bothered me, as it did in Comic-Con, was my right thigh. The garters for my right thigh were still troublesome, to the point where my right drop-down was getting caught on the top of the thigh piece when I walked. (Thank goodness you can't really see this issue in the trading cards being drafted by the squad.)

This is not the sort of "thigh gap" a trooper wants or needs.

After having made the thighs higher (after cutting them far too low to begin with) it was clear that they were low again because the garters needed to be adjusted or replaced.

One thing was especially clear to me:

• My shoulder bells and arms connected to my body with elastic straps and worked great.
• My thighs, on the other hand, connected to my body with inflexible nylon straps provided by ANOVOS (although modified for use with a garter belt) and were troublesome at best.

Taking a play from other troopers, I decided to make the garter straps for the thigh pieces using 2" wide elastic bands (as the industrial Velcro I'm already using, as well as the ANOVOS H&L tape before that, are 2" wide also). However, because I still prefer the Velcro system for some adjustability (especially as I continue to loose weight and get fit with diet and exercise), I decided to sew industrial Velcro to the ends connecting to the thighs, instead of gluing them onto the thighs with E6000 as other troopers do.

The industrial Velcro proved to be more work than I anticipated. Firstly, my wife's simple Brother sewing machine kept wanting to eat the elastic when I tried to sew through it. Secondly, the industrial Velcro was far too rigid for the weak sewing machine to puncture. Thirdly, the Velcro had adhesive backing, and the adhesive interfered with sewing it onto the elastic. So in order to get this job done, I had to sew by hand.

The design is fairly straightforward. I used a length of 2" elastic long enough to sew a goodly portion of Velcro to, and also to sew a 2" long belt loop on the top; I'm currently still using the web belt, but may decide to change to a wider belt in the future. The sewing took a couple for hours by hand, but the results were fantastic.

While I was at it, I also needed to reinforce the elastic loops for my hand guards; they were glued on with E6000, but the elastic didn't adhere well to the H&L fastener supplied by ANOVOS. So I sewed the perimeter of where the extra loop I added connected to the H&L square that fastens to the underside of the ABS hand guards.

I also sewed reinforcement for the shoulder straps I had customized for eventual EIB and Centurion status, to keep them from falling apart as they were also made using E6000. They're still standing up pretty well, but since I already had the needle and thread out, I figured why not?

This is the underside of the straps. I used black thread because it's a thicker, reinforced thread and wouldn't be seen as this is the side that sits on my shoulders. The cross-strap that connects to the shoulder bells was reinforced with regular white thread since that would be visible to those looking closely.

All these modifications were done before my fourth troop in Costa Mesa for an Air Force reintegration event.

That's my pal Blacky who recently moved on from TK to SL :D

One of our handlers even made some looping pictures; as you can see, I had no trouble walking that day as the new garters held up my thigh pieces, and very nicely at that.

The only other thing I had issues with was the thigh shims I added early on to support my larger thighs. They were really my first attempt at shimming, didn't look that great, and kept cracking near the back of my knees. So it was time to revisit them and redo the shims, cosmetically for the most part, but also structurally near the knees where they kept cracking.

I roughed up the existing shims and sanded down just a little before adding a new coat of pristine ABS paste (the old past was discolored due to poor handling techniques during my first go at it. Then it was just a matter of what I did with the front of my thighs - sanding, filling dips, re-sanding, etc. then finally light sanding, polish sanding, and polishing with Novus 3 and 2. I also severely reinforced the inside back of the knee with scrap ABS and lots of ABS paste and clamping to keep it from constantly cracking,

Of course, the right thigh was again the most troublesome.

But the back looks less like hammered poo now.

One more trick, this time in regards the holster: I'm using the rigid ANOVOS holster, which works wonderfully when it's stretched open to allow the blaster easier holstering and un-holstering. My trick is to put an old glass ginger beer bottle in the holster when it's not being worn. This helps keep the holster open when I troop.

I also took some time to make a personal logo for various forums, (501st, FISD, Garrison, etc.) and for use later on with my armor tote. I went with a tattoo art style to keep it simple and distinctive. Credits to GIMP for helping me transfer this from a hand sketch to a layered image with paths and such :)

Money's become tight in our household due to an unexpected increase in childcare expenses, so further upgrades to the suit, or even starting my older kid's Jawa outfit, will be slow going until next year at the earliest. But I'll keep making posts whenever I tweak or fix things, to help with troopers looking for more tips and tricks based on my continued experience. Until next time...