Industrial Velcro and Rebuilding the Belt

This is a long blog post that covers a couple of troops and related modifications and repairs as a result of wear and experience.

To start , I participated in a great, giant troop with the OC Squad (and other Southern California Garrison members) at the OC Zoo in the Irvine Railroad Park. There were about 50 members there between the 501st and Rebel Legion, as well as a few anchor characters like Rey, Vader, and Kylo. It was a lot of fun!

(With celebrity (pig) Kevin Bacon!)

It was a great troop, but it was a bit warm. I'm glad I had some spare white duct tape in case of emergency, because the ANOVOS H&L tape on my shins just couldn't take the heat. After the fact, I had a mess to clean up between the crap H&L tape and the adhesive from the duct tape.

To clean up, I used orange oil, Simple Green, and finally rubbing alcohol to prep the contact areas for some new industrial strength Velcro that I purchased at Home Depot.

After the clean-up, I cut the Velcro to the proper length and width, I carefully placed it onto the shin closures.

I've trooped in it once since then at San Diego Comic Con; we went even though we couldn't get passes for the con itself, because there's a ton to do in the Gaslamp district outside of the con - plus there was a 501st photo shoot Saturday morning for the Imperial Sands Garrison in which I wanted to participate, so it was the perfect excuse to troop! The shins held up very nicely, even when I had to run to the photo shoot at the con when I almost ran late trying to find it.

The serious photo

The fun photo

The really fun photos

My pauldron with a vinyl sticker I had made for the event. I ended up needing to use extra tape as the heat the previous day caused the edges of the vinyl to curl.

Trooping the con made me realize that I needed to replace the H&L contacts in my thighs and shoulder bells with industrial Velcro as well, as they were starting to separate from the armor. I removed the old H&L tape, cleaned the armor like I had for the shins, and then put in the new industrial Velcro.

The snaps for my thigh garters were slightly bothersome too; if they end up not working after this Velcro replacement, I may try to adjust the snap tension using some pliers, or modify it to be more in-line with a "traditional" belt garter system.

The other casualty was the floppy ANOVOS belt. one of the lower Chicago screws tore through the belt. I'd planned on eventually replacing it with a Rob Kittell belt from www.imperialissue.com, and it seemed like now was the time, especially with the annual squad photo shoot coming up this week and an opportunity to get pictures for my trading cards.

I had previously planned to shim my ab armor to fit around my girth, but after measuring my belly some weeks earlier to plan for this project, I was disappointing with my physical fitness. My wife had started a daily workout and nutrition regimen a couple of weeks earlier, so it was then I decided to join her for workouts in the mornings and to start watching my portion, especially carbs. Within a month I had lost more than a couple of inches form my belly, making shimming he abs completely unnecessary. This was also good because I wanted to get my ab sizing straightened out before ordering  the new belt, to ensure I had a belt the correct length.

I ordered his standard 40" belt online and it arrived within a few days - great turn around for flat postage. The belt was as advertised, at 40" with an extra 10" of overlap for the Velcro closure in the back for a total of 50". It has two canvas layers sandwiching a plastic center that gives it a lot more rigidity than the canvas-only ANOVOS belt. This also makes setting up the belt for ANH Stunt easier as the holster is only supposed to be fastened to the belt with two rivets/ Chicago screws instead of the four used by ANOVOS, which would be more inline with the ANH Hero trooper instead.

The first step was to lay the new belt out and mark where all the new holes would go for the snaps (to fasten the belt to the ab plate) and the rivets (to fasten the plastic ammo belt to the new canvas belt). I covered the inside of the belt with blue painters tape so I could mark up the tape - it would be easy to punch through with leather punches and remove before fastening snaps and rivets.

I started with the center at exactly the 25" mark , 1.5" from either the top or bottom as the belt is 50" long and 3" wide total. This would mark the rivet for the center of the ammo belt. From here, snaps were marked metrically at 17cm from center; the end rivets for the ammo belt were 20cm from center. I'd worry about the two holes for the holster closer to final assembly.

Next it was time to cross the Rubicon and remove the elements from the old ANOVOS belt. Knowing that the rivets fastening the ammo belt to the canvas were terrible to remove, I decided to at least get the ammo belt off the canvas by simply cutting it off the belt, being careful to avoid the elastic of the drop-down ammo boxes. I also had to do this for one Chicago Screw for the holster as it was incredibly torqued and refused to unscrew until I had removed it through cutting and was able to holder the other end with pliers.

Yeah, there was no going back now.

So now was the "fun" part - removing the old rivets from the plastic ammo belt and removing the cover caps from the front. I've read horror stories from the ANOVOS builders FB group and also seen UKSWrath's write-up on his belt. I'd also heard that some people weren't cursed with a crazy amount of pink epoxy and were able to remove the rivets and caps with relative ease.

Unfortunately, dear reader, I wasn't one of those people.

From the onset, I could tell that the caps were glued on with a large amount of pink epoxy (the smell of it reminds me of the stuff used in dentistry to create molds or fasten crowns to teeth). The first thing to do was to remove the rivet on the back of the belt using a Dremel. I used a cutting disk to care a cross into the rivet head so it could be easily remove with pliers and then ground down more.

You can already start to see some deformation in the ABS in the shot above right. Lamentably, in a situation like this, it's not about removing it without damage, but mitigating the amount of damage required to finish the job, to make repair easier.

I hit this epoxy with everything I had, from a butter knife like UKSWrath used, to a heated putty knife, to a cutting disk (this was far too risky and may have caused even more damage), to a sharp knife (I abandoned this for risk of personal safety) and a hobby knife (the blade wasn't long enough and the textured grip was causing too many scratches). I did the best I could, but in the end I had to pry up the last bit of the cap and rip out part of the ammo belt to get them off.

The center cap is always the hardest for anyone given the lack of space to attack the cap from the side. In the end the ammo belt backing was deforming so much that I cut relief cuts into it from the back to mitigate damage. Obviously this left a big chunk missing that would need to be repaired with scrap ABS and perhaps even paste to ensure the cap covered up any other blemishes.

Out of all of this, at least eh caps were removed without breaking, as those are more difficult to repair. I just had to take the Dremel grinding tip to them and clean the epoxy out from inside the caps to ensure they had enough room for whatever mounting hardware I decided to use.

It was a dusty job. Remember to wear a mask folks!

With the caps cleaned out, it was time to start repairing the ammo belt. So I dug into my ABS trimmings and found some pieces to CA glue on to the backside of the ammo belt. I clamped them into place for about 10 minutes to allow the CA glue to cure (I don't currently have any Zip Kicker).

After the glue cured, I went in from the front and filled in the craters with some spare ABS paste from my thigh piece rebuild. That was it for the night, so I decided to let the paste fully cure before resuming work the next evening.

The next evening, I spent an hour sanding down the ABS paste smooth and then polishing, with the help of 100-150-350-600-1500 grit paper (the latter two wet) and Novus 3 and 2. Still some light scratching, but otherwise not bad. The perfectionist in me could spend another hour removing all the light scratches, but I needed to finish tonight to give the E6000 time to cure before Saturday.

I had punched the belt holes (using leather hole punches) and put the snaps on the belt the previous night: I simply used the General Tools Brass Snaps and Fastener I used for the snaps on the ab plate, but the female counterparts on the inside of the belt, again with each snap 17cm from center on each side (34cm total). The new belt fits exactly like the ANOVOS belt, but it's obviously more rigid.

For the ammo belt, I fastened the center using a standard leather rivet with a washer on the back of the snap, to give it more support. I fastened the rivet backwards, with the rivet head on the inside of the belt, as this way was far easier to tap in given the shape of the ammo belt. The bonus is that the rivet head is far less likely to scratch my armor than the rivet back.

For the ends of the ammo belt, I used tow of the four Chicago screws from the hostler, since it was only going to need two of them for the Stunt mounting. I chose Chicago screws for one reason: as a stretch goal, I might alter the costume to support trooping as a Heavy Weapons Trooper (HWT), which don't have drop-down ammo packs on their belts. Using Chicago screws will allow me to unfasten the ends of the ammo belt to easily slip off the drop-downs if that ever happens.

When finished, the assembly was as good as new, on the new belt.

Now it was time for the holster. The first thing to do was remove the two extra holes at the top of the holsters. I measured 2.5" from the top of the holster and cut off the remaining leather, leaving only two mounting holes for the Stunt mounting. I also measured center-to-center on the bottom rivets to get the spacing correct for the belt holes - the measure is 5".

For the belt holes, UKSWrath used different measurements for his holster holes, but I opted to use the ANOVOS belt measurements and fasten the holster slightly higher using a 3/4" measure from the bottom of the belt; this also gives the rivets more purchase on the plastic stock inside the Kittell belt (this should NOT affect being able to apply for Centurion status). Because I had almost exactly 7" between the edge of the ammo belt and the edge of the Velcro, I decided to split the difference and give 1" from either side, which still put me very close to the ammo belt but not too close to the Velcro.

I marked the holes directly on the belt using a pen and very small marks, put the holes into the belt, and mounted the holster. You can't argue with the results - A very clean, strong mounting with all the pieces secure and fit for ANH Stunt CRL.

Edit: when using Chicago screws for the holster, try to use blue thread locker, which you can get form most hardware or auto parts stores. This will keep the screws from becoming loose and falling out, since it's hard to torque them down without deforming the flat threads (which also might cause them to scratch your armor).

Lastly was replacing the rivet caps on the ammo belt, this time using some proper E6000  in case of future maintenance. Before I did that, I CA glued the caps of the Chicago screws onto either end of the ammo belt, to keep them from floating off if I ever need to unscrew them for possible future HWT conversion.

After the CA glue cured, I carefully placed E6000 on the back of the caps and glued them back into place, about 1.25" from either edge to get them as centered as possible, with perhaps 1/4" at most away from the edge of the ammo belt for the caps on the ends.

So I should now be set for this Saturday, and one step closer towards going for EIB and later Centurion certification. For the latter, I still need latex hand guards for the rubber gloves, but I'll source these later as to spread around my purchases. I've already ordered more split rivets to correct the rivet spacing on the left side of the ab armor. Both will be covered sometime in the future on this blog. Until then...

Strapping Extremities

In addition to the thigh pieces, I also worked on strapping for my arm pieces, and a garter system for the thighs.

First, I'll mention that I did finally receive my soft parts from ANOVOS on Good Friday. But since my office was closed, I didn't actually get them until the following Monday. The ANOVOS undersuit is actually more loose than the stuff I purchased on Amazon, but still fits well. The rubber gloves are what I'll be using to certify for EIB for the 501st.

Now let's talk about the arms. I basically did the arms up per the ANOVOS instructions. I used some longer pieces of H&L tape inside the shoulder bells to help with adjusting placement for the bicep pieces.

After fitting, I decided there was too much inside edge in the shoulder bells for comfort; after all, these were some of the first pieces I trimmed and haven't been retouched until now. I removed a bit of it not only helped with the margin between the bells and the biceps, but also improved flexibility of the bell pieces to give them more give.

As for the thigh pieces, in preparation for finishing this project, I decided that, like many out there, I didn't want to attach the thighs to the inside of the ab plate as per ANOVOS instructions. Instead, I decided to create a garter belt system like many troopers use, but incorporate the parts from ANOVOS to make the build easier, and more adjustable thanks to the H&L tape.

I rummaged around and found an old untrimmed (full length) web belt that was a "field find" from my paintballing days. The first thing I did was unravel it and apply a fresh coat of dye (I used some leather dye I already owned). I did end up taking off the buckle and belt tip for this project after the pictures were taken.

I let the dye dry overnight and then put the belt through a few wash cycles to knock out excess dye - no need getting that on the inside of my armor pieces. Once it was dry, I trimmed the belt for size, leaving me a sizable amount for the next part of the project.

Next, I made loops to fit over the belt that would hold the ANAOVOS snaps for the thigh straps. Because the snap plates were longer than the width of the belt, I didn't have to worry too much about making these too small to fit over the belt. I took two 6" strips of web belt scrap, folded them in half, and then used a leather punch and small leather rivets (again, stuff I already had) to create the loops. I used CA glue on the edges of the webbing to keep them from fraying (I did the same with the actual belt as well).

The snap plates themselves were wider than the webbing; therefore, I removed 5mm from each edge of the plates to fit them to the web loops, using the old score & snap method.

Finally, I attached the plates to the side of the loop that would face INSIDE towards my body, using E6000 cement and excessive clamping. The reason is because the straps were designed to fasten to the ab plate, and the snaps open opposite to the hook tape that fastens to the loop tape to be attached to the inside of the thighs.

Once I'm done reshaping the thigh pieces, I'll be testing this system out to ensure it will stand up to good trooping. Until then...

Oh, snaps! (And rivets, and ABS paste...)

So I did a bit of work over the past couple of nights. Where do I begin? Probably with the ab plate this time.

The instructions and 501st CRLs call for a snap in the upper right of the ab plate. I followed UKSWrath's blog for more details. Marked the hole, double-checked the measurements, drilled, and tapped the rivet, male end towards the inside (to snap to the strap). Easy.

I needed to start getting the torso plate ready for strapping. Now, if you're using the ANAOVOS instructions, you'd just toss some H&L tape into the left side of the torso and call it a day for that side. But as it is, I (eventually) want to try for Centurion some day (I'll probably have to settle for EIB for the moment due to budgetary concerns, and not wanting to replace the belt just yet). This means that you need three MORE rivets on the ab plate's left side to correspond with the three on the kidney plate. At least ANOVOS gave me PLENTY of spare split rivets :D

Now, where you measure from top to bottom is debatable. UKSWrath does it one way, but since I started out with the kidney plate and am a noob to this, I did it another way. Fortunately, it doesn't matter so long as the rivets or 10cm from the edge of the plate and evenly spaced. This is because the belt will cover up the bottom rivets anyhow. The 501st will accept them in either configuration (if that's your goal).

So instead of having to re-do the kidney plate rivets out of OCD, I kept them as-is and drilled the holes in the ab plate to match. I first lined up the kidney plate, made marks for approximation, verified the measurements on the ab plate with a rule, and drilled.

Now it was time for the groin snaps. Wait... the split rivet is supposed to go in the cod plate, NOT the snaps? ... well f**k.

Yeah, I messed up. Thankfully, snaps are easy to remove with some pliers and "gentle persuasion" (and I have spare #6 snaps from my snap anvil set), but the holes don't exactly disappear with an eraser. And even if I keep one of the existing holes, the other has to go bye-bye. I'll have to make some ABS paste.

Until then, I can get the snaps in the proper piece - the "posterior" (butt) plate. Easy peasy. I drilled a hole about 20mm from the edge of center, then another hole 20mm from that, to match the strap supplied by ANOVOS. Then I set my snaps. I ended up using the snaps that came with my snap anvil as they worked better and match the snaps on the strap.

At least the snaps are in the right place now. In my butt... plate.

Now for the shoulder strap plates. During the armor party, the sqaddies advised us that these straps just love to snap in half lengthwise while trooping, and advised us to reinforce them with scrap ABS on the underside. That being said, I had plenty of scrap ABS, but wanted to match the shape of the straps as much as possible. I tried a heat gun at my office but encountered some "baconing" (where the edges of the pieces start to look like cooked bacon). So I had them take a hot water bath.l

This was challenging for me as a novice builder, but worked out as I was subjecting scrap ABS to the hot water bath as opposed to "real" pieces. What I did was soak the scrap in boiling water for 30-40 seconds, removed the piece, and formed the curve to the room-temperature shoulder straps by hand using my Gorilla Grip gloves. I further used the old rolling pin to remove baconing and any other warp. Each scrap required a few passes. I found it's better to be slow and methodical than to try to rush, lest you ruin the piece and have to start over.

Once the pieces were finished being curved, I used the Dremel sanding drum and sanding block to remove an leftover warping, then glued the pieces under the straps with several clamps and plenty of E-6000.

Later in the evening I went to Home Depot and picked up some industrial acetone for about $8, to start making ABS paste.

Only one of these items is for human consumption.

In a nutshell, here's how you make ABS paste:

Get a glass jar. Add some cut some scrap (make sure there's no clear protective film first; it won't dissolve in the acetone), add acetone until pieces are slightly covered, and then wait a few hours, mixing occasionally with a metal or wood stirrer. Once applied, it dries pretty fast. One can probably work with it in a few hours after you put it on, although I've been waiting 12+ hours due to real life.

But while that was setting up, I decided to work on another part of the ab plate - the snaps for the belt. Using a mix of the instructions from ANOVOS and UKSWrath's guide, I put my marks at an ideal height exactly 170mm from center in each direction (340mm or 34cm total from snap to snap) at a height determined by using a clamped straight edge as a guide line.

I also placed the belt over the plate as I wore it to ensure the snaps would line up.

After triple-checking, I drilled the holes and set the snaps. Now, getting the belt onto and off of these snaps is a pain - it's like the crimped the snaps on the belt stiffer than those on the ab plate straps (which use the same size snaps). I applied a very very slight amount of WD40 to the male snaps on the ab plate to help hasten them, which seemed to help a bit. When donning the armor, you'll probably want to fasten these snaps BEFORE putting the armor on, and unfasten AFTER you take the armor off, to avoid damaging the plate. But yes, the belt fit just fine with the measurements as described above.

Now that the ABS paste was set up, it was time to cover the one hole in the cod piece. I applied paste to the hold and both sides of the plate, using a scrap ABS piece as a scraper to control lumping.

Time to let that set.

Working with the belt, I found it flaccid, to say the least. So I took the advice of other ANOVOS builders (beyond replacing the cloth part of the belt outright) by gluing the ABS plate to the belt, and applying clamps and magnets.

Since the top is the part from which the cloth will hang, I clamped the top foremost, and used magnets elsewhere. That should help stiffen up the belt for now, and allow me to replace the cloth with a Kittle belt in the future. This is because, according to UKSWrath, the stock ANOVOS belt won't fly for Centurion status, even modified (I still need to remove or cover up some of the holster rivets for Stunt cert). But I don't have $40 to spend just on a belt at the moment, so that will have to wait until later. For now, this mod will get the job done for at least Elite certification (once I take care of those rivets).

That's it for now. I was able to get started on sanding the ABS paste on the cod, but because the snap had left a circular score ring, I had to sand down again and apply a second coat (no pictures). Next session I'll probably be finishing up that area and finally getting the strap and split rivet in place. once that's done, I can apply the left and right straps for the ab and kidney plates, and then the butt, chest, and back plates, then the limbs, and then... close to done? We'll see.

Until then...