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...

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...

Personal Touches: Blacking Out the Bucket & Replacing Screws

Last week I wanted to get the PlastiDip in my bucket before I did an unofficial troop for the birthday party of my cousins-in-law's son, who was having a Star Wars themed birthday. Apparently they were joking about having me get in the armor (or so I found out after I'd done the work), but I was serious! In for a penny, in for a pound...

Anyhow, I actually like the ANOVOS helmet system, minus the fact that I had to completely redo the H&L tape they used for the harness as the adhesive on the tape was woefully unfit for the task (I covered this in a previous blog entry). The part that irked me about the system was the H&L tape, but in this case the stuff that secured the harness to the inside of the bucket. When I went on my first troop, some curmudgeonly kid hit me hard in the back of the bucket (before the wrangler could scare him off) and caused the strap to come unglued from the inside of my bucket. The inside of the bucket wasn't prepped right for good adhesion, plus I had to move the strap anyhow for better performance. But before I replaced the H&L tape, I wanted to remove all the hardware and PlastiDip the interior.

The PlastiDip can help add a little strength to the helmet (or a lot of strength if you go with the brush-in PlastiDip layered with cheesecloth like some troopers have), but it also reduces the amount of reflected light when wearing the bucket. I wanted to get this done before installing new H&L tape for the helmet harness. So I took out the fan system and began with ripping all of the tape and foam out of the helmet's interior, and removing the lenses and screen behind the teeth. I put the adhesive stuff on some aluminum foil in case I wanted to salvage anything.

There was some cracking on the bucket underneath the gasket, so I had to repair one spot by adding a backing of scrap ABS with some CA glue. There was also some other minor cracking in other areas that I may have to address later.

After all the hardware was out of the helmet, I started masking everything I didn't want sprayed or affect by overspray with blue painter's masking tape. I started with the eye sockets, then some on the inside of the bucket over the teeth, then on the outside of the eyes and teeth, then around the neck.

(I also removed the Hovi mic tips and masked over the screw holes, but forgot to photograph it.)

After the masking was done, I wrapped the outside of the helmet in newspaper and secured it with more tape, making sure that all my edges were secure.

Once I was satisfied with the masking, It was time to spray.

Before I began spraying, I scuffed the inside of the helmet with some 350 grit sandpaper - finer than the 100 or 150 grit, but enough to give better adhesion for the PlastiDip. After a light sanding and dusting, I started spraying the PlastiDip in even coats, waiting 20 or more minutes between coats (or overnight since you can reapply any time). I also sprayed the foam pads that go over the screws that secure the bucket pieces together, as they're also originally white.

A cardboard box helped hold the bucket while drying.

Over the course of two evenings I coated the inside of the bucket as well as I could. The front bottom of the bucket proved most tricky as it has a lot of crevices to cover, which is tricky to do without a lot of overs pray.

Since I was revamping the bucket anyhow, I decided to replace some of the ANOVOS screws in the bucket with more screen accurate screws, which happen to be #6 flat head flat drive screws. The problem is that most screws of this variety don't come short unless you order them online. At the hardware store, the shortest they had was 2", which meant I needed to trim at least an inch off each screw. Dremel tool with cutting disk to the rescue. I cut them to the same length as a screw I removed from the bucket after the last coat, but be advised that screws on one side of the bucket are slightly longer than screws on the other side. We're talking 1" vs 3/4", but it's a major difference when working in tight margins, and made putting the new screws in a little more difficult in the end since some where shorter than the original screws.

I forgot to photo the next step since my phone was low on power, but I scuffed the screw heads with some 150 grit sandpaper and painted the heads white. The next evening, after the paint had dried, I installed them into the helmet using washers and #6 nylon nuts. After installation, the paint on the screw heads was slightly scratched, so I'll need to re-paint these a touch when I submit Centurion pics (I need to retouch the armor rivets anyhow).

The screws removed from the bucket will actually be used for the thermal detonator, as they're more screen accurate for that piece. I may also be trimming the TD to make the length more screen accurate as well. If so, it will be content for a future blog post.

Back to the bucket, after the last coat of PlastiDip was dry, everything looked very professional.

Now it was time for the moment of truth - to see if all of my masking had prevented unwanted spraying. I carefully removed the paper and tape and was not disappointed. There was no over spray on the neck seal, teeth, eyes, or other seems, and the job turned out great!

I had to mask over the teeth in order to prevent over spray. To blacken them on the back side, I took some Testor gloss black and painted them by hand. The gloss black is shiner than the PlastiDip's satin look; thankfully, when the screen is reinstalled, it wasn't noticeable at all.

Speaking of the screen, I still plan to re-paint the frown on the teeth towards preparing for Centurion certification, so instead of re-fastening the screen with hot glue, I simply taped it to the inside of the bucket with black electrical tape, so I can remove it later when I perform that paint job. The tape is holding fine for now.

I purchased 15' of 3/4" black H&L tape from a local electronics store. Though slightly narrower than the 1" tape that ANOVOS uses, the adhesion was much better. After re-securing the foam with some extra double-sided tape, I used two strips on top of the foam for each side of the visor (I prefer the visor to separated eyes to help prevent fogging and increase air flow into the bucket around the eyes). Then I used more H&L tape to re-secure the harness to the bucket.

I used the ANOVOS H&L tape as the removable straps for now (hence the white H&L tape for one side of the fasteners) as I would have to tediously remove adhesive from the replacement tape to be able to use them for both sides.

I was now ready to face a bunch of kids wielding pool noodles.

Pics altered and cropped for the benefit of the kids.

Check out that pinata :D

Here I am with my smallest trooper

My older trooper got into the spirit too :D

Overall, the PlastiDip and new tape worked great! One strap did became un-fastened (but NOT un-glued) after I took quite a few pool noodle blows to the bucket, but this was easily fixed and not what I normally expect to do while trooping.

The armor will need some work though, For starters, one of my thigh shims is cracking, again. So I'll need to make more ABS paste and redo the seam again, after sanding down the joint a little and applying some CA glue to strengthen it. I'll also have to re-rivet part of the holster strap since it doesn't even appear that ANOVOS tapped the rivet to begin with. At least I have plenty of Tandy leather rivets from other costuming projects.

These are either simple fixes or otherwise well documented already, so I actually don't anticipate updating this blog until I:

• Repaint the frown on the bucket
• Work on the thermal detonator (it's a shade too long and I want to replace those screws)
• Shim my kidney plate for girth (some slight pudge aside, I actually have slight scoliosis as well)
• Replace the ANOVOS belt with a better one, and/ or
• Replace the hand guards with latex versions

All will be required for me to get Elite and/ or Centurion certification, especially the belt (as I'm told that it won't even pass for Basic certification going forward, even modded as I and others have previously done; be warned).

That being said, the next update may not be for a while, but when I have time and/ or the funds, I'll start making improvements towards Centurion. Until then...