stormtrooperguy

Sadly I haven't touched this guy in a few days. Needs one more coat for a nice shine!

Wet sanded and ready for what should be the final coat. Good tip that I got somewhere... When sanding like this, wash the item off until the water runs clear, then put it on a stand to dry. Don't wipe it down or blow air on it. Both of those will generate static that will attract dust to it. Just let it sit in a clean, relatively dust free area until it dries on its own.

I can't really work with ABS. It sucks in moisture from the air when it sits. My workshop is in the fieldstone basement of a 100 year old house in new england... The dehumidifier runs constantly and dumps a gallon or so of water a day. To use ABS I'd need a drying box for the sheets... basically a huge low temp oven to keep the sheets dry, and I just don't have the space for it. Otherwise it looks like an orange peel when you pull the pieces... the water in the plastic boils as it cooks. HIPS doesn't take in moisture, so it's easier to work with. As far as selling kits... I don't do that often. I'm astoundingly slow and disorganized when it comes to shipping things. I end up taking 1 night to make the kits and 4 months to get them to the post office. I mostly stick to people coming to my house and making stuff.

Here it is with the first coat of black. It looks good now, but there are definitely some imperfections. Second pass should make it really nice. I installed the screen in the aerators. I went with black screening... part because it looks cool, part because I didn't have any silver on hand The lenses are just taped in for the photo. Definitely a fan of the shiny mirrored lenses. I'm trying to hunt down someone local with an eFX to compare to, but it seems none of our troopers have them. We've only got a couple of shadow troopers and they are all wearing FX buckets. Bummer. I'd love to see how they look next to each other!

My TIE came out pretty nice looking... I didn't do the sand/recoat on that one... that's just one hit of black. Since I do a lot of painting, I have a spray booth at home which helps a lot. Having a closed in space that I can clean and tarp off when I want to do something shiny is a bit help. It's still hard to avoid dust settling on it during painting, but at least it minimizes things!

Everyone is so helpful! I did a coat of gloss black last night. I'm going to wet sand it, steel wool it, and do another coat tomorrow night (I want to make sure the paint doesn't eat itself!) I would have posted another pic, but it looks just like that one only shinier. Once I get to the detailing I'll post another one.

My wife is totally into the hobby... she has an AT-AT driver, Commander Cody and Princess Leia of her own. She just wants me to stop with getting more suits!

I've finally taken the plunge into the TX world! Freshly made this evening: The base helmet is an MRCE that I took apart, tuned up a bit, then made ultracal molds of. The biggest change was the frown... I redid that completely to try to make it more accurate (the MRCE has a very skinny frown that's set a bit too deep into the helmet). I also redid the ears (thinner, wider flare at the bottom, 4 bumps) and the inside of the aerator indents (flattened and smoothed it out for better pulls). The seams were all filled in and the Cap&back joined together as 1 piece. The end result is something more accurate than the MRCE but still with that symmetrical look. I don't sell 'em, but it gives me something fun to play with. I pulled this out of black styrene. I'll still be painting it gloss black, but this way if it chips it will just show through as duller black. I'm going to stick to the eFX paint scheme for the finish. At this point there's no plan to make a suit to go with it, but helmets have a way of attracting armor! I think my wife would kill me if I brought another set of plastic into the house though! I've 12 suits in the house already... lucky 13 might be the breaking point