Camprandall's Flametrooper Build

[camprandall[501st]]

Plasti-dipped the ankles today. With that and a glossy coat of paint, these turned out pretty nice! Hopefully they'll hold up to trooping. I may line the inside with speaker cloth to add strength.

 

[TK 4813[TX]]

Thanks Geoff! And congrats on the new baby!! We're headed to Wisconsin the first week and a half of September so we should hook up again!

 

So painting is going SO SO much better tonight! Thank God. I think the primer just needed a couple more days of curing. The warmth of the evening might be helping too.

 

 

 

Count on it! We'll be waiting

[toddo[TX]]

Looking terrific Clint as always. I'm a few steps behind you and am eager to see how you work out the harness for the pack.

[camprandall[501st]]

Looking terrific Clint as always. I'm a few steps behind you and am eager to see how you work out the harness for the pack.

 

Glad yours is moving along! Do you have a pack yet? I still am probably 3 weeks out on my MLC pack.

[toddo[TX]]

My modified MLC prototype:

[Griffin-X[501st]]

My modified MLC prototype:

 

That's a great looking tank!

[camprandall[501st]]

Awesome!

 

So I haven't had much time today, but the work I'm doing is showing more tangible signs and it's exciting! Got the arms and legs figured out today. I'll post later how I did the shins because I'm THRILLED with it! It's a velcro closure that essentially has zero gap!

 

Got the knee cap added and it added that little bit of cleanness I was looking for.

 

 

 

 

 

 

BEFORE

 

 

AFTER

 

 

 

 

 

Legs!

 

 

 

 

Arms!

 

[Allan1313[MBO-CMD]]

Looks awesome!

 

Sent from my Nexus 6P using Tapatalk

 

 

[toddo[TX]]

Looking good Clint. I can't wait to see your zero-gap Velcro method.

[camprandall[501st]]

Ok, here's what I did for the shins. I've had four costumes now with velcro closing shins and never liked how they looked so I decided to experiment. I first tried a magnet and socket closure system and that failed miserably - as it takes too thick of magnets to reliably hold the abs together - so I ended here. I like it much better!

 

Final Product (this is the velcro closure inside seam)

 

 

 

What I did was basically create a tight slot that the calf abs fits into and then used two fabric backed thin ABS straps with velcro to hold it closed. It works pretty well and I can also add one or two more flaps if for some reason I feel it won't hold - though it feels pretty secure to me.

 

 

 

[toddo[TX]]

All these years and all of these builds, and I've never encountered that solution before. Well-done!

[camprandall[501st]]

All these years and all of these builds, and I've never encountered that solution before. Well-done!

 

Thanks! It's an interesting idea, but a little fussy. I had to tweak it a good bit to get it to stay nice and locked where I'm not afraid of it coming apart, particularly at the ankle. I think it'll work though.

 

Repainted my 7 pieces with crackling this morning and thankfully only two saw some recurrence, although much less. Now everything is great except for a tiny bit to sand/polish on the cod and a bigger area that I again have to sand and repaint on the butt plate.

 

I also built the belt and attached the cod and butt plate to the belt armor last night. I did it the same as my FO TK, using chicago screws to mount the boxes to the belt and using rivets at each end of the belt to help hold the rubber to the canvas. The buckle connection will hide behind the pouch but I have to sew bigger elastic loops to it first as the one it came with only fits the belt, not the buckle. Also, I used velcro for the cod, but I may add a couple of snaps for security.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I used little glued shims to attach the box covers so that they're not only relying on glue to hold them on.

 

 

 

 

Getting close!

 

[Griffin-X[501st]]

Wow, looking really good and close for sure Clint! Well done!

[toddo[TX]]

Get ready to be a CRL model Clint

[camprandall[501st]]

Let's do it! We'll, I've got to finish the pack and helmet first of course.

[T K[501st]]

Wow! Just found this thread. Absolutely amazing work!

[toddo[TX]]

Clint, are you attaching the shoulder bells to the chest/back assembly, or are you strapping them to one another? With the large return edge, it seems less practical to me to attach to the chest/back, but I'm curious what you are liking.

[camprandall[501st]]

Clint, are you attaching the shoulder bells to the chest/back assembly, or are you strapping them to one another? With the large return edge, it seems less practical to me to attach to the chest/back, but I'm curious what you are liking.

I'm going to attach those tomorrow. I think I'm strapping the bell to the bicep and to the yoke. We'll see how it works.

 

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[camprandall[501st]]

Hey gang! So I'm hitting that fun part of the build which is how to make everything fit well. Per usual, it's always more awkward than it seems like it's going to be at first. Here are my notes/questions after throwing the upper body on for the first time.

 

 

* The torso wants to slide left or right over my shoulders. I know I don't have it strapped to the back yet, but it still is going to need some way to stay in place when I move around since it's really only resting on a couple return edges. It also just feels really big because it seems both too close to the helmet and too far down the body. Not much I can do about that.

 

* The shoulder bells I think are just too big or too long. They drop lower than they should and are much bigger than my ANOVOS FO TK. I think I'm going to cut the bottom edge down by a half inch.

 

* The shoulder bells also need a little abs shelf to keep them more elevated. I didn't need this with the FO TK because the shoulder gaskets filled everything out. Here, they dangle a bit.

 

* The mid-section is tricky because I again feel like everything is too big. Looking at photos, I suspect that the belt armor and waist armor are both taller - unless these dues were 6' 4" or something - and the cod piece also seems smaller. I may cut some of these pieces down more.

 

* The chest flaps I think may also be too big. I'm not tall (5' 10"), but everything is jamming together much more tightly than I think it should. I'll likely cut down the height a bit on these.

 

* I'm not sure how to attach the arms. I'm thinking now of snapping them to the shoulder bells, but not sure if that's the kind of tension I want. I need to figure out how to keep them from sliding.

 

Progress!

[toddo[TX]]

You actually don't look bad at all IMHO, but I can see some of the issues you refer to Clint. I don't like that the chest/back rests on return edges, so I was thinking of padding it with foam beneath the shoulders. That would help to re-distribute the load across the entire shoulder so that the return edges don't dig as much and might also stabilize the sliding movement you speak of. Did you end-up strapping the shoulders bells to the chest/back? When I tried my chest/back on with a bell resting on my shoulder, the bell was quite a bit lower than the chest due to that large return edge. Screen images suggest that the shoulder bell rests at about the same height as the chest/back. Check out this beautiful image:

 

So it stands to reason that the shoulder bell might need to be padded a little as well.

[camprandall[501st]]

Wow, that's a great pic! I'd been told this flamethrower was actually functional for the movie and you can believe it with this one.

 

Yeah, looking around it's obviously lifted because there's a gap. That sounds like the trick. Not sure if padding is the approach I'll take or maybe some curved abs that snaps into the shoulder harness straps or something so it doesn't move around.

 

[toddo[TX]]

I'm curious to see what that abs setup on the shoulder would look like. I've done so many traditional TKs that I am having trouble picturing it, but I'm intrigued.

[camprandall[501st]]

I'm curious to see what that abs setup on the shoulder would look like. I've done so many traditional TKs that I am having trouble picturing it, but I'm intrigued.

 

Yeah, not exactly sure, but I'm wondering about a curved piece mounted to a short stack so that it sits curved on the shoulder. I'm just making this crap up since I don't actually know how it works. It's kinda liberating!

 

What isn't liberating is cutting open your thumb opening a kids toy and ending up with stitches. Yeah, I won't be done with this in two days like I planned.

 

 

[camprandall[501st]]

Oh, and I'm also pretty sure the straps go through the return edge on the shoulder to keep it higher. That's what I'm going to do.

 

[toddo[TX]]

Holy moly Clint! That's a nasty one. I've injured myself endlessly working on my droids, but that one is sick. Sorry about that. Anyway, I think I envision the plastic inside your bell. It sounds like a shoulder rest that the bell sits on perhaps. Good call on the straps going through the return edge. This shot might help:

 

It looks like his left shoulder isn't connected properly and is resting lower. I haven't seen these white straps connecting the bells before either.