Resculpting my Fett armor

And here you all thought I was done with this thread! Not quite... ;)
I'm still sporting my old Version 1 chest, collar and cod. Those will be getting replaced with my Version 2 pieces cause I'm really not happy with the flat chest pieces I have now and the way they sit on my torso.
I'll slowly be working on these between filling orders, having a day job, a gf, a real life, etc, etc, :p But I just wanted to let you all see the ones I've started on. I went with V2 collar and chest set in boltaron (minus diamond cause the one I have now is already good) and a V2 cod in ABS...all black. As of right now, all pieces are pulled, cut and finish trimmed. After that I'll be doing some light sanding and prepping for primer and paint...
Also, take a look at that nasty wrinkle in the plastic on the cod. I'm not sure if it was there before I did the pull or not, or what (cause I didn't notice it till I was already well into the heating process). I have a feeling it was already there before the pull...either way it was weird cause I've never ever seen that on any pieces of my plastic before. It doesn't really matter though cause I'm just gonna sand the **** out of it and smooth it out anyway, but I just wanted to point it out as well as to show those of you who are interested how to fix a problem like that. Take a look at the pics below and, as always, stay tuned!! :D
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Got a little more progress for you all. All pieces are sanded and primed (and sanded again). I opted NOT to shape these pieces with a heating gun as I felt they were already good for my body style straight off the table...take a look
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Remember that nasty wrinkle? ...Gone! A sanding block took care of that ;)
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Now this next part might seem redundant for many of you, but I have actually had a fair number of people ask me how to cut out the chest light display slots so here it is in pictures....there's probably a number of different ways to do this but here's the way I did mine
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I swapped to a smaller dremel bit to cut the vertical lines
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Still rough, so up next I hit with a few files (some different sizes and smaller ones to get into the tight spots)
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To help me speed up this process (cause it felt like I was filing FOREVER and this boltaron is pretty tough) I VERY carefully ran my cutting bit along the edges to flatten them out closer to the lines I had drawn...this also helped tremendously in straightening out the edges before a quick final filing
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And the final result after some more filing...I also lightly cleaned up the corners and edges with an exacto knife
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After this was done, I hit everything with the same primer that I've been using (refer to the previous posts in this thread) and then sanded it with 400 grit
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And here in this pic you can't even tell there was ever a wrinkle in the plastic! I'm pretty pleased with the result ;)
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These bad boys are now ready for silver. Stay tuned! ;)
 
Moving along on this, got the pieces all under metallic silver and some matte clear coat:
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Up next will be tracing and masking for the silver layer then some bauhaus gold (y)
 
OK so it's been a while since my last report. Sorry for so long in between but I've been slammed with orders as well as trying to squeeze in sculpting another new costume....oh and having a life (what's that?? ;P)

So I want you all to take a moment with me and think a little bit different about the way we've all been approaching attaching the armor to the vest. I know there's been about a half a dozen ways to do this, but I've always thought that there has to be another way that might be a little easier and less time consuming...so of course I thought - MAGNETS
I know, I know you're probably thinking "How in the heck can you make that work?" Well, let me now show you ;)
I went online and found some really strong (probably even too strong) magnets that will fit right inside the armor. These are 12-16 pounders if I remember correctly, but after doing this I can honestly say that you'll easily get away with using 8-10 pounders if you decide to go this route...
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After that, I attached 5 to each chest plate and 6 to the ab....with the corresponding pieces, that comes to a total of 22 magnets!
I used some trusty Devcon plastic welder and they're not comin' off! lol
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Sanded down the areas first of course
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After that was done, all I had to do was line it up on the vest and throw the magnets on the back of it. The best part is that if it's not lined up, you can just move them around a little to exactly where you need them and you're not having to mangle the vest or sew anything or punch holes or anything! (vest courtesy of LSFU). Also, if you want to wash your vest, you just need to take them off. Now there is one catch though, I won't be able to do the collar this way because of the way it likes to pull back towards your throat and the magnets won't prevent that, they'll just slide...that piece will have to be done with either snaps or, in this case, I'll be doing mine with bolts. Pics of that will come much later
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The bad news, these were EXPENSIVE, running me right around just under $100 with shipping
The good news, you will only ever do this one time and they won't wear out and you won't have to do anything to the vest itself, keeping it in better shape for a longer period of time. Plus it took me only about 20 minutes to do this.
That's it for now! I need to do some painting next! Stay tuned! ;)
 
Been a really long time since I posted in here but I did finally get this V2 set finished up. I ran into some issues with the magnets that I didn't think through enough but I got that part figured out. They were actually SO strong that they were pulling the armor over itself. I thought I was really screwed until I came up with a rather simple solution...just cut out some pieces of thin metal to stabilize the magnets between the plates and keep them from grabbing onto each other.
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Here's what I did for the collar seeing as how magnets would likely just slide and not keep the collar from pulling back choking me
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And here's the front set all painted up (I also redid the diamond, but it's just not present in these photos)
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After that part was done, I did the stencil thing again (thanks to Lor) for the chest Fett emblem. Pretty happy with it and I love the results (only took a few pics towards the end of that process, but you get the idea)
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After that I did some weathering, reassembled the armor to my new vest (LSFU) and added the shoulders and wookie braids then took my happy arse to ACE over the weekend and got some really cool shots (HIC courtesy of FAC)
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That's it for now....Thanks for looking and STAY TUNED...I'm still not done with this costume yet ;)
 
Wow! The armor and the paint job looks killer! And I like the painted chest logo too. There's one thing that bothered me when I saw the images: the collar plate looks too liniar and not angled, parallel with the chest plate lines. I know the collar is well made, but the problem might be because of the way you attached it to the vest. You might try to adjust it a bit, this way the overall look of the armor will be insane.
I already see happy faces all around TDH with the 'I need the new RKD armor so bad' thoughts in their minds. You are a valuable asset to this community!

Excellent job!
 
Great job Will ! Your paint job looks stellar. I really appreciate this step by step thread on all the details on how you did the paint job and assembly, it's definitely going to help out on when I order some of your armor!
 
Thanks guys! :cheers
I'm just paying it forward on the paint up parts...I really was kind of clueless myself until I saw another's WIP here who shared his methods (I can't remember who it was anymore, but his paint job was incredible) and he made it really easy to follow (painting is not really my forte but I'm getting better at it and starting to understand it a little more each time I do it), so I thought I'd do the same! If you have a chance at all to do the airbrushing thing, I highly recommend it...the results are unparalleled.
Stay tuned, I've still got more planned for this!! (y)
 
Thanks guys! :cheers
I'm just paying it forward on the paint up parts...I really was kind of clueless myself until I saw another's WIP here who shared his methods (I can't remember who it was anymore, but his paint job was incredible) and he made it really easy to follow (painting is not really my forte but I'm getting better at it and starting to understand it a little more each time I do it), so I thought I'd do the same! If you have a chance at all to do the airbrushing thing, I highly recommend it...the results are unparalleled.
Stay tuned, I've still got more planned for this!! (y)
I think I gave you the colors bud, after seeing you on the side of central we started chattin
 
I know it worked out well, its looking good...On the collar though it looks like its straight like Rafal was saying in the pics. Is it the same collar?
 
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