Snaps on armour

With my new vest being made and my new set of armour, I need to know the best method of attaching snaps to my metal armour. It should be easy enough to attach them to the vest, but I can't see how to do this.

And if this is not the best method, what have the rest of you used to attach metal armour to your vest?

I am in the same boat. I am going to try some glue that said it would work with metal.

i used velcro but i want to use magnets to attach the armor

There's a thread in the Jango forum about this.

Long-story short is that you'll want to use the snaps that have a total of four pieces (two for each side of the snap). Just put one through your vest normally. And put the other, armor side snap, through a 1'sq tab of abs, sintra, or other plastic. The snap will be attached to the tab, then use any regular adhesive to attach the plastic tab to the plastic armor

Personally though, I use magnets for my chest plates,

Phil

Thank you Phil, but my problem is that I have metal armour. I just can't see how to attach it to metal. I will have platic armour soon, but till then I wanna get this working.

This is a good topic.
I'm actually on the same boat too with my newly completed FG chest armors - still need to find a way how to adhere those to the vest.

Phil's suggestion on the snaps looks promising, however dunno about the magnets. Where do you get these magnets & how do you attech 'em?

Mardon

i used epoxy putty to attach the snaps to my armor plates. it holds really well.

I used a two-part epoxy available at wal-mart to attach my magnets directly to the sintra armor. Worked wonderfully. I imagine that it would hold metal to metal, but can't be certain.

I used magnets available at home depot, they usually come six to a pack or so, each is relatively thin and roughly an inch in diameter. Simply glue them anywhere you like on your chest plates. I used three on each of the three main plates (used velcro for the center piece). Once the magnets are affixed to the main plates, just put them on your vest (as you wear it) put magnets on the inside of your vest to hold the plates on and slide them into the desired position. Once everything is well just slip the vest off while the plates are still affixed. You now can see where the inner magnets will need to be placed in order to hold the plates in the proper position. I took patches of an old t-shirt, slightly larger than the magnets, and hot-glued them over the magnets on the inside of the vest. Now they will stay put when the plates are taken off and cannot fall off while in costume etc.

Worked great and it's cool to be able to pop your chest plate off without revealing any mounts behind it on the vest

Phil

Cool Phil!
Thanks for the suggestion! :-)

Mardon

Hmm...Actually I think I may go with magnets. Seeing as my armor is metal, I would only need magnets on the vest most likely.

Depending on which metal your armor is, yeah, you could probably just put them on the vest.

Aluminum isn't magnetic, right? Am I imagining that? I can't remember...

Phil

Umm, interesting - I may need this in the future..

Well I will try the magnets method, see how that holds. If not, I tested some industrial strength velcro with super sticky back, and it stick to the armour metal really well. I think I might just go with that.

JMP, do you have to limit your movement because of the magnetic attatchment at all. Just wondering how much force they take before coming off. Last thing I would want to happen is to be walking around and off pops a chest piece.



Matt

JMP's system is a fantastic idea, and I remember when he first reported on trying this. I always thought it was the coolest.

Aluminum, however, is not magnetic, so a metallic whatzit will still have to be attached to the inside of the armor plate itself. Perhaps a large washer would be enough, but only testing will provide answers (also, make sure the washer itself is magnetic ).

Depending on how heavy the armor is, and what gauge aluminum it was made from, there are a number of choices for adhesives. All those mentioned should work perfectly. For my armor attachments, I used bolts passing through the armor entirely, and through grommets in the vest, then screwed the nut from the inside. As the backplate has a hook over the shoulders, and the collar receives little stress, I used industrial strength velcro on these. GOOP was the product I used to attach the velcro to my aluminum armor. Roughing up the inside of the aluminum armor with a rotary tool provided a great surface for my GOOP to stick to. The GOOP has held under some pretty tough circumstances, including several hard falls during a fan film, and shows no sign of failing yet.

I used three magnetic connections on each of the three main chest plates. So, six magnets in total for each plate. They held VERY strong. I trooped for about two and half days at comic-con and attended the IMAX premiere in costume. The plates NEVER fell off, never once. A few times a particular movement may have 'popped' one of the connections, but the others were untouched so the plate stayed, and the best part is that generally after 'popping' loose, the chest plate would fall back to my chest and re-connect lol.

The connections are very strong. The only time I remember coming anywhere near close to one popping off entirely was on the tour bus shuttle to and from the Con. Cramped seats, lots of bending. But still I didn't lose any. And I sat through IMAX entirely without a problem.

I'm very confident in the magnetic system. I have bought the magnets I will use for my new version and plan shortly to post a tutorial

Phil

I'll be waiting for your Tutorial, Phil :-)

We pulled our first FG chest armors today & the back portion has a recessed area compared to the edges - I could try either the snaps or the magnetic system & hopefully even with a little slack, no gaps will be seen from the sides.

Another idea would be to add a FG flat sheet at the back with square or round pockets to house these magnets. Could possibly work either way.

Mardon

Sounds good mardon. Any pics?

Si

I'll send you pics thru e-mail Si....hopefully, you can help me upload :-)

Mardon

Thanks very much for the info. Looks like I'm going to buying some magnets.


Matt

One thing I'm planning to do is bolt mine on like MMM, but have the NUTS attached to the actual armor, and tapered-head screws going on the insie, so I don't have a nut head scratching me in the chest everytime I walk. Just an idea, and not tested. I don't even have my vest, much less my armor, much less anything else. Not even a jumpsuit. I have no money, and nowhere to work. We're rebuilding the garage.

"....so I don't have a nut head scratching me in the chest everytime I walk."

Perhaps a midget would be willing to do it for you. 'Course, you'd probably have to pay him.

ughhh

NUT HEAD as in the reciever for the bolt... NOT wat some of you were thinking...

hi, everyone was reading through this thread and it came to me, if you want to use magnets for your armour mabee you could use magntic sheeting, it feels like a thin rubber sheet, you could cut it to the shape you want and sew it to your vest. just a thought.

Here's an idea for you... Get these flat brass military uniform ribbon holders from either a military surplus shop, a military base uniform shop, or http://www.vanguardmil.com/store/. Get the one- or two-ribbon holders (~1-2.5 inches long).

Then epoxy the flat brass side of each one to your armor in various locations. Maybe you can apply some tape, additional epoxy, epoxy putty (like a plumbers epoxy), F/G resin, or whatever you like across the middle if you're still worried about them coming off. Push the little pins through your vest where needed and put the clasps ("frogs" or "turtles") back on the other side, and viola. That way you can experiment with placement of your armor all day long without significant damage (the pin pricks) to your vest. Good luck.

Welcome aussie fett, you and SS both have great ideas!

Heads up guys, the thread is 4 years old

Seems like it got revived at just the right time as I'm weighing my options in mounting my own armor.

Snaps FTW!

I think I'm going to use a combo of several methods: snaps for the boot armor, velcro for the shoulder, shin, thigh, and knee armor, and magnets supplemented by velcro for the chest and back armor.

I say this because each section of armor wears differently. I wouldn't want magnets in my knee armor, because if I decide to go to a kneeling pose, I'd have the magnet jabbing into my knee. I wouldn't want velcro or magnets for my boot armor, because walking around makes the armor move around a lot. I need a hinged-style attachment so that the spats bend with my foot when I take a step. Leg armor is going to be fairly stationary, and magnets are going to make the leg sections a little heavy for my tastes, and I don't want the armor swinging around due to loose jumpsuit legs - velcro should be fine.

Originally Posted by GCNgamer128

Heads up guys, the thread is 4 years old

Not anymore.

right now I have velcro on my Boba armor, and I HATE it, every time I put pressure on one side, say while on a pose, it pushes the other side off of my body and makes a hideous photo. Also I keep having to worry about ripping a plate off every time I adjust my blaster to a certain pose, walking in tight spots etc...

I NEED something that makes the vest conform to the edges of the armor so there's no spacing or unevenness problems. I saw the guide on how to do the bolts but it says to do a resin temlate for the vest, I have no skill and no knowledge how to do this, any other way? I thought about just putting the vest on, putting on the armor, and tracing around it lightly in pencil, then mark where the holes need to be, will this work? or does anyone have a better suggestion? I really want to know that I can do it instead of just go with it and hope it turns out ok

Originally Posted by SingleSeat

Here's an idea for you... Get these flat brass military uniform ribbon holders from either a military surplus shop, a military base uniform shop, or http://www.vanguardmil.com/store/. Get the one- or two-ribbon holders (~1-2.5 inches long).

Then epoxy the flat brass side of each one to your armor in various locations. Maybe you can apply some tape, additional epoxy, epoxy putty (like a plumbers epoxy), F/G resin, or whatever you like across the middle if you're still worried about them coming off. Push the little pins through your vest where needed and put the clasps ("frogs" or "turtles") back on the other side, and viola. That way you can experiment with placement of your armor all day long without significant damage (the pin pricks) to your vest. Good luck.

I can personally verify that these work GREAT! I just got them on my fett armor, and it holds like the bolt system, but is nowhere near as work intensive, my guess is it's cheaper as well. Great idea, I'm envious that I didn't think of it being posted on Ft Campbell and all...