Waxer Build

Quite a bit mor progress last night. As seen above, we did a complete test fit, which told me where we need to trim (back of the thighs at the knee, the tops of the shins at the knees, a bit under the arms, to make everything a bit more comfortable and movable.

I also went ahead with puttying the arms. I started with the upper arms, and put on probably a bit too much, which means more sanding to make them seamless, and I think I did a better job with the forearms. That stuff is pretty cool, and I’m happy with how that’s turning out. I’ll move to the legs tonight, I think, and finish up with the chest/back and the hips.

We also picked up Velcro, so the tabs on the sides of the upper body have been put together, and tabs for the thighs / cod piece as well. I’ve also put velcro on the abs/kidney plates to hold that together, and the belt has been secured in the same fashion.

Next up:

• Helmet visor needs to be completely sanded out – we’ve got the top half, now the bottom half needs to be taken care of.
• Seamless treatment for chest, cod, thighs, shins.
• Sanding for the above, and for the arms
• Forearms need to be trimmed a little.
• Shoulder bells need to be trimmed off and I need to get knee pads to stick inside. Upper arms need to be strapped up to the bells.
• Straps need to be sewn
• Shoes need to be purchased and modified

Painting:

• We’re going to most likely go ahead with painting once that’s all done – several coats of white.
• Orange coloring (this was Megan’s selling point when I convinced her to get the armor) – any tips on where to get 212th paint?

Weathering – we’ll go with the acryllic wash that the other TCW Clones have.

Cloning Around: Part 2

Earlier this year, I picked up a Watch City Armor Clone Trooper kit from a fellow member who was selling one. The armor, built to replicate the clones from the TV series, was a rough kit. Despite my admission after building my first Clone Trooper, the price was just right, everybody else had one, and after learning quite a lot from the first build, it seemed like it might be a fun project. The intent was to recreate Clone Trooper Boil from Ghost Company in The Clone Wars television series.

Then my girlfriend moved in with me, and I was able to convince her that she wanted a set of armor, and that this suit could be for her. So, the armor went from being my third, to her first. Much of the suit had been trimmed by the time she moved up, and for the first couple of months, I did a lot of fine tuning for the pieces, trimming off excess bits, using a pair of heavy-duty shears to take care of most of it, rather than a dremel, as some people use. I’ve found that shears are much easier to use, quieter and gives me quite a bit more control. Using a dremel to get to the hard to cut parts, and to smooth down rough edges, we were able to trim down the suit to the right size.

The next step came when we began to glue things together. The forearms, upper arms came together first, then the shins, thighs, chest, back, cod and butt, using Goop and clamps to hold areas together. This seems to have worked well, and a quick test fit of the chest, abs and cod piece fit together well, although there is more trimming that needs to be done.

The next major step is to fill the seams and overlaps in the armor, so that many of the pieces are seamless. With my first Clone, this was accomplished with Bondo, which was applied over the seams and smoothed with sand paper. While this worked well, it appears to be fairly brittle,and already there are some cracks with a year’s worth of trooping. For this new clone, we’re going to be using a putty made from HIPS mixed with Acetone, which melted the plastic and will allow for application to the appropriate spots, where it will then be smoothed, allowed to dry, and then sanded.

The next steps will be properly fitting the armor to its new owner, and then adding in straps and padding to make it wearable. Pictures to come!

Attack of the Clones

This was written up for a friend’s project:

One of the earliest impressions of the Star Wars universe on me was the white-clad Storm Troopers. Driving home after watching the first movie in the Montpelier Capitol Theater with my Dad, I pretended that I was one of the Imperial soldiers on the way back to a mission to take care of some rebels. Not because they were inherently evil or anything like that, they just had the cooler uniforms. My passion for Star Wars grew as I did, and in 2002, when Attack of the Clones was released to theaters, I was fascinated by the Clone Troopers, the obvious early version of the troopers that I was so taken with.

When it came to build a second set of armor, I decided to build a Clone Trooper from that film. On a film level, the movie is easily the weakest of the six Star Wars films, but has the saving grace of a massive battle as the Clone Troopers swoop in to rescue the besieged Jedi, and more often than not, most of the movie is fast-forwarded to that last battle scene. The original Clone Trooper carries with him a fascinating story that is brought out in the background narrative of the Star Wars saga: a new race of men who have been bred for warfare, covered in armor that is distinctive, interesting and battle worn from the start.

When I purchased my armor kit, I found myself in the middle of a completely new world of prop-building that took almost a year, with countless frustrations, setbacks and problems that both opened my eyes to the process, and a greater appreciation for what I do in the 501st Legion and in costuming. The armor had to be trimmed, sanded, trimmed some more, bondo’ed, painted, repainted, and has survived mis-cuts, modifications, getting run over by a car and the eventual wear and tear that only trooping can bring.

For me, this is matched with the theory that this particular Clone Trooper has been run through the ringer on the front lines. When George Lucas put together his universe, it was worn, lived in and used, and in this instance, the Clone Trooper matches that philosophy. There are cracks in the armor, scratches and scoring, designed to give the appearance that he has stepped off one of the LAAT/I ships and in front of the viewer. From inside the helmet, it’s clear from people’s expressions that he makes an impression, from his appearance to his weapon, fulfilling my original intentions: to bring the Star Wars universe to life for those who see it.

This Clone is a labor of love, sweat and tears, and in a sense, helps to me to put a foot in both sides of the Original/Prequel ponds, a predecessor and the result and a beginning and an end. But, while there is a philosophical reason for putting this particular costume together, there’s another one that trumps it: it just looks so damn cool.

New Roster Pic

I haven’t been updating this as regularly as I should have been, but well, not much has been happening on the 501st front. The New England Garrison is changing a bit with the new command staff, and we’re getting a new image for the website and all of our roster photos. Above is my new one, which is really, really awesome.

With the command staff change is some changes for me as well. I’ve been made the garrison archivist, which essentially means that I’ll be doing what I do here on the 501st NEG page – Blogging, public outreach, photos, etc. It’ll be pretty cool, and I can’t wait to start getting stuff off the ground.

The trooping season’s starting up soon. This past weekend was supposed to be the St. Patrick’s Day Parade, but we were rained out. Hopefully I’ll be out and about soon enough!

Arm Upgrades

So, this past weekend, I think I solve a couple of the last remaining problems with the Clone – the Shoulder and Upper arms. The consistant problem has been that the shoulder bells fall backwards, and the upper arms are just a little too loose, and move around a lot.

With the shoulder, I ripped out all of the padding that was in there, and replaced it with a foam knee pad, held in with some industrial velcro. That both holds the bell up off my shoulder a bit more than it did before, and straps it right to my arm.

The shoulder bells was another quick fix – on the sides of each one, I glued two strips of foam, which hold my arm right in place. Now, the two are both snug, and fit nicely together.

Converting a Rubies Blaster

The build was pretty easy – thanks Sean, for posting up the pictures, and Brian, for helping me last night with a couple questions. This is what I did:

Materials needed: Rubies Clonetrooper blaster, 2 ft long piece of PVC, PVC connector for said pipe, 5′ piece of 3/4 flat rod, thick cardboard tube, metal clothes hanger, glue, spray paint.
Tools needed: Hacksaw, clippers, sandpaper, clamps, screwdriver (small)

I took the gun and cut the bottom rail off with a saw, about halfway down – completely seperate this from the main body of the gun. At the same time, I also cut off the wires on the barrel, although Brian noted that they can be snapped out somehow. I just tossed the pieces. I also removed the greebles on the side with a small screw driver.
Taking the metal rod, I cut it into four pieces – 2 15″ pieces that make up the side rails, a smaller, 13″ piece for the bottom, and the last piece, about 6″, went on the handgrip. From there, I used Goop to attach the two rails to the seperated piece, lengthening that bottom part. I used clamps to hold the pieces on, then glued on the bottom piece and clamped it down. Once that glue was well on it’s way to being set, I put on the handgrip piece.

While that glue was setting, I cut the PVC pipe down from 24 inches to 14 or so. I took a cardboard tube (the kind used to mail posters and things) and cut it in half, then stuffed the two halves down the barrel, to give the entire setup some stability. (It might be prudent to put some glue on them.) Put on the connector (essentially a PVC ring – It was a snug fit, I didn’t glue it), then glue the greebles on the pipe in the same postition as on the original barrel.
After that is set, I took a coat hanger, and cut off the corners. They’re about the same position and shape as the original wires. Taking a sharpie, I marked out where they should be postitioned on the end of the barrel (use the original for reference) and with a small dremel bit, I drilled two guide holes. Cover the ends in glue, and stick them in, and they should hold – make sure the holes are a little angled and that there’s no undo tension that will pop out the wires before the glue sets. Mine are a little delicate, so next time, I’m going to drill a little deeper.

Once the bottom rails have finished setting, I slathered the original barrel with Gorilla Glue and put the new barrel over it. There’s a stub on the guide/handgrip, and I used some goop on the top of that – that connects to the barrel, and will hold that assembly together by connecting the handgrip to the barrel. Make sure it’s on straight and let set. Gorilla Glue expands a bit, and I’ve found that this helps when in an enclosed space – I don’t think that’ll be going anywhere. Allow this to dry.
Next step, paint. I only had time to give it one or two coats, but flat black should do the trick. There’s a lot of little edges that you should keep an eye on – I missed a couple my first go around and had to repaint a couple parts.

Done!

This was a pretty easy thing to do, and around $40 all told. I really enjoyed putting this together. Knowing that there’s a bunch of clones out there in the test tube, so to speak, I’d be willing to make more of these, provided they’re okay to be approved with.

Clone Modifications

 

The night before the Woburn Parade, I worked on improving my Clone Trooper. As I’ve noted before, troops take a toll on a set of armor, and there is generally a bit of maintainence that’s required before using it again. In this case, my Clone required a bit more work, as I’ve lapsed on the fixing up parts. Over the last couple of troops, I’ve had to replace the straps at the knees and elbows, knee pads, belt boxes and shoes.

The knees were the big thing that I needed to get fixed – previously, they’ve slipped down over my shins, which looks weird. To fix this, I took some industrial velcro and simply velcroed them to the knee pads. Now, the straps in back simply hold the knee pads straight, rather than in place. It did push my shins down on my ankles a bit, which wasn’t fun, but it’s a work in progress.

The belt was the bigger improvement. Previously, I’ve had issues keeping the boxes on – they frequently fell off, so I decided to affix them on to the belt permenantly, using an expanding foam. I need to do a little cleanup and paint it at some point, but other than that, it worked wonderfully at the parade – nothing fell off!

Shoes required a little glue here and there, but other than that, they’re good to go.

Meet Trilo!

Not 501st related, but close, my Clone Trooper has been accepted into the Rebel Legion. Clones are accepted, like they are in the 501st, and I submitted mine along with the 501st a little while ago. Instead of numbers, the RL seems to assign people names.

I chose Trilo, which fits with my TKID, TK-3220 (The three in there) and my common username online, JediTrilobite. I also think that I’m the first Rebel Legion member in the state of Vermont. Interesting.

TC-3220

So, it’s finally come to pass. My clone trooper is now, officially done. Earlier today, I found that the suit is 501st approved, almost a full year in the making.

This has been a far more troublesome, difficult and rewarding project over the past 12 months. A year ago next week, I decided to purchase an armor kit, with the intent to finish up a workable Clone Trooper by the time that the movie came out. Obviously, the project has been far more time consuming than I thought, and over the build period, I’ve gained a far different appreciation for armor and the 501st.

Armor making is hard stuff. I didn’t even make the armor, I just got a rough kit. But even there, there was a lot of things that went into this. The armor needed to be trimmed. A helmet was built, then rejected and replaced. There was much gluing, then painting. Deadlines were pushed back, and I’ve shaved years off of my life, no doubt, because of the paint, glue and bondo fumes. Then the approval process, where numerous tweaks were needed, and the regular maintainence and improvements will undoubtably continue for some time.

Still, it was a worthwhile project. It kept my mind off of things when I had a rough year, and I’m ultimately very proud of the thing that I’ve put together, and I’m grateful at the praise that I’ve recieved for it at troops from other troopers, but also from the people who see me in the street with it on. The next step will most likely be converting the entire guy over to Commander Bly, but I don’t know when that will happen.

See the entire progress here.

New Clone Pics

*Dusts off Blog*

It’s been a little while since I’ve updated as I’ve been incredibly busy lately. The Clone is almost done, and I’ve got some pictures to prove it:

(Pictures offline for now, hopefully they’ll be back up soon…)

Many, many thanks to Bill Hicks at Alter Ego portraits!