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[Slade Kel]

Hey folks, old timer here. You might remember me from such times as several years ago, the OG Horns-On-Head mando. I popped back in briefly shortly after Celebration lamenting the regrettable POS kit that I wore to that lovely event. I made the mistake of helping a bunch of other people get their armor done with the hubris-laden belief that I could slap together a new set of armor in a week. It did not go well.

So here I am, back from Outer Space and starting the job right, from the ground up.

The outfit is heavily influenced by the SW Rebels mando armor, specifically clan Wren:


Now, the helmet came out pretty good, in my opinion at least, so that's going to be kept from the travesty that was the Celebration Kit.

BTW, I had the bloody handprint before TFA made it cool

Torso plates have been rough-cut out of 16 gauge steel.
Chest, Collar and Ab:

Back Collar and Main Back:


My Hitachi metal shears are almost a decade old and a little clunky, so I need to cut the diamond out and do cleanup of angles and corners with the dremel, but that'll be going forward. Hopefully I'll have more updates soon. I'm planning to keep my nose to the grindstone on this, as I've been putting off building a new kit for years now and I have to blot the disappointing sack of dung that was my Celebration armor out of my own mind.

Edit: I had a request for templates, and as I found none online and had to draw my own, I figured I'd offer them up if anyone is interested. Just gimme a shout-out if you use them for a build! . It's an incomplete set, as I'm doing a custom job here, but it should be a solid start for anyone looking to do their own Wren grunt/Rebels mando.

https://imgur.com/a/LVnO5

For actual Clan Wren plates, I have the back plate and back collar, front collar, chest plates and ab, knees and the top half of the gauntlet shells. I appear to have misplaced or chucked the shoulder, and the lower half of the gauntlet shell I just free-handed using my measurements...

The gauntlet shell top and collar plates need to be mirrored to get the full template, and the back plate needs to be cut out, put together and then mirrored. I was also having some issues with the lines showing up, so any extra thick lines you need to cut on the outside of the line to get it at full size. My printer/scanner was also otherwise acting up so I could only do jpegs, but they theoretically were scanned into 8.5x11 inch size and should print out accurate to size for that. For reference on sizing, I'm 5'7", stocky and chunky, 16.5" from armpit-to-armpit across the chest and 16" from collarbone to navel and the bottom of the ab plate sits at about the center-point of my navel.

And upon closer inspection the tip of the ab plate was out of the scan area and the front end of the gauntlet shell top is a bit past the printable area. Neither should have a great effect on the final product, easily fixable with a pencil and a ruler.

[Slade Kel]

Day two, most of the remaining armor parts rough-cut out.



All that's left for actual armor parts are the gauntlets, and if I decide on finger armor for the full crushgaunt look. Tonight and perhaps tomorrow will be dremel cleanup of the current pieces, as I more or less ran out of metal and can't even start cutting out the gauntlets...and we're supposed to get 12-18 inches of snow tonight into tomorrow, so it'll be a few days before I can get out to buy more metal.

[Havelock]

Nice.  Very nice.  Not sure the bloody handprint will fly, though, with the House of Mouse and "No Gore."  But very nice.  I'm going to enjoy watching this come together.

[Darasuum Prudii]

Cant wait to see those plates formed!!! Helmet pain is nice!!!

[Slade Kel]

Nice.  Very nice.  Not sure the bloody handprint will fly, though, with the House of Mouse and "No Gore."  But very nice.  I'm going to enjoy watching this come together.

Thanks! And on the handprint, if that's the final ruling of the App Team when go time approaches, then fair's fair, but the handprint has been a bit of a thing since 2011 so I'll just have to repaint it. My one defense of the 'bloody' print is that (even though I did it first!) the Powers That Be used it in TFA on Finn's helmet.

Cant wait to see those plates formed!!! Helmet pain is nice!!!

Thanks 

[Havelock]

Unfortunately, it's a case of "Do as I say, not as I do," with the higher-ups in the Galaxy Far, Far Away.  That aside, I'm really interested in seeing this kit come to life.

[Slade Kel]

Fair Havelock, I'll burn that bridge when I get to it, though before submitting I'd appreciate it if you would do me the favor if pitching it to the full team to see if you all officially think it would violate the no gore rule. If that's the ruling of the team, it isn't the end of the world, I'll just repaint it another color.

Anyway, progress. Spent all day cutting, dremeling and hammering. Nothing has had the final sand and polish, some still needs to be touched up with the dremel and a lot of it still needs at least a little hammering.

The torso plates are the closest to done:





The gauntlet shells are about done, but I need to either find a source of templates for the toppers or make my own:



I intend on doing crushgaunt style hand armor, but until I find a suitable pair of gloves all I've done are the back of the hand and the plate over the first knuckles:


Thighs are a cross between those seen on some of Wren Clan, and the old TCW Death Watch, knees are standard Wren, and feet are custom for comfort.I'm also working on enclosed greaves, but they're not far enough along to be worth posting.






The cod piece is going to be attached to a padded vinyl backing for comfort, and attached to the flight suit so that it fits snuggish, not loose hanging.


Oh hey, and the mess that is my hammering workspace . I have a sliver of log for a dishing stump at the moment, a small anvil and a cast iron pedestal for them to stand on, along with a set of ballpeens in various weights from 12-20 ounces and a rubber/plastic mallet combo job.


I also finished the back collar plate, but I'll picture it when I get more done on the back plate. I will say it was a stone cold sonofa-you-know-what to get shaped so that it lay flat to my back, and in the end doesn't quite line up with the collar plate anymore and will require some adjusting. I ran out of arm strength before I could get far with the back plate. Been a while since I hammered for more than a few minutes.

[Talon Ven'ad]

I'm gonna have to go with Havelock here. That hand print isn't gonna fly. No blood and gore, and that's clearly a bloody handprint. I think you could change the paint color and keep the hand, but the bloody version will get bounce back. 

[Sep Ho'ban]

Powers That Be used it in TFA on Finn's helmet.

The hand print would be fine if you were doing a canon FN-2187 -- but that would be Rebel Legion or 501st territory. As a merc, it's not CRL compliant, regardless of what prior CRL's or approval precedents are.  The CRL's are a living document.  Otherwise you wouldn't be able to use the Clan Wren inspiration. 

I think you'll do great things with this kit, and I want to see that, but I don't think you need the bloody handprint as a crutch to sell it.  You can find other ways to show your Merc means business vod!

[Mereelajum]

Slade lives!!  Long time no see, good to have you back in action. 


Looks great by the way.  I love metal plates so much.  I’m using Sintra now for my new set (one you commented on on FB) and it just doesn’t have the same feel.  Gonna have to go back to metal again eventually

[Slade Kel]

I'm gonna have to go with Havelock here. That hand print isn't gonna fly. No blood and gore, and that's clearly a bloody handprint. I think you could change the paint color and keep the hand, but the bloody version will get bounce back.

The hand print would be fine if you were doing a canon FN-2187 -- but that would be Rebel Legion or 501st territory. As a merc, it's not CRL compliant, regardless of what prior CRL's or approval precedents are.  The CRL's are a living document.  Otherwise you wouldn't be able to use the Clan Wren inspiration. 

I think you'll do great things with this kit, and I want to see that, but I don't think you need the bloody handprint as a crutch to sell it.  You can find other ways to show your Merc means business vod!

Thanks for your input guys. I'm not one for pedantry, but the current phrasing is

No gruesome themes or items/elements including, but not limited to, human or human-like bones, skin, or organs. This policy is not limited to trophies and includes sculpted or otherwise attached elements.

But like I said, if the App Team makes the call that it meets those restrictions, I'm okay with repainting it. As it's been a staple of 'Slade' for so long I'd like to keep it as is if I can. And I'm well aware of the changeable nature of the CRL's, I used to be part of the revision process, after all . 

Slade lives!!  Long time no see, good to have you back in action. 


Looks great by the way.  I love metal plates so much.  I’m using Sintra now for my new set (one you commented on on FB) and it just doesn’t have the same feel.  Gonna have to go back to metal again eventually

Thanks bro, glad to be back . And yeah, sintra isn't a bad medium, it's just not my favorite. Takes less time to make the plates, but more time and tlc to make them look as good with paint and weathering, in my opinion. Metal is definitely my preferred medium .

[Havelock]

No worries on the pedantry.  While not specifically included in the CRL, "gruesome" includes bloody hand prints.  And blood an gore in general.  Sorry, vod.  I wish you could keep it, as it's pretty bad shebs, but it's a no-go.

[Slade Kel]

No worries on the pedantry.  While not specifically included in the CRL, "gruesome" includes bloody hand prints.  And blood an gore in general.  Sorry, vod.  I wish you could keep it, as it's pretty bad shebs, but it's a no-go.

Understood vod, no worries. I'd like to have kept it, but if that's the official word then I'm not going to fight it .

I made a little more headway on the gauntlets, the hinges are attached and they're more or less final shaped, just waiting on the toppers and such. Next is touch-ups on the other plates and attaching the hinges to the shins. More pictures to come.

[Havelock]

Looking forward to more pics, vod.  I"m really enjoying this build.

[Slade Kel]

Ask and ye shall receive

We got another slight snowpocalypse up here in the frozen northeast, so shoveling wore me out enough that hammering the back plate was not in the cards...and I got the wrong size belts for my belt sander the other day and didn't notice until I opened them today. Still got a fair bit of sanding done with dremel and mouse and hand. Realized in the sanding process I'm more out of practice hammering than I thought, so I had to do extra finishing work, but we're getting there.

The front torso and upper back are almost finished, except for some trimming to make the collar plates line up again now that they're shaped.





The gauntlet shells are more or less finished and hinged together, they just need a little edge smoothing and for my magnets to arrive. Plus I'm still working on the topper problem. Still no luck on templates, so I'm going to try mocking some up myself. I guess I've made all of the other templates, so I should be able to come up with something. Maybe build something up out of foam and face it in thin aluminum? Hand and top knuckle plates are essentially done, though I'll be adding 'rivets' to the hand plates and small spikes to the knuckles later.




That's all for now, more to come soon!.

[Straka Zulu]

Hey, vod, would you have templates of the Wren style plates?  I'm looking to make a set myself.

[Slade Kel]

Drew them all by hand with ruler and pencil, but I can probably get them scanned and uploaded if you want. You'd have to play around with sizing most likely, but it would give you somewhere to start from.

For actual Clan Wren plates, I have the back plate and back collar, front collar, chest plates and ab, knees and the top half of the gauntlet shells. I appear to have misplaced or chucked the shoulder, and the lower half of the gauntlet shell I just free-handed using my measurements. The rest of the plates are custom designs so they won't be helpful in an actual Wren build.

Edit: I scanned and uploaded them anyway https://imgur.com/a/LVnO5
The gauntlet shell top and collar plates need to be mirrored to get the full template, and the back plate needs to be cut out, put together and then mirrored. I was also having some issues with the lines showing up, so any extra thick lines you need to cut on the outside of the line to get it at full size. My printer/scanner was also otherwise acting up so I could only do jpegs, but they theoretically were scanned into 8.5x11 inch size and should print out accurate to size for that. For reference on sizing, I'm 5'7", stocky and chunky, 16.5" from armpit-to-armpit across the chest and 16" from collarbone to navel and the bottom of the ab plate sits at about the center-point of my navel.

Edit2: Upon closer inspection the tip of the ab plate was out of the scan area and the front end of the gauntlet shell top is a bit past the printable area. Neither should have a great effect on the final product, easily fixable with a pencil and a ruler.

I also added the link to the first post in case this gets lengthy or someone's just feeling lazy.

[Slade Kel]

So the rest of the armor cleanup has been slowed because I keep forgetting to get the measurements on my belt sander and I have been too sore from work to want to hand sand everything. In the meantime, I made a little bit of headway with the gauntlet toppers.

So for reference, for those of you that haven't looked closely, this is what I'm aiming for:

All of the rebels mandos have basically similar armor, except for the 'hero' characters like Katan, Rau and Sabine.

I started from paper, went on to foam and finally made this mockup out of sintra.





Very rough as I've done basically no cleanup on it, but I think I've started to get on the right track. I'm giving some thought to making the top entirely out of sintra. The proportions aren't as good as I'd like, but such is the problem with building from cartoon references; they don't exactly have human proportions and their armor bends in weird ways.

Edit: An equally rough mock-up in 22 gauge aluminum, slightly wider-built.



I like the wider look better, and of course metal is my preferred medium. I'll have to play with both more and see what's what.

[Havelock]

This is looking absolutely great, vod!

[Straka Zulu]

This is looking absolutely great, vod!

I agree! 
Kinda envious of your metalworking skills, but, I'll get there.

[Slade Kel]

Thanks guys! And Straka, it's just a matter of time and experience; I've been doing this since 2006 and have built (for myself and others) somewhere on the order of a dozen or fifteen full sets of metal armor for myself and others. I'm a fair bit out of practice as I haven't done any real armor work in about a year, so I'm taking it easy on this set, but I think anyone can do the metalworking if they put in the time and effort. If you have any specific questions, feel free to PM me at any point and I'll get back to you asap.

I will hopefully have a more concrete update this weekend, but I have to pull some overtime because of the snow day earlier in the week so I might not have anything until next week.

[Slade Kel]

Fair certain over a day later isn't double-posting, but even if it is I'm doing it anyway because I don't believe editing a post makes it pop back up on folks' feeds or as 'new' in the forums. If it does, well, someone can educate me on that.

Anyway, I've been working on this most of the day, since getting home from work at 10. I got some work done on the backplate, much of the dishing in fact:



And then my dishing...device...broke in half D:

That 16 gauge can really be a pain in the shebs.

Welp, it is what it is. Also took that left gauntlet top prototype and converted it into 22 gauge steel and started hammering it into shape. I had to get creative because my anvil was a bit too wide and, being the idjit that I am I forgot I had a second, slimmer anvil in my car.




Did a little tweaking, then hit it (along with most of the rest of the armor) with the belt sander, then wirebrush, then fine grit sandpaper. And then I began the mounting process.


Unfortunately I lack the bossman's welding skills, so this is attached using Amazing Goop, which I've found to be ideal as it so far has glued anything I want to anything else; metal-to-metal, metal-to-plastic, plastic-to-plastic, wood-to-wood, wood-to-metal, wood-to-plastic, etcetera. So far I haven't found anything I can't glue together with it. The white bit between the teeth of the topper is a bit of sintra, as the easiest material to fill in there. The whole of it will be bondo'd to the gauntlet shell when I have a chance to do so, along with bondo on the seams with the sintra to blend it all into one lovely whole.

I also made some progress with the right gauntlet topper, because I was bored and needed to give my hands a break from bending, sanding and hammering. You get to have a snapshot of the Slade Template Technique.
Reference pic:


First template proved to be a little too small:

As you can see, there's a lot of ruler-guided lines and paper folding.

Then that got used as a template for another template template-ception:


That one seems to be better proportioned, and also frankly better than the first topper template. Like I've said, I'm a little rusty





All-in-all productive day. Tomorrow I'll likely be tweaking the leftt gauntlet topper and getting the right cut out of metal. Not sure if I'll be able to do it in one piece like the template, though regardless I have plenty of bondo in my future. I think I got enough dishing done on the backplate to jigger it into fitting, so I might do more hammering on that tomorrow. Backplates are by and far the worst part to work on though, so I may need a couple more days of recovery for my arm. Unfortunately I work in manufacturing and spend all work day bending what amounts to metal spaghetti with my hands. The thin metal tubing isn't hard to bend and we have templates and forms to bend around, but it's still tiring on the hands, arms and shoulders once you do a few hundred in a day . Hopefully all of this hammering builds my stamina back up soon.

Also, stay tuned for more; I've decided that with my triumphant return, I'm going to build a kit from each era. This is my main project, but I've already templated and traced early era crusader armor. It'll be done out of 'sintra' because it's supposed to be bone and that's the easiest medium to get that look with minimal effort. Fortunately, Home Depot just started carrying pvc sheets and I was able to pick up a 2'x4' each of 3mm and 6mm. I just haven't worked up the motivation to cut a full suit out, especially as most of it is the 6mm for that beefy armor look and will need to either be cut with a dremel or jig saw. I'll post it up in the appropriate area when I get beyond the traced-out-on-the-sheet stage.

[Straka Zulu]

Looks like it's time to upgrade to an actual dishing stump! 

[Slade Kel]

Looks like it's time to upgrade to an actual dishing stump! 

Well...you're not wrong

Got the shins more toward finished. Not in love with the hinges, but it's hard to attach them otherwise. I decided to go with a style I did previously for enclosed shins, with the closure at the back and two smaller flaps as the back half.



And yes, the front detail pieces are different, one raised more than the other. Part whimsy, part laziness of shaping, but the assymetry will be tied in with the final details and paint done. If I decide I hate the hinges too much once they whole of it is painted, I might pull them, make a simple back clamshell and attach at both sides by magnet. Time will tell.

[Slade Kel]

A good deal of the armor is complete, simply waiting on paint, velcro and straps. I have to wait on the weather for the former, and for the arrival of the latter two. As a teaser, here's much of it sanded, wire brushed and ready for paint.





Not pictured here are the parts of the cod plate (I realized when cleaning up my indoor craft space yesterday that I somehow missed them in my grand sanding/wire brushing session) as well as the back plate and the gauntlets. The back plate is still in its dished only state, as it's a large, awkward piece and relatively tiring to work on while manhandling into place. The gauntlets are still in process.

I did manage to convert the paper template of the other gauntlet topper into metal format, 22 gauge steel like the first one.






Unfortunately, my second anvil also proved too wide for the detail work on the bent topper, but I was able to make use of the iron frame for a fish tank stand that has been living on my back porch since the previous tenant moved out. It's solid metal, and by tipping it on its side and bracing the other legs under my foot I was able to use the end to hammer the piece into place. Unfortunately my cuts were not as neat as could be wanted because of the tools I was using, but they'll be adjustable in the final cleanup.

The inside of the seams have been thoroughly gooped to hold them together, and hopefully this weekend I'll acquire some bondo and seal the outer seams on both toppers. Then it's just a matter of adding the detail pieces and weaponry! I've also done some work on my early era crusader armor if any of y'all are interested in checking it out, link's in the signature.

Edit: I had time to get the cod plates sanded and wire-brushed today, and hit the gauntlets with bondo. Only had enough time to sand one of them tonight, however.








So a bit more work on the back plate and gauntlets, and cutting out a chest diamond, and I'll be done with as much as I can until straps and velcro arrive and the weather decides to cooperate.


Edit: 24Mar2018

Finishing touches on the gauntlets. Just need weapons added, and backfill inside the toppers.