Updates:
My flight suit is officially on order hopefully I'll have that around the beginning of July. I met withmy local seamstress over the weekend to get the Flak Vest started. Here is the material I'm using for the vest. I went with a upholstery vinyl in a dull black color. I plan to make the belt out of the same material.
I finished trimming up and rough assembly on the second gauntlet. I haven't done much work yet on the communicator for the left gauntlet. Also, lesson learned while trimming my first gauntlet. On Kev's kit I took out all of the material between the two halves of the inside face. When I closed it there was a considerable gap so I went back in and glued in a backer which needs to be trimmed down a little yet.
I began assembling the knees pieces. As I've had to shave down the return edges at the knees on both of the clone suits I've assembled from Kev, I wasn't suprised to learn I had to shim the knees a bit. This worked well for me as I wasn't keen on having a large bondo joint on the front of the knee. It seemed like a future crack waiting to happen. I basically just took some .1 think ABS and cut and pre-bent it into shape. I glued the two haves of the knee to the new front plate and the used my dremel to shape the plastic.
This knee on the right is still a work in process. I still need to smooth out the edges and hit it with some bonod putty.
I also got the belt assembled over the weekend. Another valuable lesson from working with previous kits from Kevin...he's skinny
So when I was trimming the belt I left myself a bit of extra breathing room. In the picture below the whole section between the lines is supposed to come out. As you can see I left about 3/4" on each side for comfort.
Finally, I trimmed up the boot armor and attached it to the boots. I prepped the boots first by rubbing them down with acetone to get rid of as many oils and such as possible. I then roughed up the areas with some sandpaper to help the glue adhere. I opted for E6000 to attach the armor. I haven't worked with it much previously but I've been told it should stay a bit flexible which sounded ideal for my shoes.
My helmet shows up later today, I'm looking forward to starting some preliminary work on the horns.
