Thanks folks!
Well, glacial progress on the kit at the moment as we're in the final race-to-the-finish work-wise for
our new videogame.But, pleased to say that all the kit has been sprayed silver and sealed with clearcoat in advance of painting and attaching it all.
Since I'm limited on time lately, I've been doing small fixes and additions - first up - building the 'grenades' for the left thigh...
PVC pipes. The red pieces are actual the tops from washing up liquid bottles - I was rooting around for greeblies and noticed that out-of-context and closed these would make pretty decent-looking switch-like ends for the grenades. The ribbing on the smaller two pipes is some detail from some large plastic milk containers - I cut around them and with a little heat, wrapped them around the pipes.
Other small raised panels are more plastic from the milk containers, cut square, corners rounded off and details added by scoring lines in it and punching nice circular holes in it with a paper hole punch.
The large recessed button on the larger pipe is simply a bottle cap, and the clip assembly is a piece off a plastic trouser hanger (remaining from the bits that I made the 'grenade rack' from), a Foamex shape and a screw...
Sprayed up silver and lined up - I'm quite pleased with the results, considering it's just PVC pipe and things out of the recycling.
Looking forward to getting the time to paint everything and weather it all.
Feet-wise, I've just about finished the boot armour.
Decided to use Chicago Screws to attach the armour - with the front pieces I decided to heat form a few bits of flattened out PVC pipe to add strength to them (learning from how well it performed on strengthening the knees) and attached them using 2-part Epoxy and a couple of screws, punching holes in the PVC to glue the screw heads between the Foamex and the PVC.
The heel armour I decided to add as I noticed the boots had a very subtle logo embossed into the leather. Since I was making these to fit, I chose to push the Chicago Screws through the Foamex and countersink and fill over the head.
The thing that guided the design of the boot armour for me was trying to make it flow with the existing shapes and lines on the boots - the trauma plate across the top of the foot follows the same lines of the leather underneath and, as you can see, I made both pieces of armour so that they shaped to the elastic and drew an imaginary curve along the line of the bottom of the front armour that the bottom of the heel armour then flows into.
Have worn the boots for a few hours - the Chicago Screws do press a little into my foot - when it comes to final fitting I'll be stealing a bit of Jayne's old yoga matting to cushion the heads and then wear them solidly around the house for a few days before committing to any kind of trooping in them!
Finally, made a start on my girth belt. 10m of olive green paracord. Having studied a lot of the tutorials out there I decided that although it might be quicker using hot glue it wasn't for me (I guarantee I'd burn my fingers at least once and would be cursing trying to get the paracord to 'take' the glue) so I adopted the following...more organic approach...
I measured my waist and then cut a piece of card half that distance, tightly wound 7 strands around it and using a large needle sewed the strands together. I used a 'Z' type stitch - straight through the line of threads and out the other side, stitch straight back through them in the opposite direction, then make a 45 degree stitch across and then two perpendicular stitches before going diagonal again.
Quite therapeutic and I now have 4 small 7-strand belts with hidden stitching that I intend to cut to size and then stitch together to make the whole belt.
...and that's the update for today. Girth belt hopefully completed soon and in the background scribbling tons of ideas for colour schemes (seriously, deciding on one is the hardest part for me) especially since I've now realised that my intended kit is actually only going to be one sidearm and a breaching charge away from an Assault Brigade kit...
